Photographer: Police were O.K.
To The Editor:
Re “Photographers describe picture rough treatment” (news article, Sept. 8):
I would like to share my personal experience photographing during various protest marches during the R.N.C. in the Chelsea/Midtown area and impressions of the overwhelming police presence in this particular neighborhood.
I cruised this neighborhood on and off as the many protest groups were assembling or marching to the Garden and stopped from time to time to photograph cops stationed along Eighth Ave. between 18th and 25th Sts. I was able to ask them to pose for a picture and also to use my camera and photograph me — even posing with them. They, as a rule, were compliant even if a bit uneasy and smiled when I said this was a chance to portray New York’s Finest, so to speak.
Occasionally I spotted some violent confrontations and one particularly with some photographers wearing police photo IDs around 23rd St. in which cops tried to stop photographers who seemed to be marching along with the protestors — but nothing too bad.
All in all I was surprised at the sort of peaceful demeanor of the cops in Chelsea.
Don Snyder Oh, the poor, poor protesters
To The Editor:
Well, boo hoo. Those poor protesters with no thick mattresses, no clean sheets, no grilled panini, no latte, probably not even the Times. Obviously, the Police Department should have received a first-class hotel to accommodate them. Oh yeah, those were all occupied by paying guests — those ugh Republicans (none of whom, incidentally, had gone haring off to Boston to attempt to disrupt the Democratic National Convention).
And the lengthy wait to be processed kept the protesters from their more important scheduled activities of snarling traffic and yelling at Republicans. Tch, tch. Now the A.C.L.U. plans to sue. Fine, I hope that officer sues them for being dragged off his scooter and kicked and beaten. The Policemen’s Benevolent Association should sue and collect the other half to distribute to our policemen who had their schedules disrupted to deal with these “peaceful” protesters firmly but gently.
Thank goodness it’s over. Maybe now we can get back to our normal lives in Manhattan with our normal problems from the bridge-and-tunnel crowd.
Betty Rinckwitz
Rinckwitz is a “proud conservative Republican”
School is forward-thinking
To The Editor:
It was great to see our wonderful school featured in your article “Stretching the traditional classroom’s boundaries” (Back to School, Sept. 1). My daughter is an eighth-grader at School of the Future. This school uses every way possible to get kids involved and interested in the curriculum — and it works! The teachers at School of the Future have used arts, crafts, dramatizations, riddles, music, comedy, classroom visitors, trips and much more as part of each learning unit. The students seem to be extraordinarily confident, unafraid to express their opinions, creative thinkers and just generally excited about learning. My hat’s off to S.O.F. for making a strong commitment to this somewhat unconventional yet highly effective teaching philosophy in a school system that often judges the quality of a school by its test scores alone.
Barbara Knight
