Re “Police shouldn’t shoot to kill” letter by Kathleen Parks.

Parks tells us that she is originally from Suffolk County on Long Island, New York. She goes on to extol the virtues of the Suffolk County police department as a wonderful, well-trained department, which is quite accurate. However, this is where the accuracies end.

As a 30-year retired member of the police department on Long Island, I think she had the Suffolk County police confused with the Andy Griffith Show. For one thing, our weapons were always fully loaded and prepared to fire.

We were trained that if we had to, God forbid, use our weapons, we were to fire at center mass, which is the middle of the chest, the largest target. We were not trained to shoot for the leg to wound the perpetrator for future interrogation; a wounded perp is still a potentially lethal perp.

I never worked with anyone who wanted to ever be in a situation where they had to use their weapon, but if they did, they wanted to be the one going home that night. So, you didn't shoot to wound. Sorry Kathleen, but it was nice to hear you had such good memories of the police back home.