LAPD accused of brutality

Re “Video, arrest report at odds,” Nov. 11

The punching in this current incident of “police brutality” by LAPD officers and the “whacking by baton” in the Rodney King incident had their genesis more than 20 years ago, when the board of police commissioners outlawed the bar arm control.

The bar arm was simple and effective. The officer got behind the suspect, took control and dropped the suspect to the ground to cuff him, while at the same time protecting against the loss of his weapon.

But an inconclusive report came along that announced the bar arm caused the death of several suspects. The politicians and the board of police commissioners scrambled to outlaw it.

Since then there has been no effective means of suspect control provided through training.

Now the LAPD officer has to face his suspect and struggle in order to follow training policy. Use of these techniques is not only ineffective but continues to expose officers to public criticism for the ugly perceptions that result from their use.

Now this idiotic “distraction punch” is getting its day in the media and boardrooms. The police officers will be pillaged and demeaned and the “control” techniques, born of some other politician’s cowardice, will be replaced with another quest for reform and new “control techniques.”

STEPHEN DOWNING

Palm Desert

The writer is a retired LAPD deputy chief.

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Re “LAPD, FBI probe arrest on videotape,” Nov. 10

If we saw a videotape of an Iraqi beating a U.S. soldier the way the L.A. police officers were beating their suspect, we would be outraged. We wouldn’t say it captured only part of the event or “the actions of the officers were appropriate in light of what they were experiencing.” Although this man was a suspect, he didn’t check his rights at the door of the L.A. Police Department.

SUZANNE CORWIN

Westlake Village

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I really don’t need to wait for the “totality of circumstances,” as Police Chief William J. Bratton ascertains, to determine if I am witnessing police brutality when I see an apparently subdued and prostrate man who yells, “I can’t breathe,” while one officer sits on him as another repeatedly punches him in the face with those purportedly acceptable “distraction strikes.” Bratton says the strikes were “not life threatening,” as if that mitigates the obvious brutality of the act. Once a suspect is apprehended and subdued, he should be handcuffed and taken to jail and not subjected to further unnecessary violence. End of story.

As we all know by now, if this incident had not been videotaped, no one would have been the wiser other than, of course, the suspect.

STEVEN LYLE

Montrose