POLICE: Lax on red lights

As a former police officer (20 years ago), I am disturbed by the Coeur d’Alene police force and the city workers. I can’t count the number of times I have had to drive through broken glass from a traffic accident because not a single worker can come and clean up the glass. For a resort town, I see way too much litter around the neighborhoods. Again, where are the city workers?

As for the police force, I don’t know if it is orders from the top or just the average officers who seem to believe that traffic enforcement is not part of the job. I have never experienced the level of red light violations as I have in this city. Not late yellows into red, but red all the way from well before they cross the stop line. Worse yet is I have been behind a Coeur d’Alene police car on two different occasions where the green light comes on for us and two or three vehicles pass through the red light in front of us and the officer did nothing. I know the first excuse will be maybe they are on a call. Both times the police squad car went from one red light to another in no hurry at all.

If this is how they respond to calls, then I hope I never have to call them in an emergency. Maybe if the police chief or mayor had a son or daughter who were killed or injured by a red light violator, you would see enforcement overnight. Ordinary citizens don’t seem to count. When a vehicle blatantly runs a red light in front of an officer’s car and he does nothing, then that police force needs a good cleaning out either from the bottom or the top depending on where this stems from.

RALPH PEDERSON

Coeur d’Alene