Award to Robber

* Re “Jury Awards Robber an Additional $80,000,” April 27:

I can’t believe this! On the one hand, a nation shocked by the horrible event in Oklahoma City clamors for action, and then there are two federal juries and federal judges ordering four Riverside police officers to each pay $26,183 and the chief of police to pay $80,000 in punitive damages for stopping a heavily armed fugitive robber with bullets, a robber who had just shot one of his helpless victims in the head!

If that’s how we treat the “thin blue line” that is all we have between us and chaos, what good will be the public outrage of our politicians or the reams of new rules and regulations they will generate in response?

Is someone trying to tell us that the proper role of the police is to hurry to a crime scene after the fact, file a report and in the event that a suspect is apprehended to trust the court system and its multibillion-dollar budget to find the proper mix of plea bargains or politically correct penalties if there are no hung juries or obscure technicalities preventing that?

Let our police know how we feel, that we appreciate what they do and that we stand behind them!

KURT G. TOPPEL

Pacific Palisades

* What kind of a message are we sending criminals when they are given three or four times the yearly salary of a hard-working contributing member of society as a consequence of a robbery and violent attack? How can such remuneration be condoned? A man escapes after shooting an unarmed homeowner; the fact of the armed attack should more than justify the police using similar force to capture the attacker.

Use a gun, get $180,000; what kind of policy is that? Use a gun, face a gun--that’s what we should be saying.

LINDA FOLSOM

Los Angeles