- October 30, 2024
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Dear Editor:
On WNZF’s "Free For All Friday" radio show, FlaglerLive Editor Pierre Tristam made a very disturbing and hateful statement about law enforcement: that law enforcement officers "love to shoot and kill people.”
We will not tolerate anyone attacking any law enforcement.
Sources like FlaglerLive are hurting our economy and reputation by their opinions promoted as news.
First responders deserve an apology. Flagler County deserves a better reputation than this guy is creating. We don’t support stereotyping area law enforcement this way. Many Flagler residents work at these agencies.
As a county, next time you encounter any first responder, let them know how thankful you are for them.
We as a community value our safety. We want the best watching out for us, and they will be treated like the best! Thank you to all law enforcement officers and staff for what you do.
This is not what Flagler County supports! We stand with all law enforcement across the nation!
Joe Mullins
Bunnell
Editor's note: Mullins, a Flagler County commissioner, is quoting a snippet of a comment Tristam made during a live radio discussion with host David Ayres and Palm Coast Observer Executive Editor Brian McMillan on Dec. 27. Tristam was praising the Flagler County Sheriff's Office for its lack of officer-initiated shootings relative to other jurisdictions.
Tristam's full comment was: "The agency itself continues to function without major scandals. And again, any chance I get, I have to mention this: You realize that in Flagler County, the Sheriff’s Office — we are surrounded by sheriffs who love to shoot and kill people; this is the only agency that, now I think going on seven years, has not shot and killed a civilian — which is really an incredible achievement."
When Ayres and McMillan objected to the remark, Tristam said, "Maybe they don’t love it, but they excuse it the first chance they get as, 'Well, this is part of the job.' Well, the job the way it’s done here is, they have managed to go seven years not doing this, even though they had maybe a dozen chances when that could have been the outcome, and it was not."
Tristam sent this reply to Mullins' letter:
"Joe Mullins’s intellectual dishonesty strikes again. Though he is Flagler County’s supreme leader of idiotic and clumsy statements, this hypocrite takes a clumsy statement I made and fabricates an entirely false narrative from it. He never notes that I corrected myself within seconds of making it on the air. He never notes that it was in the context of praising our local law enforcement’s remarkable and exemplary record of restraint. He never notes that I devoted an entire column to that praise, or that FlaglerLive can sometimes read too much like the sheriff's PR annex. And of course blinded by his blowhard sloganeering, he ignores the fact that yes, with nearly a thousand civilian deaths a year at cops’ hands in this country, the problem bears debating, not veiling behind brown-shirted statements like 'We will not tolerate anyone attacking any law enforcement.' It’s not that this guy has nothing better to do than attack facts and truth on his infomercial (or here). Of course he does. He could start by being a county commissioner. But he doesn’t know how. Short on substance and ideas of his own, he lustily erects straw men and takes on targets who do have better things to do than take his crassness seriously. I trust most of your readers, like most of ours at FlaglerLive, know not to fall for this scalper of deceit. He knows not what he does."
Dear Editor:
All you see in Palm Coast is construction everywhere. If you drive through Town Center, you’ll see those low income apartments that the city says are needed. First of all, it is so ugly, looking like “pigeon’s houses!”
We have a lot of seniors driving here, including me, and honestly some should not be on the roads especially when it is dark. Let’s face it, we will all be there one day!
Some seniors need “transportation,” which this town does not have — I mean transportation with bus stops, like Daytona Beach or St. Augustine have. And not a small bus that you have to call to pick you up or bring you back. Three or four buses would cover this town.
But not here. Our seniors, whether they want to or not, are forced to drive in traffic, at night time, with no street lights.
It is time that our mayor sees that there is too much construction and that we need some regular transportation.
Think twice next time you vote.
MarieRose Dunayer
Palm Coast
Dear Editor:
I read Brad West’s letter, and totally agree with everything he wrote, but there was one topic that Brad did not mention: the possibility of badly contaminated soil on the Mantanzas Woods golf course and other golf courses in Palm Cost.
Golf courses have to be attractive and well-maintained. This requires pesticide, herbicides and fertilizers. Some may contain arsenic — enough arsenic, used in industrial quantities, to badly contaminate the soil. Google “golf course arsenic.”
Developing unbuilt sites requires dirt to be excavated. It gets carried on shoes, on tools, on tires, and the wind scatters it. The point is, the dirt gets carried into our homes.
If there is arsenic or other poisons, we need to know BEFORE that land is approved for rezoning.
Collier County placed an 18-month moratorium on development on golf courses.
Yet, Palm Coast seemingly has no plan in place to deal with this potential disaster. Palm Coast does not even require soil to be tested until rezoning has been approved.
This is totally backwards. Everyone who lives near a golf course could be facing the same potential contamination problem!
The government of our city needs to make sure we identify potential health hazards well in advance, and have proper plans in place to protect us. Contact the mayor and council and demand they protect you, not developers!
Mike Martin
Palm Coast
