Three Comments

Re: “Nico Tried to Get Out,” June 25 cover story.

First comment: It should be one vertebra. Vertbrae is the plural. It should be: “Doctors informed Nico that one bullet bounced off his spine and shattered one vertebra.”

Second comment: It’s pretty hard for this gringo to feel any sympathy for any of these clowns in the story.

Third comment: I don’t see anything that Donald Trump said in his announcement that he was running for president that was untrue regarding our Hispanic brethren.

• Name Withheld
• via voicemail

Not So Bright

I live in Fallbrook, and am active on a lot of community pages. This story regarding the bite on Officer Banks is causing a lot of issues in our community. I understand it is a fake story, but others are not so bright. Please clarify this.

• Jill
• Fallbrook

WWII of Climate Change

I just wanted to call and thank you all so much for covering the midnight ride of Paul Revere warning about the climate disruption that is happening, and the need for us to engage in a World War II-scale mobilization to translate us off of fossil fuels and onto renewables.

• Name Withheld
• via voicemail

Horrible Before; Now Worse

Regarding the Adobe Falls article by Siobhan Braun — please remove it!

I live at the entrance to Adobe Falls and in the last two weeks we’ve had three times the amount of traffic going into the falls. It was horrible before. Now it’s worse.

All entry into Adobe Falls is trespassing. It is owned by SDSU. It is illegal.

My street now regularly has ten cars on it that don’t belong, and people are getting high and drunk in the neighborhood and driving and racing their cars around. They play chicken with the residents, and they scream at our kids playing in the street. I call the police almost daily. I’m over it.

It’s awful. I’m 36 years old, and having to complain like a grumpy old woman about the “kids these days!” Seriously, it’s that bad.

I’m pulling bottles of liquor and urine out of my yard, picking up empty spray cans, condoms, and food containers. We’ve also had a ton of break-ins in cars and homes with all this traffic coming in.

We taxpayers also have to pay for the kids that get airlifted out of there when they get stoned and drunk, and fall. It’s a danger to them, a burden to the taxpayer, it’s illegal, and I can’t even begin to go into the environmental damage.

• Name withheld
• via email

Accept Middle Age

Some readers complain about the small fonts you use. I am 76 — had to buy reading glasses when I hit the forties. These whiners just need to accept the fact they are coming up on middle age, and just don’t want to accept that they are losing their youth. Your font size is fine.

Whiners: get contacts, buy $10 reading specs, or just quite whining.

• Greg Gieselman
• Ocean Beach

Smells Like Gross Ineptitude

How many is too many white male lifeguards?

I represent no organization or institution. What I am exposing is from my own personal opinions and experiences. I am a retired lifesaver. I guarded all City of San Diego and Coronado beaches from 1960 to 1989. I am a male. My eyes are blue and my light hair is now white. My mother was born in the Republic of Mexico and I have an English surname. I saved thousands of people from drowning and I don’t think one of them cared “what” I was.

Racially, ocean lifesaving services have stuck out like a sore sunburn. Still, after all these decades, they are dominated by a gringo male workforce. Lifeguarding is being targeted by bureaucrats as a “white male culture.” This implication of a good-ol’-boys network that needs to be busted open to minorities and women is short-sighted and smells of gross ineptitude, and is reverse discrimination.

Understand this. Ocean lifesaving is a highly specialized physical and mental skill-orientated profession. Very, very few individuals in the world, regardless of gender or genetic makeup, are capable of successfully and safely working as a lifeguard in the marine environment. It takes a young lifetime of continuous aquatic experiences to learn the skills to be able to repeatedly challenge the power and dangers of the ocean to save lives. If almost half of San Diego’s ocean lifeguard staff will be retiring soon, then that is a major experience resource loss to our city and it will take years to bring up the level of service to its present degree of safety.

Unfortunately for government pundits, the recreational learning grounds and activities that spawn capable watermen are dominated mostly by white males. Competitive swimming, board and body surfing, SCUBA and skin diving, spearfishing, and boating are just a small sample of these endeavors. Why other ethnic groups are not generally attracted to these water sports and do not participate to a degree that lifesaving aquatic skills are learned is unknown.

Many women learn the necessary abilities to become proficient lifesavers but few pursue it as employment. Why this is I also don’t know, since qualified women generally excel equally with men on the beach and in the water.

In Hawaii lifeguards are a standout example of ethnic diversity. They are mostly comprised of Polynesian and/or Asian backgrounds. Islanders grow up as super water babies and are remarkable water athletes. I don’t think there are many Hispanic lifesavers in Hawaii, although San Diego had a force of exceptional ones during my career.

