for breaking news visit www.queenscourier.com APRIL 30, 2015 • The queens CourieR 35 oped letters Give the gift of life A blood donor is a special kind of volunteer. One donation of blood can help save up to three lives. New York Blood Center provides blood services to hospitals throughout the metropolitan area. We are fortunate to live in a region where sophisticated medical facilities and transplant programs are available. These programs require many blood donations. When there is not enough blood, patients wait for hours for blood they need, delaying their recovery. Patients who are weak from low iron wait for red cells; patients whose bodies have been assaulted by chemotherapy wait for platelets that will allow their blood to clot again. Patients who have been on an organ transplant lists for months or years and finally get an opportunity for an organ will lose that opportunity if there is no blood. Therefore, the need for blood is constant — you never know when someone you care about might need blood. To be eligible to donate, you need to be between the ages of 16-75, weigh at least 110 pounds and be in good health. You must have photo ID with you. Each donation can be separated into different components and therefore help save many lives! Did you know that our local hospitals need more than 2,000 pints of blood each day? That means they need your help. I myself understand that all too well. I help run two blood drives a year at St. Anastasia Parish in Douglaston as a member of St. Anastasia Knights of Columbus Council #5911. We will be having a blood drive on Sunday, June 7. If you want to donate earlier you can call their office 800-688-0900. You can also check their website which is www.nybloodcenter. org. So please donate, for the life you save could be your own or that of someone you know and love. Frederick R. Bedell Jr., Glen Oaks Village GROCERY BAG TAX MAY HURT PHYSICALY CHALLENGED With the proposal to begin charging grocery shoppers a fee for each plastic shopping bag distributed at stores in order to reduce their use, I thought it is appropriate to voice my objections publicly. Plastic bags do not just wind up as litter flying in the street or getting stuck in trees as many legislators and media outlets would have you think. Plastic bags actually facilitate physically challenged individuals who do grocery shopping and purchase items from a variety of other businesses. Having to rely on bringing reusable shopping bags to grocery stores would be cumbersome at best or become an additional obstacle to overcome for a physically challenged shopper. I don’t think it is appropriate for shoppers who rely on plastic bags that are extremely lightweight and provide a means of conveyance to be burdened with additional charges other than the cost for their purchases. The same goes for shoppers who are not physically challenged as well. Speaking personally, I rely on plastic bags to carry items from the checkout counter to my car and from my car to my home with the added assist from a shopping cart. I often request the cashier at grocery stores to “please pack light for me” since I am physically unable to lift anything of weight. I therefore require an additional amount of plastic bags than someone who does not have the physical challenges that I do. I then reuse these plastic bags for lining the plastic garbage cans we have in a number of the rooms in our home and not until they are full do we dispose of them (I do understand the plastic bag is not recyclable and regrettably will become part of landfill). In addition, we use the plastic bag for a number of other purposes including storage. I therefore will make my voice heard as this proposal moves forward. Phil Konigsberg, Bay Terrace A thousand new cops needed to keep us safe by City Councilman Rory Lancman T h r e a t s to our city continue to pour in from around the world at this time of global unrest. New York’s Finest are doing everything they can to protect us, but we need to help them. At the time of the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks, there were nearly 41,000 officers. Today, the force has shrunk to only 35,000, leading each precinct to lose an average of 60 to 75 officers. That is simply not enough officers, and it’s why I’ve joined my colleagues on the City Council and Police Commissioner Bratton in calling on the mayor to include funding for 1,000 new officers in this year’s budget, who are necessary to improve public safety and counterterrorism efforts. Two Queens women were recently arrested for trying to join ISIS and planning terrorist attacks on targets in New York City. One was a resident of my council district. Events like these make it clear that threats can come from anywhere and that we must be vigilant to keep our city safe. Organizations like ISIS try to radicalize anyone with an Internet connection. New officers will be crucial in combating the increasingly sophisticated recruitment techniques our enemies employ. These officers will also play a large role in improving relationships between the police and communities of color. Commissioner Bratton has mandated a three-day training course for all patrol officers to ensure they communicate effectively with all of the residents of our diverse city, and are current on the skills they need to police our neighborhoods. We’ll have to take police off the streets to do this and new officers will ensure staffing levels stay the same while this happens. The additional officers will also play a key role in Commissioner Bratton’s new patrol model, which will put more cops on the beat and improve community relationships. Currently, officers rotate throughout an entire precinct, which makes it difficult to build trust between officers and the communities they protect. The new model will ensure that officers are given the same beat for long enough to develop relationships with the local residents and address their concerns. It will also provide officers the necessary training and ability to recognize individuals suffering from mental illness, which may reduce the need for use of force. This will make all of us safer. That’s why the Council has made it our top budget priority to get funding for 1,000 new officers. I’m proud to stand with my colleagues as we fight to keep our city safe and improve police-community relations. City Councilman Lancman represents the 24th Council District, which includes all or parts of Briarwood, Fresh Meadows, Jamaica and Jamaica Estates. A LO K BA CK This photo taken between the 1930s and 1940s shows something inconceivable to most Queens residents today: a traffic-free Union Turnpike near the present day Kew Gardens interchange, looking east toward Kew Gardens Hills. The center of the picture shows the winding terminus of the Interboro (present-day Jackie Robinson) Parkway as it merges with the Grand Central Parkway. Note the wooden streetlamps lining the parkways and Union Turnpike; these were characteristic of the parkways built on Long Island during the period when driving was more of a leisurely activity rather than a daily chore.
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