- April 26, 2024
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Dear Editor:
Ms. Marjorie Vincent-Tripp has missed a very valuable point. Yes, there was probably profiling as she suggested, but I believe it was attire, not race.
If you watch the evening news you cannot help but see the "hoodie" being the favorite clothing for criminal activity by all races. I would bet her neighbor
saw a potential criminal. Also think she should thank that neighbor for being alert to someone new in the area and alerting the Sheriff. What if it had
been someone who was scouting for a home to burglarize?
I know for a fact, our Sheriff makes a point of telling all residents of our county, "If you see activity or someone unusual in your neighborhood or
anywhere, report it.” The sheriff would rather respond to a false situation than to having a crime committed.
Tom Mayne
Palm Coast
Dear Editor:
It is good that Sheriff James Manfre wrote a response to the Jan. 7 piece written by your guest writer, Ms. Marjorie Vincent-Tripp, where she reveals that the "suspicious person in the neighborhood" was her son. I would feel awful if my neighbor called the police on my son as he was walking in his own neighborhood.
Her letter included a list of her many accomplished and successful family members, implying: How could this suspicious person in the neighborhood be related to any of them, or to her, as she, too, is successful?
By her comments, she more than insinuates that the neighbor's call to the Sheriff’s Office was race related.
Instead of being objective to the circumstances surrounding the situation, she chose to assign fault to the caller’s judgment of the color of her son's skin.
Mr. Manfre's detailed account of the 911 call dispels any suggestion that the call was racially motivated.
I am glad that this did not remain a one-sided story.
Carl Marco
Palm Coast
Dear Editor:
Upon reading this “hoodie call” piece, I had to double check that the initial “hoodie call’ had not been placed by our now notorious “get him out,” “deport them all,” “rapists and murderers” Donald J. Trump, with a parting comment like: Grand Landings must build a wall, a very large wall, very attractive wall, but we need a wall.
Bonnie Bellin
Palm Coast
Dear Editor:
I read Ms. Marjorie Vincent-Tripp's guest writer article, and parts of it were rather puzzling. She spends the first half of the article talking about her and her family’s accomplishments. They seem to be quite successful.
The rest of the article is spent complaining about her son's run-in with the law. He was wearing a "hoodie" and walking down the street reading a book when someone called the Sheriff's Office.
Ms. Vincent-Tripp lives in a small, gated community out in the boonies, which, by the way, has no guard at the gate, and, from what I saw driving through the area, her son probably would receive some attention. Anybody walking through this place would get noticed. I saw one person when I drove through Grand Landings.
She mentions “Selma” and how the poor treatment of blacks continues. I don't know how old she is, but I was born in North Carolina in 1933, and I know how it was. Don't tell me about how bad off the black people were; I'm white, and we were all in the same sinking boat. The only difference was I lived in a mill village shack on one side of a dirt road, and they lived in a shack on the other side! Black people don't have a monopoly on hard times.
Yes, we had different water fountains and different schools, but that didn't amount to a hill of beans when you are hungry and wearing patched-up overalls! We were all worried about surviving, not race relations. I have some good friends who happen to be black and my age; we traveled down the same dirt road to get here.
Douglas Glover
Palm Coast