So, there is another management attack to genetically diversify San Diego’s lifeguards. It used to be the personnel department. Now it is the city auditor, Eduardo Luna, on the promotional war path.

The Reader quotes Mr. Luna, “In order to bring lifeguard services in to conformance with labor force availability of San Diego, it should improve its recruitment of Hispanics and females individuals.” By this recommendation, are we to discriminate against other ethnic groups and gender-orientated individuals by excluding them from Mr. Luna’s recruitment list?

California lifeguards have worked hard to develop junior lifeguard programs to teach all minorities the skills necessary to qualify for employment. There is also a regional lifeguard academy to further teach advanced lifesaving. Is Mr. Luna looking for a subjective quota, whether they are qualified or not?

Years ago the County of San Diego hired an unqualified pool lifeguard to head the ocean services with disastrous affirmative action results. The auditor’s statements imply that the existing United States Lifesaving Association’s educational, fitness, and background standards — requirements used nationally — are a possible barrier to hiring Hispanics and women, and should be lowered if needed to justify his diversity goals for San Diego lifeguard professionals. Under the existing lifeguard qualification standards, there is less than a one in 18,000,000 chance of drowning in America on a guarded beach (USLSA). Safe swimming to you and your family, Mr. Luna.

• William Dean Owen
• Retired lifesaver, aviator, and medic

Experience a Pit Bull

As a disclaimer, I am not a crazy pit activist. But this article really struck me the wrong way. Much like your author, Bill Manson, I love my pet and would be biased against a breed if my baby were to ever be attacked. It is an unfortunate event that happens far too often, but people only broadcast pit bull attacks because of the negative connotation that goes along with the name.

Pit bulls actually have a very friendly nature, and once upon a time they were used as nanny dogs. But it can take a turn for the worst when bad people get their hands on such a strong, protective breed.

When I was seven I was attacked by a golden retriever — chomped on my calf pretty good. Does that mean all golden retrievers are dangerous? No, it simply means a harmless dog was raised poorly. Everyone is entitled to their opinion, but there is a rising of pitty activists in this day and age who will rip your author apart. I am simply writing because I would like this author to meet a few pit bulls, do real research, not just look for what will help his argument, and become a more open-minded person.

When I started my search for a companion, I was looking for a medium sized breed (not a pit bull, because of landlords) and stumbled upon Brutus. I fell in love.

My dog is an American bulldog/pit bull mix. He is a fully grown two-year-old who weighs in at roughly 85 pounds. He was set “free” and became stray at a very young age before I rescued him. So, his personality is completely nature rather than nurture. He had limited human influence before I got him, but he is naturally the sweetest giant. He loves children of all ages, he goes to my grandmother’s nursing home to put a smile on her neighbors’ faces, he plays with cats at our friends houses, and he thinks all small dogs are puppies and tries to take care of them. He also thinks he is 10 pounds and tries to sit on the lap of any guest I have over who will let him.

So, Bill Manson, I urge you to go out and truly experience a pit bull. You will see my boy is not a rarity but rather an average pitty, whose just big and scary looking. And as sad as it is that Mr. Whiskers got attacked, I’d blame the ahole owner, not the breed.

If you would like to see what Brutus looks like and see that he is gentle and not scary, my Instagram is mostly pictures of him.

• Kara Dintino
• Buffalo, NY

#endbsl

This article is full of hate and uses fear tactics to make pit bulls look like monsters. Please stop using your platform to discriminate against dog breeds. This is totally unacceptable and downright disgusting that you would let such an article be published. Please educate yourselves before you allow such nonsense and discriminatory content

It truly saddens me that this is still happening today. Discriminating against certain breeds is like being racist against a certain skin color, the only difference being that it is dealing with animals instead of humans. Remember, it is not the breed, it is how they are raised. Even with that, these dogs are still the most loving dogs ever. Educate yourselves, do research.

Have you ever read into what happened to the dogs that were confiscated from the Michael Vick fighting ring? Or have you read up on a rescue story of any pit bulls? Have you gone to a social media platform and looked at the endless pages of rescues working so hard to save these beautiful souls and bringing about #endbsl?

Good job, Bill Manson and San Diego Reader, for adding to the list of ignorant, stereotypical people who feed the incorrect fear of pit bulls into people’s minds, for allowing more dogs to be abused and or put down due to their breed, and for taking the innocence of the most beautiful loving creatures in the world. I truly applaud you for your careless work. Ignorance really is bliss isn’t it?

• Rachael Patel
• via email