Hit-and-Miss Articles on LAPD Shootings

Re “The Times Quotes Firebrands and Convicts the City’s Cops,” Outside the Tent, Opinion, Feb. 20: Bravo to Jack Dunphy for highlighting The Times’ anti-cop bias. Your pandering to the extremists in the black community will incite more racial violence and further hinder the police in their efforts to bring peace and safety to the good citizens of Los Angeles.

If it were true the LAPD is on a mission to exterminate young black men, why then was only one, who was stealing a car and attempting to ram the police with it, shot that night? Why not the one who ran from the car? Why not any the night before? Or the night before that?

The fact is, young black men are more likely to be shot by a gang member in a drive-by than by the police.

John Lieto

Newport Beach

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Why is the author of this column using a pseudonym? If you’re going to “invite outside critics to excoriate” The Times, how about getting ones who aren’t afraid to use their real names? The authors of the articles and columns Mr. X criticizes didn’t hide behind pseudonyms.

Mr. X gives us a tedious, resentment-filled rant about why he canceled his Times subscription because it didn’t reflect his political biases -- but mysteriously, he still seems to read The Times.

Mr. X is allegedly a police officer -- but readers have no way of verifying that. That he “writes for the National Review Online” does tip us off that there might be another agenda at work here. But why allow anonymous right-wing media bashers space in The Times? If they really believe their own drivel, why don’t they have the courage to sign their columns with their real names?

Gerald Kelly

Santa Monica

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In defending a police officer’s “split-second decision” to shoot a suspect (Commentary, Feb. 21), former LAPD Officer Rod Bernsen concedes that there have been instances where the officer had no justification for shooting the suspect. In such cases, he assures us, officers are fired and prosecuted “when this comes to light.”

Unfortunately, Bernsen’s analysis begs the question and overlooks a very important problem: The LAPD’s ability to investigate itself, coupled with its “code of silence,” suggests that many facts that might prove a shooting to be unjustified will never “come to light.”

Steve Danning

Woodland Hills