The City of Kingston has had its share of gun violence. And to be sure, the problem has not even come close to what people are experiencing in Newburgh and other similarly-sized cities. And it is a problem that the KPD has handled very effectively in my opinion.
The department is run by the very able Chief Keller, who answers to the city’s police commission. The person who presides over this commission is none other than the City Mayor.
This is why I was aghast at his comments in the Daily Freeman today in this ongoing and nonsensical debate over his desire to spend public dollars on a second gazebo for Gallo Park. Opining incorrectly that aldermen who oppose the gazebo have unfairly criticized the proposal, comparing the criticisms to “bullets” being fired at him, he was quoted: “‘They ought to be careful because those bullets may ricochet and…you just might get hit.'”
Huh? Are you serious, Mayor? We might get hit with bullets? That’s hardly the kind of thing any clearly thinking public official should EVER say, let alone the mayor of a city who also happens to run the police department!
This mayor tends to say things before he thinks, but even for him, this was at best outrageous and at worst, a little scary.
Kingston Today 