I was alarmed to read the Greenfield Police Department will be adding a substation on Main Street “in response to significant community demand for more policing downtown.” [“Greenfield Police Department adding downtown substation,” Recorder, June 21].
I question Mayor Virginia Desorgher’s intentions in fast-tracking this project. Why is this an important agenda item? To “clean up” downtown by harassing houseless residents and intimidating peaceful protesters?
Any politician or citizen who supports this initiative, thereby sweeping issues these folks are discussing and facing — inflated housing and food costs, poor health care, attacks on LGBTQ+ and reproductive rights, climate crisis, book bans, the genocide in Gaza — in favor of a tidy downtown appearance, patrolled by city police, should consider the formation of policing in the United States: armed thugs hired by plantation owners to track down enslaved people fleeing a subhuman existence.
This history is embedded in silencing any perceived threats to balance of favor. Power belongs to the people, and the people demand attention be paid to more meaningful issues.
Skyler Lambert
Greenfield