Seeking Solutions

Experts address solutions to the problems in coping with too many murders and too few police:

“I think the core problem is that Southern California law enforcement has far too few personnel. In 1960, there were three violent crimes reported for every LAPD officer. By 1990, there were 10 violent crimes reported for every officer. Until we correct that ratio, there will be too few men and women to do all that is necessary to investigate and solve violent crime.”

--James Q. Wilson, professor of management and public policy, UCLA

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“You know why there’s a high murder rate? One of the reasons is the accessibility of firearms. That’s part of our culture. This developed in the movement west in the Revolutionary War and the right of the militia to exist and protect this country. And that’s the argument that the 2nd Amendment people get and yet look how many lives it cost. I’ll give you another example. We said alcohol is bad for this country. And yet the American people want to be able to drink and it costs us 50,000 lives a year with drunk drivers on the road killing people, and America’s willing to pay the price just so they can drink. Are they willing to pay the price for 25,000 murders a year just for the right to bear arms? You guys go figure that out.”

--Deputy Police Chief John D. White, LAPD

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“If this were 30 years ago and we would have had a single year of the kind of carnage we have today, we would consider it a crisis. . . . The amount of carnage we see on our streets has reached the point that I think a lot of people have given up, we have put up a defensive shield to numb ourselves and in doing that, I think, we end up accepting it. . . . The bottom line is that we have to change the culture of violence in this society. We are far too accepting of violence. . . . So yeah, give me the jails and the prisons and the cops [and] the prosecutors, and we will do a better job. But that is not going to be nearly enough. We are going to have to take some real time to change the messages we are giving our kids, to change the lyrics they are hearing, the messages they are seeing, even in sports, where just winning is not enough. . . . All of that reinforces a very violent message.”

--California Atty. Gen. Dan Lungren

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“Homicides have overwhelmed the system. Certainly, they’ve overwhelmed our detectives. If you compare the way they do it on television, compared to real life, there isn’t any comparison. If a detective is carrying six or seven homicides or more . . . you just can’t expect them to do the job as they should. . . . The system has just broken down at all levels when it comes to homicide. I guess that says something about our willingness--or our belief in the sacredness of human life. It’s getting cheaper and cheaper.”

--Former LAPD Chief Daryl F. Gates