To the editor:

Just how bad is the Lawrence Police Department? Why couldn’t the accident with Judith Vellucci have been avoided? Substandard police efforts, that’s why. Substandard in that one 19-year-old driver was able to outwit, outmaneuver and outdrive Lawrence police from one end of town to the other.

How does a car doing 50 mph give police the slip all the way across town? Radios should’ve been used, communications should’ve been made, successful roadblocks should have been set up, and the chase should’ve ended. Ended because LPD did their job, not because a children’s hospital worker was at the wrong place at the wrong time. What an avoidable tragedy.

However, this repulsiveness also recalls another LPD blunder in recent months. Taking a 16-year-old fast food cashier to the precinct for three hours of questioning about pocket lint found in an officer’s chicken fingers! Give me a break!

Two clearly different cases; their only relation being that they were both caused due to an inefficient, unacceptable Lawrence Police Department — that largely due to Police Chief Ron Olin, who after both blunders tells us “Procedures were followed.” No, chief, they weren’t. If procedures are followed we wouldn’t see preposterous acts of chicken finger lint and tragic high-speed chases occurring the way these two did. There’s nothing I hate more than watching somebody say everything was done right when outcomes clearly show that it wasn’t. Face it Chief Olin, your leadership adds up to a substandard police force.

Chris Heath,

Lawrence