LETTERS: Plight of Las Vegas children overlooked

To the editor:

Perhaps what happens in Missouri needs to stay in Missouri. We will never know what was in the hearts of a policeman and a young man in Ferguson. A grand jury, consisting of Missouri citizens from multiple cultures, decided there was no crime committed, sad as that outcome may be.

But we know full well what happened in Las Vegas in the deaths of Roderick “RJ” Arrington and Raymond Rodriguez-Gonzalez. Where is the outrage declaring that we need to put a stop to what’s happening to children, infants and toddlers in Las Vegas? It cannot be only my stomach that turned when I read the accounts of these helpless little boys suffering at the hands of their parents.

On the front page of the Nov. 25 Review-Journal was a story about the local reaction to the Ferguson, Mo., grand jury decision (“In Las Vegas, decision shocks”). Then I went to Section B of the same edition, and at the bottom of Page 1 was the story of the infant killed by his father (“Father killed infant son by crushing him, police say”). This was not an accident, not a complicated question of police malice or misjudgment — just a baby being fussy and his daddy wanting to shut him up.

Where is the shock? Where is the outrage? What is wrong with our society? Why aren’t people lining up protesting the incompetence or malpractice of social workers or yelling about a system that is obviously beyond broken? Granted, the system is overwhelmed, but that’s no excuse.

And RJ’s mother got a plea deal for testifying that she took part in the murder of her child (“Palmer given prison sentence,” Thursday Review-Journal). There, you should have outrage.

It cannot be only my tears that fall for RJ and Raymond and the dozens of other innocents whose parents, step-parents, foster parents and family don’t just abuse them or neglect them — oh, that they would only just neglect them — but kill them. Community priorities are massively screwed up when people in our town get totally wound up about a situation in Missouri, while the RJs and Raymonds are left to die violent, miserable, heinous deaths. It’s so much easier to rant about Ferguson than clean up our own house.

MONTEREY BROOKMAN

LAS VEGAS

Stadium pursuit

To the editor:

Why do we keep wasting time on all these stadium sites and what franchise we must attract? Why don’t we tear down Sam Boyd Stadium, build a 75,000-seat stadium and go after an NFL team? Let the casinos join forces and provide resources, along with a deal from the state, and do the thing right.

If these casinos can be $22 billion in debt, what’s a billion more dollars to build a stadium? We have some big players running these casinos who are very smart about raising money. Why do we keep thinking small? Let’s start thinking big.

This would also solve the problem of where UNLV football would play and would be a shot in the arm for recruiting. Could you imagine what a Super Bowl would mean to Las Vegas? We have the hotel rooms and the entertainment. What’s the problem?

DAVE MESKER

LAS VEGAS

Imperial order

To the editor:

An imperial President Barack Obama has handed down a unilateral executive amnesty decree, which is clearly unlawful, according to persuasive arguments given by the president himself in dozens of speeches during the past six years. Most midterm voters strongly agree with the president’s assertion that “the idea that the president of the U.S. can simply suspend the deportation of illegal immigrants is not how our system works.”

The truth is that an executive order giving protection from deportation, while providing Social Security numbers and work permits to 5 million illegal immigrants, is an action that overrides existing statutes and violates the Constitution (Article 1, Section 8). It is now certain there will be no business as usual in Washington, D.C., during the next two years, as Congress attempts to reclaim its powers and reel in an extremely far-left president behaving like an emperor.

LARRY BROWN

NORTH LAS VEGAS