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CITATIONS DON’T ADD UP I take a more aggressively skeptical view than does Samuel Johnson of Springfield of Deputy Police Chief Dennis Arnold’s contention that having more officers patrolling the east side due to the higher call frequency produces more traffic stops (“Black and white,” Patrick Yeagle, Aug. 14). To say that this makes sense is to allow that the police, once called to the east side to respond to the higher call frequency, spend their time on that beat making routine traffic stops.

Wouldn’t it make more sense that those officers would make fewer routine traffic stops, given that they need to be available for shootings, assaults, burglaries and other crimes giving rise to the higher call frequency? To say that officers are assigned to the east side to deal with these crimes, and then that they accordingly spend their time issuing citations for turn signals and the like, is really the equivalent of asking the state troopers at the State Fair, “Hey, as long as you’re not responding to assaults and other disturbances, mind stepping back here and selling a few beers for us?” I also would have liked to hear the deputy chief’s take on the fact that the Springfield police had only given 125 or so turn-signal citations between November 2012 and November 2013. What is the department’s rationale for stopping only certain turn-signal violators? The 125 citations in a 12-month period works out to roughly one citation every three days for the entire police force. Clearly some kind of triage is at work here, and the stereotype of the older car, driven by the unlicensed or uninsured socioeconomic misfit on the east side of town, is the only explanation that makes sense to me. Eric Fisher Springfield

BARRED FROM CARE The article by Bruce Rushton (“Settling affairs,” Aug. 21) left some unanswered questions. Where was the jail doctor while Paul Carlock’s health declined in the jail and why wasn’t he taken to the hospital in a timely manner? Any doctor knows that a diabetic has to check their blood sugar daily and keep their medicine and diet adjusted to keep their blood sugar at an acceptable level. One would think Carlock would have been taken to the hospital long before his health declined to a critical level. I have been told of another case where an inmate suffered medical damage because the jail doctor told him his chest discomfort was the result of being in jail.

Another question is why was the legal advice apparently not to pursue mediation in the face of two judges recommending that, and the facts of the case suggesting that the case was probably not winnable? Who can have a person approaching 300 pounds sit on their back for any length of time without having trouble breathing and problems with the heart pumping adequate blood to their vital organs? And now the county wants to pursue a case in which a person was apparently tased more than 20 times. How many people would be able to withstand that many taser hits? Apparently the county and the lawyers have not learned “when to hold them and when to fold them.” The only winners in these cases are the plaintiffs and the lawyers. These cases seem to be penny wise and pound foolish and we taxpayers are paying a multitude of pounds.

It appears the new sheriff and the county board have a large task on getting the jail back to the place it needs to be with sensitivity training, better rules of conduct, adequate medical care and possibly other training needs. Tyre W. Rees Springfield

TIME SERVED FOR POT I was the correctional officer at Logan Correctional Center when Jason Spyres was first incarcerated and when I retired, Jason was still there (Letters, “Thirty years for weed,” Aug. 28). His every word in that letter is true. I took him to his court writs and I met his good family. When I retired in 2009 I told Jason’s family that I would be an advocate and witness for his clemency hearing. As of this date, Gov. Pat Quinn and the Illinois Prisoner Review Board have utterly failed in freeing Jason from Dept. of Corrections custody. All those years behind bars for a drug that is safer than alcohol and tobacco! It is my feeling that Jason has done his time and we should save the taxpayer the $35,000 a year for his incarceration. Cannabis laws are changing across the nation, except in Illinois where a person can still get 30 years for a marijuana offense. It seems the governor is more hell-bent on stealing state retirees’ pension checks than doing the right thing by letting Jason Spyres out. Marijuana laws will be changed in Illinois. So Gov. Quinn, why not start now? George Atterberry Springfield