Use of Mathematical Facts Is Misleading

* Your Aug. 13 editorial (“LAPD’s Problem is Not Reform but Funding to Fill the Ranks”) states three mathematical facts: Less than one out of every 10 Van Nuys Anglos are robbers. Less than one out of 10 Latinos are robbers. Less than one out of every 10 African Americans in Van Nuys are robbers.

I admit to being one of those unfortunates who did not participate in California’s famous public school system and I have no idea what one is taught in first-year (and subsequent years) math, but your numbers leave me with totally different mathematical facts.

First, the 61% of the Van Nuys population that is non-Latino and non-African American is not all Anglo. There are Native Americans, Pacific Islanders and Asians who are part of this 61%. If I use all the numbers of that article (15,000 African Americans--1,600 robbery suspects per year; 100,000 Latinos--1,700 suspects, and 180,000 Anglos (and others)--400 suspects) and make all those terrible assumptions you made in your article, I am left with the following mathematical facts: One out of every 9 African Americans in Van Nuys is a robber, one out of every 59 Latinos in Van Nuys is a robber and one out of every 450 Anglos (and others) is a robber.

Now, we are either a terribly racist society with a terribly racist Police Department and a terribly racist judiciary, or I think Will Rogers was wrong when he talked about lies, damned lies and statistics. It ain’t statistics. It is what people such as your writer want our well-educated and informed populace to believe they mean.

The sorry thing about your less-than-1-out-of-10 mathematical facts is that they are not far from the truth--however, they don’t mean anything. Quit fooling around!

J. H. De VRIES

Newhall

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* Re: the Aug. 13 editorial “LAPD’s Problem Is Not Reform,” your sloppy and incomplete use of erroneous statistics was false and very misleading. You use your bogus numbers to try to convince readers that there is absolutely no basis in fact to believe that a “disproportionate share of crime [is] committed by minorities.” You go on to say that enforcement activity “was never justified by the numbers.”

You are absolutely wrong! In fact, using your own numbers, and carrying out your statistics to their more honest conclusion, the evidence is very clear that minorities do indeed commit a disproportionate share of crime. This assertion is certainly nothing new or startling and is borne out in any crime summary you wish to read. According to the robbery and population figures you use in your editorial, the true statistics are as follows: Latino robbers constitute 0.016% of the Latino population; in other words, 16 out of every 1,000 Latinos are robbers. African American robbers constitute a whopping 0.105% of the African American population; 105 out of every 1,000 African Americans are robbers. Caucasian robbers constitute a minuscule 0.0022% of the Caucasian population; in other words, only two out of every 1,000 Caucasians are robbers.

By your twisting of the facts, you have attempted to promote your own views of the crime picture in our community, and by doing so you have done the taxpaying citizens of our community a disservice. Just tell the truth and print the facts next time.

EDMOND AUERBACH

West Hills