Anthony Morgan of Petaluma writes of the shooting death of Jeremiah Chass in Sebastopol, “I have nearly 35 years in law enforcement, and I have been placed in precarious situations a number of times. I know how suddenly a situation can change. Because of that knowledge, I cannot criticize the deputies. Also, I wasn’t there.”

Meanwhile, Jesse Chavez of Santa Rosa writes, “The two officers who shot the young man (Chass) the other day should be indicted like those New York City officers. There had to be another way to handle the situation . . . “

These are just two of the many letters that we have not published as yet regarding the tragic Sebastopol shooting. Why? Because there are just too many to publish, and many are repetitive of letters that have already appeared.

Letters tend to go in waves in high-profile stories such as this one. In this case, the first wave came from friends and neighbors of Jeremiah’s who were understandably upset about the shooting and perplexed about his conduct that day. Then came letters from readers angry at comments made by the attorney the family had hired. (He later backed down from some of those remarks.)

That was followed by a wave of letters of people angry at the deputies, followed by letters angry at the people who were angry at the deputies and urging everyone to withhold judgment until a full investigation is completed. That’s pretty much where we stand today, in the confluence of these two kinds of letters.

Monitoring this correspondence is never easy. But we plan to keep these letters to a minimum for now – until there’s a new development in the story and a new wave of letters breaks.

— Paul Gullixson