Del Olmo on Police Shooting

Frank del Olmo’s “ ‘To Protect and to Serve’--and Fear” (Commentary, Aug. 6) is a wonderful expose of the age-old grievance Latinos have had against police abuse in Southern California. However, Del Olmo, in a bizarre twist, attempts to discredit the activists, the very sector which has monitored the same police misconduct he so eloquently scorns.

Del Olmo’s words, together with the statements made by Mayor Richard Riordan (Aug. 5), accusing the Communist Party and the diminutive Brown Beret group of inflaming the climate, clearly smack of McCarthyism. This, at a time when what we need is cool heads. Additionally, Del Olmo’s comments are short of solutions to the problem cops remaining in the LAPD and the more serious general conflict of police intolerance against Latinos.

JAVIER RODRIGUEZ

El Sereno

* Del Olmo’s column on the LAPD reflects a perspective which has kept blacks and Hispanics in poverty for generations. Although police racism and brutality have had a negative impact on black and Hispanic communities in Los Angeles, this impact is trivial compared to that of the violence and subsequent lack of economic investment plaguing these communities. It is this predominantly minority-on-minority violence which, beyond its horrific human toll, terrifies outside investors of all colors from bringing jobs and growth to these communities.

Although acts of racism by LAPD officers have undeniably gone on too long to be further tolerated, the real story does not end there. For generations, whites like myself throughout America have been encouraged to overcome their own prejudices and forsake the shortsightedness of their parents and grandparents. I encourage Del Olmo to achieve a more impartial view toward the LAPD than the one that his mother foisted upon him. So long as unwholesome figures like Rodney King and Jose Antonio Gutierrez represent black and Hispanic communities, these communities will have no future.

KENNETH S. ALPERN

Marina del Rey