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Berkeley schools take down signs in ‘phony’ move 

Why did the signs on all those Berkeley school fences suddenly come down? The signs had been there since the Berkeley citizens voted a few years back on a school bond measure giving the schools $158 million. The signs said, “Thank you Berkeley for fixing our schools.” 

Now the school administrators are thinking about going for another school bond measure for more money. So I guess those signs had to come down. How phony. 

Ruth Brazil 

Berkeley 

‘Driving while black or brown’ stats complex 

Police Review Commissioner Mel Bartynn stated that statistics show people of color are stopped by police officers because of their skin color (Daily Planet, April 26). But making sense of field stop statistics is vastly more complex than just viewing the raw numbers. First, you can’t compare the demographics of vehicle stop occupants to those of the entire city of Berkeley. Instead, you have to compare the stop data only to the demographics of drivers on the road in Berkeley at the time of the stop – who can say what that would be? Second, you would have to subtract those stops where the race of the person was part of a suspect description radio broadcast, which would naturally justify the stop being based on race. Lastly, you’d have to determine how many of the stops were made under circumstances where the race of the person could not have been known by the officer before the stop was made. Now, even if you could collect and analyze all this data, it eventually comes down to the same crux – hire the best people as officers, train them in the proper policies and procedures, supervise them effectively, and then support them for doing a tough job. 

Gary Allen 

Berkeley 

What is the Lab doing about tritium concerns? 

I am concerned about recent reports of possible tritium leakage at the Lawrence Hall of Science, including a decision by some local schools to no longer take field trips there. 

I looked-up tritium in a dictionary. It said it is “a radioactive isotope of hydrogen having an atomic weight of 3 and a half-life of about 12.5 years: it decays by beta-particle emission and is used in thermonuclear bombs, as a radioactive tracer, etc.” Sounds like some nasty stuff! If it’s leaking, I’m sure we all want to know about it. 

My daughter is a student. She also works with young children at a day care center. Do I need to worry that my child or the children she cares for may get cancer from exposure to tritium if they visit the Lawrence Hall of Science? 

Other than public relations efforts designed to make us think tritium is no big deal, what are the Lawrence Laboratory people doing about this? 

Steve Wagner 

Oakland