Koon and Powell Don’t Belong in Rogues’ Gallery
* How dare you compare or even associate “the Rodney G. King beating” with some of the most horrific crimes in California, if not U.S. history? (“Rogues’ Valley: The Life and Times of the Valley’s Most Notorious Villains,” June 15).
To categorize Laurence Powell and Stacey Koon with the demented, devious Charles Manson, Kenneth Bianchi, Angelo Buono and the like is completely unfair, to say the least.
One can argue all day long about the Rodney King incident and the subsequent convictions of Powell and Koon. As a Los Angeles police officer and a good friend of Larry Powell, I can confidently say that nobody met before, during or after rollcall and conspired to beat or kill anyone, black, white or otherwise. Whether they went too far and were outside of LAPD policy is certainly arguable, but criminal intent is not. It just didn’t exist, and no evidence was ever presented in any court that it did.
JACE KESSLER
Santa Clarita
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