Sheriff needs to be held accountable
I am writing this in response to the recent articles about our Sheriff Ken Fries. Paul Moss, a Republican on the County Council, was recently pulled over on suspicion of drunken driving and refused to take a breathalyzer and later made a phone call to the sheriff at 3 a.m., and all of a sudden it wentfrom a possible OWI case to a ride home.
Fries said it sounded like he had a few drinks but he was not drunk. I guess we can throw out the breathalyzer tests, and when people are drunk, they can just call Fries and he will diagnose them as drunk or not simply by listening to their voice.
Fries said this type of situation has happened hundreds of times. That makes me feel better that people who refuse breathalyzers and are not even taken downtown to see if they are drunk are just given rides home.
I wonder what people in Fort Wayne who have lost a family or friend due to a drunk driver would think about how the sheriff handled the situation. I think our sheriff should take OWIs more seriously; 16,000 people die each year in alcohol-related accidents.
Moss said he was providing a safe ride home for his daughter. A person who gets pulled over and refuses a breathalyzer does not sound like a person providing a safe ride for anyone. What example does that set, and what message does that send? “Do not drink and drive unless you have the sheriff on speed dial.”
Does Fries think this is Mayberry? If it had not been for that phone call, Moss would have been sitting in jail like every other drunk driver. If Fries is not going to hold drunk drivers accountable for their actions, then we have to hold Fries accountable at election time.
Tom Ackmann
Pence will keep right-to-work law
Responding to the letter written by Curtis J. Ranson, Spencerville, that was published in the edition of May 30: It is obvious from the content of his letter that Ransom has strong feelings for unions and is a strong supporter of them. Ransom possibly is also satisfied to receive the same hourly wage as the rest of the workers as provided for by the union contract. He is apparently satisfied to see much of those dues go to pay the salaries of union officials, who can “eat high on the hog,” as the old expression goes, as well as see a part of those dues be paid into the coffers of the Democratic Party.
I have never been a member of a union and have always depended upon my own abilities to earn the wages and benefits I earned to support my family. I have never worked in a union environment, instead was employed by an employer who fairly treated its employees and rewarded those who gave excellent performance and whose pay scales were based upon individual performance.
That is why I am a strong supporter of the Indiana right-to-work law. People should not have to pay a part of the money they are earning to a union in order to be able to continue working. People should not be forced to belong to an organization they do not want to belong to, but that they were having to either belong to, or worse, to not belong, but still be contributing the monthly donation to the union, so that they could continue to be employed.
Mr. Ransom, you are hoping the Democrat who is running for governor of Indiana will win and will have enough support in the Indiana Senate and House to repeal right-to-work. For me and others who support right-to-work, we are planning on seeing Mike Pence become governor, who will keep Indiana progressing into the future, a future where people are rewarded for their own efforts.
Ronald G. Ross, 1SG U.S. Army (ret)
Saint Joe
Our right to work
Regarding Curtis Ransom’s May 30 letter, “RTW law illegal”: If this is the case, how is it that there were already 22 other states that have right-to-work laws? Why haven’t any of those laws been successfully challenged in the federal courts?
To put it on a more personal level, why should my daughter have been required to join the Service International Workers’ Union (SEIU) as a condition of having a part-time job at a Bluffton Kroger store? She doesn’t even know what the SEIU is, let alone what political causes it supports.
This is about people’s freedom of association. If memory serves, that’s something enshrined in the Bill of Rights, isn’t it?
Craig Leonard
