Wilderness Park misinformation

Dear Editor:

It’s no wonder that Wilderness Park users are creatively imagining what the city really cares about in the park hours imbroglio. Officially stated reasons are unconvincing and, at times, disingenuous, and none are offered with much evidence.

Mayor Opanyi Nasiali’s “Viewpoint” piece of April 12, intended to “clear up some misinformation” about the park, lays it on thick with some more of his own. He implies that preventing hikers from being lost in the park after dark was a major concern in the changes and cites an expensive operation “last month” to find a lost hiker after dark. This smelled funny to me.

The Claremont Police Department informed me that this occurred in June 2012, and that the phone call requesting help came in at 7:46 p.m.—20 minutes before sunset, 50 minutes before the “dusk” closing time then in force and, most importantly, 14 minutes before the park would have been closed under the new regulations. Since this is when the lost hiker’s companion made it out and called police, the act of getting lost obviously happened in the light and during legal hours.

It’s reasonable to think that if he hadn’t accidentally taken the wrong trail, the missing person would have exited the park within even the new, more restrictive hours. The fact that the expensive, multi-agency search, undertaken due to medical concerns with the lost person, happened in the dark is no rationale for the park’s new hours.

I foresee a long, ugly road of complaints and fact-checking ahead before we learn what is really driving these changes.

John Norvell

Claremont

More on the XL Pipeline

Dear Editor:

Anyone still considering their position on the Canadian tar sands oil should know one important point not included in Ellen Taylor’s letter of May 3: The sands oil, no matter how it is brought into this country, will do little if anything towards our energy independence. Most or all of it will be refined in Texas refineries for export to other countries, which also serves to maintain the high prices of our gasoline since the domestic supply is not enhanced.

J. Michael Fay

Claremont

Equal coverage for sports

Dear Editor:                                            

Hi! We are Lucy, Merry and Edyn, Girl Scouts of Troop 109-4. We have recently been reading the sports section of your newspaper, the COURIER. As we have been reading, we have encountered that there were more articles written about male sports than female sports. We had read 14 articles about sports.

 While we were reading, we made a tally for how many more girl or boy sports were in each article. Overall, out of all the articles, there was a tally of 8 points for the male sports and a tally of 6 points for the female sports. We feel that it is a slight injustice.

We wish that for your next article that when we read the sport’s section, we see that the difference between male and female sports is gone.

Thank you for your consideration.

Lucy Chinn

Merry Paris Aichele

Edyn Hawke

Claremont

Crime watch

Dear Editor:

The Mt. Carmel and Redlands Avenue area of Claremont is having a considerable increase in crime.  We had intruders in our front yard about the 13th of April, identified by our neighbor across the street, who called the police. We have to park 4 vehicles in our driveway and take considerable care in not leaving anything of value in them, but 2 individuals were prowling around our cars.

On April 15, a 1990 Honda Civic was stolen from our driveway, found later that evening in Pomona, stripped to nothing and sold for junk. Since then, the house south of us was broken into through the front door, but the alarm went off and the intruders left. The police quickly responded with guns drawn and investigated but the property was safe. We have since put multiple motion lights in our yard to help out. 

On May 2, neighbors noticed 2 cars not belonging in the neighborhood and called them in. The drivers were casing our front yard at 1:40 p.m.—one was a white van and the second a pickup truck with 3 individuals in it. The police have responded and are doing everything they can to help us out but, as one of the lieutenants at the police station told me, they have 10 incidents a night and have to choose what to report on the alert system. We haven’t had an alert in months. 

The officer told me that it takes considerable time to send out notices to the public when issues are happening. The COURIER evidently gets information from the Claremont Police Deptartment as to what is happening but why do we get only the public drunkeness, good reporting on the terrible times the Vons center is having, but certainly not covering enough and warning the neighbors in the areas that should be warned. I certainly think a stolen vehicle is an important enough issue to report. 

The police warned about not answering the door to people you don’t know, use your alarms if you have them and be very aware of any strange vehicles or strangers in your area and report it to the police immediately. 

As the very accommodating officer today told me, they are hampered by a smaller staff and can only do so much and have to count on people in their own neighborhoods reporting anything out of the ordinary. Even with our signs in the entry about no contact, we are besieged by people knocking.

Joanne MacAlpine

Claremont