Implementing LAPD Reforms

I am appalled by your editorial criticizing the City Council for doing with the Christopher Commission report exactly what it should be doing: giving a careful, detailed, thoughtful review of the commission’s recommendations. The Times seems to have failed to grasp many important facts about the efforts at Police Department reform being undertaken in the aftermath of the Rodney King incident.

The Times seems to have missed, for example, the fact that consideration of the commission’s recommendations is a landmark event in a city in crisis. We are facing a critical, volatile and highly emotionally charged situation in Los Angeles, with substantial numbers of citizens deeply concerned and actively involved on different sides. It is a situation which cries out for the best our governmental process can offer, and not simply the most expedient.

Doesn’t The Times realize that the issues under review by the ad hoc committee are some of the most fundamental and that they go to the very heart of our system of government?

The job of elected officials is not simply to rubber-stamp recommendations that come before them but to ask the tough questions and do the hard, nuts-and-bolts work of bringing those recommendations into reality. Overall, I accept the findings and recommendations of the Christopher Commission report and I am confident that they can successfully withstand a comprehensive review. As chairman I intend to do all I can to make sure this is accomplished.

Surely, The Times appreciates the desire for as wide a consensus as possible, so that the people of the city will support the needed reforms, and equally important, that they feel comfortable that they have had a full opportunity to have their views considered.

MARVIN BRAUDE

Los Angeles City Council