LAPD Accountability Demanded

Re “The Cost of Change at the LAPD,” Commentary, Feb. 14: Chief William Bratton speaks of reform in terms of increased numbers of officers. The reform we Angelenos want is that of the “shoot first, ask questions later” culture that the department defends time after time as its officers continue to gun down city residents, almost all of them people of color, in dubious circumstances.

The fact that so many voters in November rejected the sales tax increase to pay for the hiring of more officers, and that the City Council blocked a similar ballot measure again, should serve as an indication to the LAPD that the people of Los Angeles view the killing of 13-year-old Devin Brown, among so many others, not merely as an isolated incident, as an individual mistake, but as evidence of a systemic problem that shows no sign of wanting to correct itself.

We want a department that behaves as part of the community, not one that continues to act above and against it.

To increase the number of officers seems to us only to increase this sense of liability among residents, from the unnecessary deaths it provokes to the huge lawsuits that follow, all of which drain this city of its true great potential. This is not something we will pay for.

Claudio Cambon

Los Angeles

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I keep reading in The Times about the great distrust of the LAPD in the African American community. That distrust cuts across all ethnic and racial lines. I am not African American, I have lived in Los Angeles my whole life and am horrified, year in and year out, by an endless stream of outrageous, unjustified police shootings that defy common sense. Year in and year out they are ruled “in policy.”

Chief Bratton is wasting his time in writing new rules of engagement; the problem is in the basic culture and mentality of the LAPD.

It sees itself as a paramilitary force, operating above and outside the law. As such it attracts the angry, the frustrated, the insecure and the racist, giving them not only support, structure and cover for those weaknesses but a badge and a gun.

It is a recipe for lethal disaster that the unfortunate residents of Los Angeles must endure.

Michele Greene

Los Angeles

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Re “The Irrelevance of Black Leaders,” Commentary, Feb. 13: Whatever crisis in black leadership might exist, it does not preclude them from expressing justifiable outrage at racist, predatory cops coming into our community and killing our children! Joe Hicks, who seems to spare no opportunity to engage in apologia for white supremacy, raises other issues that simply are not germane to the issue at hand.

When he says that “community leaders have ... acted as instant judge and jury, proclaiming officers guilty of abuse -- or, in the case of Devin Brown, essentially murder -- even before critical facts are established,” we need to make him and The Times understand that the only facts that matter here are that another black child has been unnecessarily gunned down without the benefit of judge or jury, and that every member in the black community has a right if not an obligation to speak out against it. Including him.

We also have a right to demand accountability.

Gbudwe Bafuka

Los Angeles

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Re Hicks’ column: It’s refreshing that someone finally has the nerve to tell the truth about what goes on in the black leadership community. They can’t seem to get to a camera fast enough to denounce the “racism” of the LAPD before they or anyone else has had time to gather the facts in a case involving the police and a black person. In the case of Devin Brown, everything was thrown at the police.

Why did not one of these so-called leaders raise the question of what a 13-year-old was doing in a stolen car at 4 a.m. and why he tried to run down a policeman? Where is the questioning of the youth’s guardians about their attention to his activities? We know the answer. It doesn’t get the headlines.

William H. Scannell

Santa Ana