If you truly desire to save our city and our children, you must demand that all people be held to the standard of unimpeachable truth.

Years ago on the schoolyard of what is now Obama Elementary School, I remember that the privileged kids often would threaten other children by saying they would tell on them. They would make false accusations against their victims to the adults in charge.

The adults would believe the bullies and then would act wrongfully against the innocent child, thereby unwittingly rewarding the accusers with undeserved power and prestige while causing suffering and psychological harm to the innocent children and their families.

The lesson that the bullies learned and carried into adulthood is that their conduct will be rewarded. But it actually did psychological damage and mental harm to the perpetrators.

The solution to any and all psychosis is to insist upon unimpeachable truth — in the streets, the schools and the courtrooms.

Unfortunately the conduct of our police, clergy and prosecutors does not meet this standard. This is a result of what happens when good men stand by and do nothing.

What exists today in Richmond and the commonwealth is the opposite of community policing, which is not predicated upon the welfare of the citizenry and truthfulness but rather on a dysfunctional exercise of citizen control. 

One must insist on unimpeachable truth so that all of us, especially our suffering children, may be set free.

JAMES RUSSELL STALLINGS II

Mineral