Crime: Police Deployment and Ammunition Sales

Violence and crime are rampant (Westside letters, June 29). Our police forces are undermanned and underfinanced. Yet, the current “solution” to this problem is not to hire more police officers, not to put more officers out patrolling our streets, but to turn them into file clerks so they can work on ammunition registration.

No one has yet to explain precisely how it is that recording the identification of the purchasers of ammunition is going to reduce the crime rate.

If anything, by reassigning patrol officers to ammunition registration duties, by turning our police into file clerks, crime will most likely increase. After all, someone will have to gather, process, record, review, analyze and file all the information collected.

But let us assume that all sales of ammunition do, as has been suggested, require that all purchasers provide identification that is recorded. Then further assume a few spent rounds are recovered from a crime scene. What then? Do the police now try to review all purchase records from each and every place ammunition is sold in Los Angeles County? The logistics of such a search are mind-boggling.

And, what if the purchaser is actually located? That fact is insufficient grounds for an arrest, and it does not meet the high burden of proof required for a criminal conviction.

The Culver City Council did the right thing. It voted to keep the police where we need them: out patrolling our streets and not filing ammunition sale reports. For it is a well-established fact that a greater police presence is what reduces crime. IRENE M. CORCORAN Los Angeles