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Sound Off calls published on August 19, 2009
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• Gang informants

Regarding Chief deWerk's column on "Gang-related killings proliferated like cancer," the sad part is Ceres turns gang members into informants and they allow these individuals to roam our streets and rob, steal and shoot people but that's okay as long as they are informants.

• Thugs stealing recyclables

This is ridiculous. The city of Ceres just had a commercial on ... for recycling. How can you recycle when you've got all these scums coming around to your neighborhood, going on the side of your house or in front of your house? The city of Ceres needs to do something about these people and get them off our streets because they are a bunch of low lifes who are taking everything. Don't put on this commercial on TV ... when you can get these people off the street.

• Put race issues aside

Listen up all citzens of Ceres, whether you are black, white, Mexican and Asian, - whatever you may be - as long as you are paying taxes, we as a people, not a race, need to stand up and take notice of what's going on around here. Everything we pay is skyrocketing. You name it and it's gone up. It is eating everybody up, not just the city fees and costs but state and federal as well. This town continues to argue race week in and week out. I'm sick of it. I hope many people are. We need to drop the race issues and stand up for what we believe in, our rights. The government is stripping everything away. I hope we can all see this. Our wonderful state has really never understood, never enforced anything as well.

The longer we stay on race issues, we will continue to spiral downward. Congressmen continue to get what they want because we continue to pay attention to race only and argue that.

• English on the back page

I just want to say that the man in the paper who someone thought he was Hispanic in the bank because of his color, I went somewhere this week with my son and they were very rude to him. It was a half-brown and half-Cambodia and she was very rude to him. We got the papers and they were all in Spanish and Portuguese. The English one was the very last paper and this was at the welfare office. I thought it was very, very sad because this is America right here. We have everybody from other countries come here and they work and support their families by sending their families the money from America and then have the right to cut America down and make fun of us. This is America.

Yes we are supposed to love everyone and we do but a lot of times it's that they (immigrants) come over here and get their free education, their free schooling, the free everything. A lot of us Americans don't get that kind of specialness. If we went to their country, would we get the same thing that they do here?

I think the American people come first.

Who are we becoming when English is on the back of the folder on everything. I think it's very sad.

• Cell phone law applies to all?

I'm calling in regards to the law that requires hands-free cell phone useage when operating a vehicle. I understand the rules and everything but yet I see police officers driving around in their cruisers talking on the phone. Today I observed one at Whitmore and Faith Home going towards Hughson talking on his cell phone as he looked around to go through the intersection.

If it's going to be a law, the officers need to enforce it upon themselves first.

(Editor's note: In February this issue was addressed by Chief of Police Art deWerk. He wrote: "To clarify, the law specifically exempts on-duty emergency personnel, to include firefighters, police and emergency medical responders, from the hands-free requirement. I believe legislators had a rationale for this apparent anomaly in the law. Specifically, any hazards incurred by using cell phones without a hands-free device are substantially outweighed by the need for emergency personnel to be able to have two-way communications as quickly and efficiently as possible. One might speculate that onboard computers and two-way radios accomplish the same thing, but they do not. Two-way radios are slow, and using computers to text information is even slower under the best of circumstances. Hands-free devices like those with wires or Bluetooth wireless are less reliable and more cumbersome than using a cell phone like a regular handset. They are therefore not practical for use by emergency personnel who must act quickly and receive the clearest sound possible."

• Voting against incumbents

I want to comment about the call, "Vote trustees out of office." To be specific, I'd like to call on everyone to vote for Valli Wigt over Teresa Guerrero, and vote for Lourdes Perez over Edgar Romo. Guerrero and Romo are the ones who wanted to violate board policy and have the school named for outsider Cesar Chavez.