Controversy Over Police Killing of Man Mistaken for Suspect

I am writing to you as a schoolteacher and concerned resident of Los Angeles about my neighborhood, gangs and crime. On Father’s Day, I was walking down to the park to take my 2-year-old daughter to the swings. As we arrived at the park, six youths passed by in a pickup truck, shouting the slogan of a local gang (Drifters), and making hand signs. As they drove by two men standing next to a car, one of the men pulled out a gun to show them. The youths sped away, and shot something that sounded like a cap gun, and then the two men drove away.

Someone called the Los Angeles Police Department. Ten minutes later, four officers with their guns drawn converged upon two youths who had nothing to do with the prior incident, sitting by a cooler in a different part of the park. The police shouted obscenities audible to everyone; threatened to shoot them if they didn’t stand up; and then made them lie face down on the grass. When they had them lying down, which was difficult for one of them who was on crutches, they handcuffed them and did not let them move for nearly 40 minutes. When I walked over with my daughter, the policemen were making jokes about the youths’s Latino names, and were calling them names like barrio boys and gang-bangers. The boys did appear to be in a different gang who were playing a baseball game in the park that afternoon.

I understand the fear that the police officers may have felt, and felt some of it myself. However, I was at least as afraid for my daughter when it was the policemen who were shouting, calling names and pulling guns on people. Other more publicized examples of similar police behavior are the recent mistaken killing of the African-American resident of Hawthorne, and the battering ram used on wrong houses. These incidents are a sign to me that we would be better served and protected by more education and sensitivity to our communities than by more random violence between “rival gangs.”

DAVID STEIN

Los Angeles