It’s poor county leadership to place blame on the poor

Good job, Commissioner Pierce!

You not only blamed the poor for being poor, you blamed them for making the whole of Rowan County poor!

The teacher with four children who has to depend on food stamps to feed her children? Try paying your teachers a living wage. Or should she have consulted the school board before she started her family?

Single mothers who come to Rowan county to have their children so they can qualify for free housing? And have drug-slinging boyfriends move in with them? Seriously? I find your statements appalling and degrading. Where is the police presence? Where are the women’s health centers to provide family planning to the young girls in Rowan County ?

Maybe you need to try building low- cost housing outside Rowan. Surrounding counties might be more able to handle the poor.

Education is the key to helping people become an asset to any community. Educators should have a better sense of the population they are educating. Those who suggest families who are unable to afford WiFi should go to CeCe’s pizza to do their homework are completely clueless.

What does Rowan county offer people who are looking for a community? It can’t be all one-sided. To attract businesses and residents there must be forward-looking leaders who are ready and willing to work for and with the people .

— Bethel Gainer

Salisbury

Animal abuse a red flag 

The makers of “Making a Murderer” did viewers a disservice by downplaying Steven Avery’s history of cruelty to animals, including a 1982 incident in which he doused the family cat with an accelerant before throwing the animal onto a fire, for which he served nine months in jail.

Medical experts and law-enforcement officials agree: Cruelty to animals is a major red flag. Many rapists and murderers have a background of abusing animals, including the Virginia man who killed a TV news reporter and photographer on the air last August, who previously killed his two cats, and the accused Louisiana theater shooter who reportedly claimed to have tried to bludgeon a stray cat to death. Other notorious killers who abused animals include Albert DeSalvo (the “Boston Strangler”), Jeffrey Dahmer, BTK killer Dennis Rader, and Columbine school shooters Dylan Harris and Eric Klebold.

Today, the FBI and other agencies recognise cruelty to animals as a precursor to further violence: The FBI tracks animal abuse like it does homicides, and this month, Tennessee became the first state to create an animal abuse registry.

For everyone’s safety — humans and animals alike — it is vital for crimes against animals to be taken seriously.

— Alisa Mullins

Mullins is a senior writer with the PETA Foundation in Norfolk, Va.