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Restraint needed in
search of Thao home
Re: “Mayor’s home part of startling FBI raids” (Page A1, June 21).
The search of Oakland Mayor Sheng Thao’s Oakland residence is a lightning bolt electrifying the city’s government and politics.
Some of the responses are deplorable. Those seeking Thao’s recall are screaming for her to resign, this despite the fact that they know nothing of the search warrant’s content.
They assume Thao is under criminal investigation. That’s a risky assumption. Law enforcement officers can obtain a warrant when a judge finds probable cause to believe that evidence relating to a crime may exist at the location to be searched. But the person who lives in the place to be searched need not be a target of the criminal investigation.
Mayor Thao has no warrant facts either. Yet she shouts that she represents the poor and her situation is caused by “billionaires and millionaires” who want to destroy her. Lots of luck with that.
Restraint is badly needed.
Gary Sirbu
Oakland
Charreadas shirking
responsibility unacceptable
California boasts the nation’s most comprehensive rodeo law, Penal Code 596.7. The law was amended in 2007 to include the Mexican charreadas common throughout California.
Current law requires either an on-site or on-call veterinarian at every rodeo and charreada, and bans the use of electric prods in the holding chutes. The law further requires that animal injury reports be submitted to the State Veterinary Medical Board. These reports are public record.
Incredibly, no charreada injury reports have been submitted to the vet board since 2007, and injuries are routine. Three of the charreada‘s nine scored events involve roping the legs of running horses. In the “steer tailing” event, tails are routinely stripped to the bone (“degloved”), broken, even torn off.
It appears that the charro community is unaware of state law and its penalties. Please spread the word to help remedy this unacceptable situation.
Eric Mills
Oakland
Homeless are not
on streets for ‘freebies’
Re: “We should start holding homeless accountable” (Page A6, June 7).
How lucky you and I are to not have experienced the misfortune of an unhoused person.
If only this topic were as “simple” as taking advantage of “free stuff.” Each person’s trajectory toward becoming homeless is, in fact, complicated. They may suffer from mental illness or a drug dependency. They may have been gainfully employed until an unexpected medical or other emergency depleted their funds.
Try engaging in a conversation with an unhoused person. You may be surprised by what you learn. I guarantee it won’t be, “I’m here because of the freebies.”
Sharon Brown
Walnut Creek
Returning land is
justice for Shasta tribe
More than 2,800 acres of ancestral land in northwestern California will be returning to the Shasta Indian Nation.
The transfer will include land that was buried at the bottom of the reservoirs created by the Klamath River dams, which is an ongoing project of removal. Historically, the Shasta Indians have inhabited the land in both the northwestern part of California and the southwestern part of Oregon located next …read more
Source:: The Mercury News – Entertainment
