RE KEVIN Cullen's column "Asking for trouble" (City & Region, July 21): He writes that the individuals he interviewed felt uncomfortable at the sight of the police presence when they exited the Boston Garden the night the Celtics won their 17th championship. I can only imagine how uncomfortable these same individuals might have felt if they had traveled a few hundred yards to Friend Street, where, on the same night, the Globe reported last month, there was $50,000 dollars in damage to one business alone. This occurred during a rampage of revelers who "yanked street-sign posts out of the sidewalk and smashed them through . . .the building's windows," according to a June 19 Globe story. I surmise it was probably very uncomfortable for the law-abiding pedestrians who tried to negotiate their way down the street during the drunken frenzy. In the same June 19 coverage, the Globe also published a photo of several individuals damaging property at Faneuil Hall.
After reading that and seeing the photos of the culprits in action, I wonder how people can still feel that the police presence was unnecessary.
TOM LEAHY
Dorchester
WHEN JUST about every sports championship is routinely followed by wanton destruction by hordes of Neanderthals who think it is their inherent right to "celebrate" this way, it is unconceivable that Kevin Cullen could have the audacity to suggest that the police presence is the cause of all this insanity. Is he serious? What's more, acting as judge and jury, he blames police for the death of David Woodman, a baseless assumption of facts not yet proven.
The public good would be better served if the blame were placed where it properly belongs: at the feet of a couple of generations of witless, gutless parents who have never said no to their children, and are now reaping a harvest of spoiled, ego-centric monsters who are locked into perpetual adolescence and devoid of all sense of respect for the rights and property of others.
Cullen's unwarranted and unworthy attack on the integrity of all police officers is an insult to all decent citizens everywhere.
WILLIAM McDADE
Burlington
