Local Sin Squad

Thank you for writing the Column One article on the morality-enforcing ‘sin squad’ police in Malaysia (July 13). Although it may be surprising, we have a quite similar arm of the police here in L.A., called the vice squad. Its primary duty is also to enforce the public morality, and they engage in activities such as arresting those engaged in consensual adult sex if money may be involved, those seeking private use of nonprescribed drugs, those who gamble and those who have sexual encounters in places such as parked cars at night.

Many thousands of such morality arrests are made each year in Los Angeles (1,600 alone for so-called lewd conduct), and it has been noted that many, if not most, of these arrests are questionable, with no witnesses or witness complaints.

Just as in Malaysia, it seems an incredible waste of resources to spend so much money enforcing a particular moral standard on others.

Alan Jones

Los Angeles