Views Around New York

COVID Impatience Can Be Dangerous

From: The Daily Gazette Editorial Board, Saratoga

The return to normalcy has started. But we’re not there yet.

And if you think we’re beyond the bad old days of seeing big spikes in cases, look no further than Saratoga Springs High School, where about two dozen students contracted the virus recently.

Officials believe the outbreak was largely the result of a teen party in Lake George the weekend of April 10.

… We’re almost there! Now is not the time to get complacent and let down our guard.

Vaccinations are available to anyone over age 16. If you haven’t gotten your shot(s), find a vaccination site in your area and get one. It shouldn’t be difficult.

In the meantime, keep taking basic precautions. Wear your mask indoors and around others. Social distance. Wash your hands and disinfect surfaces. Don’t gather together in large numbers.

If we all keep at it, this will be over soon and our patience will be rewarded.

We just got a vivid reminder of what can happen if we don’t.

Policing Issues Are More

Than Just Tear gas related

From: The Albany Times-Union Editorial Board

It seems incongruous in a free society for law enforcement to use on civilians a chemical agent that’s been banned on battlefields for nearly a century. So, it’s commendable that Albany is looking to restrict the use of tear gas by police.

Albany, however, will need more than just a policy on paper to make this proposal work. And it needs to go beyond one tactic in exploring better ways for police to deal with the public.

… We need a rethinking of law enforcement, from the vetting that goes on in recruitment and hiring to the training officers receive in the academy and on the job, and to the very culture of police forces, including the consequences for violating policies. We need police to be able to recognize when it’s truly necessary to control situations and when their need for control will more likely have the opposite effect — with the kind of needlessly fatal results we see too often in arrests and minor traffic stops. Far better than control would be communities that seem less like battlefields, and
encounters between police and civilians that don’t require the weapons of war, banned or not.