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The recent federal Department of Justice report of racist police practices in Minneapolis is welcomed, and the problems needing attention are necessary to be addressed and corrected. I do wonder, however, if the DOJ had reliable data of how many police encounters were handled properly. I would hope that kind of information would also get some attention.

The attention given to the DOJ report is appropriate but may also encourage noncompliance with future police work. Let's not handicap our police in a way that prevents them from enforcing the laws that they did not write but are supposed to enforce. I would also hope some attention would be given to what else could be done to encourage public compliance with police encounters, even when the object of the encounter feels the encounter to be inappropriate. An encounter does not have to be a fight or an argument on the street. It is not likely to be a pleasant police task, and may well even be a dangerous task, for police to approach a person and suggest that there is concern that person is engaged in unlawful behavior.

When predominantly Black neighborhoods demand more police presence for safety concerns, it is likely those police will be encountering more Black people in circumstances where there can be reasonable concern about whether they are engaging in problematic activity. Sometimes, behaviors that may seem innocuous to one person may not seem quite so innocent to an experienced police officer.

If there is high crime in a predominantly Black neighborhood demanding more policing, then we can understand why there would be more arrests. As a result, the reputation of the Black community suffers and the police still have to work in that community.

So, by all means, we should address police bias and excessive force where it exists, but let's also understand the totality of the circumstances underlying their work. We should not want to create the public impression that defendants may violently resist police action on the street. Let's protect the public from improper police action of any kind, but let's also provide police with the tools and public and media support that they need to do the job that we want them to do.

Thomas W. Wexler, Edina

The writer is a retired judge.

In addition to mourning and grieving the senseless death of five young vibrant and beautiful women (editorial, June 20), we also need to recognize and appreciate the Somali community for raising five young people who all were college students and the future of our nation.

Our nation will have a chance to thrive only if we support and encourage young people from all ethnic backgrounds to follow the example of these five young women whose life was tragically and "senselessly" cut short.

May their memory last for eternity.

Zvi Frankfurt, Minneapolis

Concerning the bag fee in Edina ("Shop owners worry bag fees are 'tacky,' " June 18):

These upscale businesses that feel it's tacky to charge a fee after a customer bought a $500 pair of jeans.

Maybe it's just tacky for these owners to charge that customer.

Tacky is as tacky does.

Phyllis Nelson, Edina

Reading the June 19 letter on a lack of good customer service ("Press '8' to record a primal scream") I thought for a moment I was reading satire, then the stark fear hit me — lots of folks don't realize customer service is done by actual other humans.

From the letter: "No one knows how to use a landline to call a taxi." Are you having service people call for you? What job is that?

"They can't break a $20." Who are you paying with cash instead of your debit card?

Treat people well and if you have an occasional request outside of their duties think to yourself why you feel more comfortable asking them instead of someone else nearby (they do after all have an actual job to do). Oh, and throw away your own receipts, please. Customer service can be great if you're not treated as a customer servant so much.

Casstinna Hanson, Columbia Heights

The easy wish-filled, what-if days of summer have again slipped the knot of winter's bleak chokehold; that warm sunlit-stickiness clings to time and forces a slowdown. Collars unbutton, full-length pants roll up into shorts, and long sleeves slip off the arms of shirts, like snakes shedding their skin.

So shed are the encumbrances of study and school — this is the short season, when fields grow potatoes and kids grow dreams, and young minds, in a whiff of idle, create what young minds will. Clouds become shaped semblances, and in quiet ponds and pools our inner Narcissus blinks and we fall in love with ourselves and become one with summer.

This sultry, sodden season beckons; and heated by that bright blazing orb coaxes from seed like gravid heads, dreams, as they burst out like tender tendrils and grow up to become memories of sun-soaked days and steamy star-bright nights.

It is a time when we can waft back, as if smoke and slip into youthful skins. We can find again those magic years, the last portion of youth's frantic surge; the 9-12 years, that strip of time sandwiched between the slices of "kid" and "teenager."

The nights, so warm, bring back best those tender years that have slipped off and away. Those humid nights we stayed "out a little later." Nocturnal blackouts, they were, save for the stars; and with dew drops forming on unmowed blades little lightning bugs stung the dark with flickering flares of white — a "catch me if you can" to nighthawks and kids alike. Those "fleeting flickerers" hang yet in the mind, with their peek-a-boo parade; existence was their grand scheme for a show that bejeweled the night with light. Theirs was a steamy semaphore of lightning flashes signaling summer love for sale; little lanterns that winked at their would-be wooers and tarried on the tall, pointed, grass parlors.

And so were we wooed by summer, in those dying days of youth — as we danced in a breeze, like cottonwood-down flirting with the dew, brilliant in our moment, young, flashing through the inky black of childhood's dark backyard-of-learning; we perched before the light-filled house of knowledge that would take us far from the wonder years and nature's bliss and lead us into the bright lit kitchen of the working world.

But for a twinkling before our scintillating childhood fled, we flitted under summer's starry skies, fireflies, we, illumed in a moment — then gone.

Don Anderson, Minneapolis