Controversy Over Lomax

Citizens are not unsocialized children who must be disciplined as such, though in more brutal ways, by the police. Abraham Tannenbaum’s premise (“Use of Force Is What Keeps Cops Alive,” Column Right, May 8) that the police, out of some belief thought necessary for their own survival, must maintain a high profile of negative behavior in order for them to be protected from citizens is a faulty notion.

It is because of this kind of police misconduct, as evidenced in the extreme by the Rodney King beating case, that the public fears and has little respect for law-enforcement officials. Tannenbaum cannot pin this one on citizens in an attempt to justify free-wheeling police abuse.

Because police misconduct is steadily on the rise, particularly against racial minorities and members of alternative lifestyles, the time is now for citizens to demand of their local governments, with Los Angeles being the timeliest place to begin, that citizen review boards be established. Accountability to the people who pay police wages through taxation is long past due.

DAREL PROPST, Downey