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Flock comments don’t match current picture

In response to the District Attorney’s statement and press release to the OBSERVER (Aug. 31, Sept. 2 and Sept. 5, 2026), it is immediately apparent that the facts behind the Flock camera program don’t back up what the DA says. Here are four problems: — Crime is not going up. The DA says crime “has increased substantially.” State data checked by the OBSERVER shows Fredonia police reported 293 crimes in 2003 and 163 in 2024 — a drop of almost half. SUNY Fredonia, with its own police force, reports very low crime. The whole reason for the program rests on a trend that isn’t ...

Sept. 11 Events Are Firmly In Memories

CHAUTAUQUA—If you’re more than, say, 35 years old, you’ll recall where you were when you heard the first news bulletins of 25 years ago today. Maybe you were in school or college. Maybe you were at work. Maybe you were running errands. Maybe you were with relatives or ...

Finding a proper perspective in 9/11, aftermath

How can it be 25 years? We keep asking that about 9/11 and it proves one of my favorite sayings, “Time’s a noodle.” I remember the 25-year anniversary of John F. Kennedy’s assassination, in 1988. I was 10. It was one of the first times I noticed “wall-to-wall” media coverage about something. But 1963 seemed completely mysterious to me, like another world. It was 15 years before I was born. It makes me wonder, “What do we tell the children today about 9/11?” Here are some thoughts: — It was a very bad day for anyone with a shred of human decency. And yet, ...

After being rerouted from a standard Pacific patrol in January, the carrier USS Abraham Lincoln sailed to the Persian Gulf. It had originally been scheduled to return to the U.S. in May, but the rest of the U.S. Navy’s aircraft carrier fleet was locked into fixed schedules of required ...

After 25 years, we still remember

President George Bush was seated in a second-grade classroom in Sarasota, Florida when it happened. His chief of staff, Andrew Card, suddenly approached, bent down, and said, “A second plane hit the second tower. America is under attack.” I looked up that statement after seeing a ...

People’s column

Reason for worry over U.S., Israel military merger Editor, OBSERVER: Recently the House of Representatives passed the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) which merges the US military industrial complex with Israel’s. The vote had to be disturbing, if not shocking, to the Israel Lobby which has counted on passage of the merger by a pliant Congress. The vote was 209 in favor, to 205 against. Though the Democrats, like the Republicans, are almost all recipients of AIPAC money, they voted as a bloc against passage of the $1.5 trillion defense budget for 2027, with only six ...