Letters to the Editor
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‘The duFresne Murder’
Both The New York Sun’s editorial [“The duFresne Murder,” February 2, 2005] and the front-page news story [“Murder Suspect In duFresne Case Had Broken Parole,” Jeremy Smerd, February 2, 2005] force one to reflect upon the adequacy of parole supervision of released violent offenders. The circumstances seem to suggest that this tragic, senseless murder might have been avoided by a different review of the suspect’s parole case.
The one isolated December 2004 surprise home visit by the parole officer to ascertain whether the suspect was keeping curfew sounds superficial. The suspect was previously convicted of gun possession, a crime defined as violent by state statute. More frequent visits ought to have been made and not just to ascertain if he was home at night.
The suspect’s person and his effects ought to have been consistently searched to see if he had acquired a new illegal firearm. A parolee, as one serving the balance of his sentence “on the street,” does not have the same Fourth Amendment protections as ordinary citizens. Such searches are well within the authority of parole officers. Not only is the finding of such illegal weapons grounds for violation but the failure to comply with the search is also.
Moreover, the suspect’s relationship to a 14-year-old girl, also arrested in the incident, should not have escaped review by the parole authorities. If this liaison was sexual that would constitute yet another separate felony and be grounds for violation of parole. And the troubled young suspect, a previously convicted violent felon, would be off the streets.
The claim that parole officers are overworked is no defense. Everybody is overworked. Law enforcement and public security are critical aspects of governance. If the NYPD can hire police administrative aides to do paperwork that frees desk-bound cops for street policing, then the Parole Authority can do the same. Reforms and adjustments must be implemented. The law-abiding public deserves diligent and effective supervision of parolees. Until then, we will tragically continue to suffer the loss of creative, vibrant, and positive people like Nicole duFresne.
STANLEY M. RUBIN
Fresh Meadows, N.Y.
‘Mideast Parley Takes Ugly Turn’
Sol Stern and Fred Siegel [“Mideast Parley Takes Ugly Turn At Columbia U.,” Page 1, February 4, 2005] repeatedly refer to a Columbia university panel on the Middle East as engaging in “hate speech.”
Why? Because the panel questioned the idea of the ethnic Jewish state, which is by definition a state in which Jews have special political and civil rights that non-Jews do not have. Democracy means equal rights for all.
There is nothing hateful or anti-democratic about supporting a single state for Jews and Palestinians, one in which all would have equal rights. This would, indeed, spell the end of the Jewish state. It would be the beginning of real democracy for Jews and Palestinians alike. There is nothing hateful in pointing this out.
JESSE LARNER
Manhattan
Sexism Not To Blame
Re: “Blame Sexism for Differences” [Jason Zenith, Letters, February 3, 2005], I was a student in the Department of Mathematics at the University of California, Berkeley in the early 1980s. In my four years there, I didn’t encounter hostility or even inhospitality that Mr. Zenith writes about; on the contrary, I and all my female friends in Mathematics and Physics were welcomed and encouraged.
After graduating, I was accepted to all the graduate schools to which I applied. In graduate school in applied mathematics at Stanford, there was the same atmosphere of good will emanating from professors and male students.
Now my two older daughters are in advanced mathematics classes at elite New York schools, one in high school, the other in middle school. They have experienced no negative attitude either from the boys or from the teachers, some of whom are women. Girls constitute but a small minority in these classes.
I believe that my experience is not an anomaly but the general rule.
POLINA LIBERMAN
Manhattan
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