Safety and the need to respect police

I am angered by the outrage over the fact that the Chicago Police pulled over a motorist because he wasn’t wearing a seat belt and his car had tinted windows.

No neighborhood is safe anymore, and when I am at a stoplight next to someone with tinted windows, I always have a very uneasy feeling. This was in a known high-crime neighborhood in Chicago. Tinted windows to that degree are against the law. Every person that has them should be pulled over and issued a citation requiring them to appear in court showing they now comply with the law.

If the police legally pulled 50 people over and gave 49 of them warnings for not wearing a seat belt and arrested one for illegally having a firearm, they may have saved lives.

When I was 17 years old, I had an old beat-up car because that’s all I could afford. I picked up two of my Caucasian friends who lived near Cicero and Wrightwood in Chicago, which wasn’t that bad of a neighborhood 50 years ago. Chicago police pulled me over for no reason, I guess it was because three teenagers were driving around in an old beat-up car. They had me get out of the car and put my hands on the trunk, then patted me down. I did everything they asked, very respectfully.

When they were done I thanked them for keeping my friends’ neighborhood safe. I wasn’t thrilled about being pulled over, but I learned at a very early age how to treat people with respect.

Rich McHugh

Des Plaines