Lottery and Slayings

The most prominent article on the front page of the Metro section (April 14) was “Lotteau Fever: Beverly Hills Purchases Tickets in Elegant Anonymity.” In a scant four columns on Page B5 that same day, buried among the ads, The Times reported that seven people were fatally shot or stabbed over the weekend. Fifteen column inches divided by seven murders, almost all of them gang-related. That comes out to about two column inches per life.

Are the lotto habits of Beverly Hills celebrities really more important than the daily massacre taking place in our city? Is it because the gangs aren’t killing in affluent neighborhoods that the gang problem keeps getting swept under the rug and ignored?

I implore The Times not to let us become immune to the outrages. When an innocent mother of four gets blown away simply because she looked out the window of her home, we the citizens deserve to have our noses rubbed in the shame of it, for we are allowing this kind of thing to happen. The political powers that be have abdicated their responsibility to protect us (Mayor Tom Bradley wants to trim an already understaffed Los Angeles Police Department by 500 officers). We must elect new political blood that will do more than pay lip service to this problem that is literally killing us. Dare I say in this jaded age we need a newspaper willing to crusade for real change for the common good. The alternative is that we’ll all stop looking out the window for fear of our lives being reduced to two column inches.

EDWARD KOVACH

Los Angeles