For days now the Readers Write section of the Star Tribune has been a series of people patting themselves on the back for bravely standing up in favor of police, talking about how the majority are well intentioned and good-natured and how we should not rush to judgment or overreaching reforms motivated by "magical thinking."

I do not disagree with these points on paper, but the reality for young people is that we are exhausted by people constantly opining about how any push for change is too hasty and any societal criticism is too broad. The fact that the Minneapolis City Council can only provide us with a vague and uncertain ballot initiative in the face of a year's worth of calls for reform says that people in power just aren't ready to take this seriously.

People are dying because we aren't actually looking at the core of how we approach safety and justice. Tearing it all down without a plan is not the solution, but neither is simply throwing more money at a Police Department that has lost all credibility among the young people of the city. When the number of police officers goes up, I don't feel any safer. I just feel frustrated that this is the best we could come up with when the status quo is causing so much pain.

Max Ritter, Minneapolis

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Matt Mackowiak's Aug. 24 commentary ("Our city defunded its police. Don't make the same mistake," Opinion Exchange) fails to make the case that more police means better public safety. He argues that serious crime has risen in Austin, Texas, since the Police Department has been unable to fill all of its shifts and since some funding has moved to non-police priorities such as domestic violence services. But serious crime has risen in almost every major city in the U.S., regardless of police staffing levels. It's a manifestation of broken systems and racial and economic disparities compounded by the social trauma of the pandemic. And it's an indication that we need to try a different way to address these chronic issues.

Mackowiak seems to suggest that unhoused people are a significant part of this problem. But we know that the solution to homelessness is not more policing and restricting public spaces, but an expansion of the safety net infrastructure that would address the real problems that keep people living on the streets and in the parks. The proposed public safety charter amendment would allow Minneapolis to shift the interactions with people experiencing homelessness, mental health crises and opioid addiction to unarmed professionals who would have the training and the resources to assist them. It would also expand violence prevention efforts within communities. In this vision for public safety, licensed police officers would focus on serious and violent crime. It is not a good use of taxpayer dollars to have armed officers show up to take a report of a bike stolen from an unlocked garage, but that is what happens in the current system where the city charter requires employing 1.7 officers for every 1,000 residents.

If we have the courage to broaden our vision of public safety beyond policing, we can work toward becoming a city where everyone truly feels safe regardless of race, gender, income or ZIP code.

Patrice C. Koelsch, Minneapolis

A resounding "yes" to the suggestion that the record-setting, billion-dollar boondoggle known as the Southwest light-rail line (SWLRT) be abandoned and written off ("Avoid sunk-cost thinking," Readers Write, Aug. 23). When, or if, the line is ever completed, the Metropolitan Council will be coming back every year for millions of dollars in subsidies. For every dollar paid in fares, tens more will be needed to cover the actual cost of day-to-day operations. Five years ago, an audit of light rail found as many as 10% of riders didn't bother to pay the fare, a number that will certainly increase. As the system ages, dozens of millions more will be needed for maintenance and upkeep of the ugly concrete scar running through our communities, which the Met Council leadership, unelected and unaccountable to anyone other than their patron the governor, will blithely extract from local and county governments without a second thought.

It's time to stop indulging the council's "edifice complex" and make better use of taxpayers' money.

Jack Sheehan, Eden Prairie

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Many people will remember the original cost of the SWLRT. Five years ago, it was around $1.3 billion, but it has now nearly doubled. For the sake of argument, let's compare that to the original construction of Interstate 94 from downtown St. Paul to Minneapolis. The price tag for that stretch of freeway was $80 million back in 1968. Doesn't sound like much until you convert it to 2021 dollars. Suddenly that reasonable price tag has ballooned to the shocking amount of nearly $700 million. Now try to imagine if I-94 were being built today and the Rondo neighborhood delayed construction for years using the tactics we've seen in modern times. Would that original estimate have doubled as we've seen with the SWLRT?

Everything needs to be put into the proper perspective. The physical rail will last a long time with minimal maintenance and the cars themselves have a long expected lifetime. Our freeways are a different matter. It's hard to find documentation on the original price tag of the Interstate 35W corridor from Interstate 494 to downtown but we can guess that it's similar to the cost I found for I-94. If that wasn't expensive enough, then add in the cost of more recent projects. It began in 2007 with $234 million to rebuild the I-35W bridge over the Mississippi, continued with another $288 million for the Crosstown Commons project and will end this year with another $240 million to rebuild the freeway from 43rd Street to downtown. Now let's add in a bit of the future and mention the $255 million it will cost to rebuild a single freeway intersection at I-35W and I-494. We're talking a few miles of freeway work that will add up to more than $1 billion.

It's all a matter of perspective.

Dale Jernberg, Minneapolis

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The recent letter "Avoid sunk-cost thinking" really nails it regarding the implications of continued financing of SWLRT. What we know now, what we don't know and what we may not know for some time about final costs or even the final feasibility of finishing the route through Kenilworth make this a most unwise project on which to continue to spend hundreds of millions of our tax dollars. At a minimum, consideration should be given to ending the line at West Lake Street with rapid bus transit expanded from there.

Another very important point in favor of just stopping, however, is the carbon cost of the project. The final Environmental Impact Statement provided by the federal government clearly stated that building SWLRT would increase greenhouse gas emissions compared to the no-build option — and that was before recent developments that are rapidly shifting cars and buses away from gasoline-powered engines. Trains take massive amounts of electrical power, while at the same time cars and buses are getting greener by the year. Given the obvious and accelerating impacts of climate change, completing a project that puts the Twin Cities area on the wrong side of the campaign for cleaner power is shameful — not that it deterred our planners from going ahead with it even though this was known. But with the unresolved and very serious construction issues and their attendant costs, the impact on climate change should be another factor leading to reconsidering completion.

Steven R. Goldsmith, Minneapolis

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