Thanks to The Baltimore Sun for covering anti-cop activists’ hijacking of the town hall meeting on the new Johns Hopkins University police force (“First town hall to discuss Johns Hopkins private police force is ended by protesters and moved to online-only format,” Sept. 22). Quite a few JHU neighbors like me would have liked to learn about the university’s plans and express support for its continuing efforts to enhance safety in the area, but we were denied the chance.
 

An unruly, disrespectful and misinformed group was able to exercise the heckler’s veto and prevent a useful exchange of information and views. If the ugliness of some of these hecklers’ signs (including “All Cops Are [B-word]” and “[F-word] Police”) is any indication of the quality of their thinking, they have little to offer regarding ways to mitigate our fair city’s tragic and escalating crime problem.
 

Yet they behave as if only their views deserve a hearing.
 

Under Baltimore City State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby, the city has experimented with de-policing and de-prosecution for over seven years, during which its homicide rate has climbed 50% above that in the previous seven. While everyone supports treating the root causes of crime in the long term, it’s clear that efficient policing is necessary to enhance citizen safety now. That’s why voters have shown Ms. Mosby the door.
 

Hopkins’ neighbors hope that the university and the Baltimore City Council will tune out the loud but empty shouts of the activists and create the Johns Hopkins Police Department to make our area safer and help reduce the load on the overstretched Baltimore Police Department.
 

— Steve Walters, Baltimore

The writer is a professor emeritus at Loyola University Maryland.