Opinion: In Thursday’s Letters to the editor
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In Thursday’s letters, readers speak out about the Los Angeles Police Department’s new headquarters in the wake of a statement by former police chief and current city councilman Bernard C. Parks that the new facility should retain the name Parker Center in memory of legendary (but racially divisive) chief William H. Parker.
Stanford Nelson, of Irvine, agrees that the name should stay but questions Parks’ reasons why:
I worked under Chief Parker; he swore me in at my academy graduation. It was a proud moment. A few years later, he passed away. His funeral service was attended by thousands from around the world. Every ethnicity and religion was represented.Parker was anything but a racist. What he was a chief of police who brought ethics to the Los Angeles Police Department. He established parameters, discipline and professionalism at the department that were mirrored and revered across the nation.Parker Center should not keep its name for continuity’s sake, as Parks suggests. Parker’s name should continue for the ethical impact he created in establishing the finest police department in the United States.
But Ben Miles, of Huntington Beach, agrees with Tim Rutten’s assessment that naming HQ after Parker doesn’t work in 2009:
Bernard C. Parks’ assertion that naming the still-under-construction police building after long-gone LAPD Chief William H. Parker would ‘assure continuity’ betrays the City Council member’s mind-set.Parks is clearly more concerned about the superficial aspects of order and continuity than the actual message that would be sent by lending Parker’s moniker to the new headquarters. The issue calls to mind the debates over flying the Confederate states’ flag in South Carolina.
Steve Freedman, of Venice, agrees:
Giving the new LAPD headquarters a name more suggestive of the reforms undertaken in recent years would offer the people of Los Angeles greater assurance of a police force we can depend on for fairness and justice than would retaining a name associated with a long-past era in order to ‘assure continuity.’
Letters about possible fraud in California’s home-care program, banks in Sioux Falls and animal rights activists, too.