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I am deeply distressed about the misguided plan to redevelop Hennepin Avenue between Douglas Avenue and Lake Street. Minneapolis is at a tipping point and the destruction of a business-friendly avenue is in no one's best interest ("A looming mistake on Hennepin Avenue," Opinion Exchange, June 8).

You only have to look at the streetscape disasters on Hennepin between Lake and 31st Streets and the Nicollet Mall debacle to see what barren streets do to the vitality of a neighborhood. Do you really think the neighbors will like having all the additional traffic pouring through their quiet streets if Hennepin is congested?

I implore the City Council to put the Hennepin Avenue plan on hold and:

• Open up a fresh dialogue with neighbors and businesses to articulate what is needed.
• Look at St. Paul's Grand Avenue and other urban corridors to see what's working.
• Survey the bikers, bus riders, neighbors, business customers and owners, so you have real data upon which to make a decision.
• Stop the rush to destroy Hennepin in the service of responding to "climate change." There are other more sensible solutions.

I am a lifelong resident of Minneapolis, and I mourn the loss of our vital, robust business districts. Uptown has become a ghost town. People don't feel safe when there is not a critical mass of people. Parked cars signal a "happening" place. Do not add to the decline.

Catherine Victoria Jordan, Minneapolis

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In 1956, a crime was committed against St. Paul's thriving Black Rondo neighborhood. That crime is about to be repeated.

The U.S. did need a highway system in 1956, but Interstate 94 didn't have to run right through Rondo. An alternate proposed route would run just to the north through unused railroad lines. That alternative was dismissed in favor of destroying the Black neighborhood and displacing hundreds of families.

The U.S. does need more bike routes in 2022, but a bike route doesn't have to run through historic Summit Avenue ("Talk of Summit Av. trail alarms residents," June 5). Alternate routes are available. Yet our leaders propose a route that would besmirch the historic street we show off to tourists, the avenue architecture students come to study.

Why repeat a crime that brought shame to this city and to the state? As a retired consultant to local city planners, I urge our leaders to abandon this abominable act of wanton ignorance that reeks of revenge.

Let's repave our sadly potholed Summit Avenue and propose an appropriate alternate route for bikes to run at their own speed.

Tess Galati, St. Paul

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I'm writing in reference to the commentary in the Thursday newspaper about Cleveland Avenue and the county plan to wipe out the trees ("Press pause on clear-cutting Cleveland Avenue"). I know that street well. I've walked it end to end, ridden and spilled my bike on it, driven on and across it and still do. I've had a few adventures on that avenue. One day while delivering this newspaper (the afternoon Star) I slipped, fell and left several feet of flesh and fabric on that pavement. That was in 1943.

When I first learned that the county was planning to deforest that part of St. Anthony Park, I contacted my commissioner for more information. What I eventually got back was platitudes and boilerplate. I emphatically support the commentary writers in their position. We need trees — more trees. Those trees shade the neighborhood, clean the atmosphere and capture carbon dioxide. Today, when I drive down that avenue on bumpy, patched concrete that's probably the same pavement I biked on, I observe and wonder why the university doesn't remove its buses from Cleveland. That would be far better than clear-cutting the trees.

Carleton Brookins, Roseville

POLICE

Face it: Minneapolis is bad at this

I love Minneapolis. After living in a lot of other cities, I settled here 40 years ago. It has been a great place for me and my family. But now, one terrible fact is on the table: the city of Minneapolis is incompetent to operate a Police Department. Some of our officers — and yes, there are many good ones — lie, steal, beat people and kill people, and the only way it stops is when judges send the worst cops to prison. That's our police management strategy. And when a study of the situation comes out, after two years of intense work, documenting a decade of abuses, City Hall backs away, saying there might be something wrong with the report ("Minneapolis again asks state to back up charges of police racism," June 3). In another room at the heart of our city government, someone sits writing checks, big checks, to the people who have been hurt by our law enforcement employees.

Maybe we should contract out our policing to St. Paul or some other city that is able to be a good place to live, and to manage a police force where the officers don't go to prison so often.

John Stuart, Minneapolis

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Having worked as a volunteer police chaplain with four departments and over 100 families after homicides, I have something to say. I'm not buying into this false either/or. I want to see reform so that the bad apples are removed from the force, but I also want my brothers and sisters in blue to be there for the families walking this dark valley after a homicide. Justice is broader than these false either/ors too many of us are stuck in.

I will not brush stroke disdain over all these men and women in blue, because I know they are instrumental in bringing justice for the victims lying dead in our streets again and again. We need to come together and work together to reform law enforcement and prevent the next tragedy in our community.

Howard Dotson, Maple Grove

VIOLENCE

We're headed to a dangerous place

Enough, already! Our nation has been awash in hateful rhetoric for far too long, and it comes from both sides of the political aisle. Now we have a man arrested near Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh's home in the middle of the night, armed with a gun and burglary tools, confessing to police that he intended to assassinate Justice Kavanaugh because he feared that the court might overturn Roe v. Wade ("Threat to Kavanaugh foiled," June 9). Several days earlier, a gunman broke into a retired Wisconsin judge's home and killed him because of a court case or cases.

Our country was founded on the basis of the rule of law applied equally to every citizen. If we abandon that fundamental organizing principle, we are headed down a very dark and ugly path. It was unconscionable when Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer bellowed at the top of his lungs outside the Supreme Court two years ago, "I want to tell you, Gorsuch; I want to tell you, Kavanaugh: You have released the whirlwind, and you will pay the price. You won't know what hit you if you go forward with these awful decisions." Schumer was warning two sitting Supreme Court justices that they had better do his bidding and refuse to uphold abortion restrictions, or else. Chief Justice Roberts responded, saying that "statements of this sort from the highest levels of government are not only inappropriate, they are dangerous." Indeed, they were and are.

How tragic it is that we have dumbed down our national conversation from reasoned, principled debate on serious issues to the hellhole of social media and its awful consequences.

Mark H. Reed, Plymouth