Bradley on Rioting

As we face the most significant crisis in Los Angeles history, I must correct the mistaken impression being deliberately fostered by a few self-interested members of the police union--who are opposed to the Christopher Commission reform and Charter Amendment F--that my comments somehow contributed to the riots. Some who lack the facts fostered this same irrational assumption. Let me set the record straight.

Several times during the evening of April 29, as the riots broke out, I appealed for calm. During a live, televised address to a citywide audience that ended at approximately 5:30 p.m. that evening, I repeatedly urged the public to express their outrage through words and not with acts of violence. The incidents of violence started as early as 4:34 p.m.--45 minutes before my televised remarks. It is absurd to suggest that my remarks started the riot. President Bush, thousands of elected officials, and 70% of the people in the community and nation expressed shock and disbelief at the verdict, just as I did. Am I to remain silent in the face of this irrational, unexplainable verdict?

Two weeks ago, during a 90-minute interview with a Times reporter, I outlined the content and goals of my speeches that evening. Nonetheless, the subsequent story failed to describe how eyewitnesses at the Florence and Normandie site said violence and chaos erupted there as early as 4:30 p.m. Clearly, the people who were engaged in violence were not influenced one bit by what I said nearly an hour later.

I was informed by Melanie Lomax, a former police commissioner, that this very reference was deleted from her letter to the editor that appeared on May 24.

The Times has a responsibility to print a balanced story about my role during this crisis. While the Daily News printed a complete transcript of my speech that Wednesday evening, The Times failed to provide the same public service. Standards of honesty, fairness and balanced reporting, it seems to me, are not too much to ask of The Times.

TOM BRADLEY, Mayor Los Angeles