Police Powers Are Second to the Public’s

* Robin Klein, a former police officer and current police psychologist, complains (Letters, Sept. 4) that every officer he counsels has the same concern: They would love to serve and protect, but fear prison and are frustrated by being hand- cuffed.

Anyone with a modicum of understanding of the intent of our Founding Fathers realizes that they intended to restrict police powers because they feared the alternative more than they feared crime or a frustrated police force.

Police officers take an oath of office to uphold the Constitution and the law, and then many immediately see those very instruments as their enemy because they make the arrest and prosecution of the “guilty” difficult, and they demand police accountability.

Furthermore, unless Klein believes that officers do their job when they rape and molest using their position of trust, when they steal from drug dealers and use the money for their personal gain, or that Stacey Koon and Laurence Powell were somehow protecting and serving Rodney King, he cannot provide the name of a single police officer anywhere in the country within the last century who was sent to prison for merely doing his or her job.

Klein, and those whom he counsels, would better spend their time and money understanding the role and the ethics of the police in a democratic society, the historical development of our Constitution, and learning that there is no factual support for their misplaced apprehensions.

PATRICK T. MAHER

La Palma