Brewer Named Head of Police Commission

Jesse A. Brewer, a retired Los Angeles Police Department assistant chief, was named president of the Police Commission Tuesday during the five-member panel’s annual rotation of officers.

Brewer, who was appointed to the commission in July, 1991, was unanimously chosen by his colleagues to take over the president’s seat from Stanley K. Sheinbaum, who will remain on the commission. Attorney Michael Yamaki was chosen vice president, replacing Brewer.

In other business Tuesday, the Commission heard from about two dozen anti-abortion activists who complained that police did nothing to protect them during a July 25 prayer vigil attended by abortion rights advocates. The counterdemonstrators ripped apart and burned Bibles, dressed in garb to mock the Virgin Mary, and waved “an insulting and disgusting eight-foot-tall phallic cross”--all without police intervention, the anti-abortion activists said.