Solar power and the desert environment; the checkered history of Chavez Ravine; LAPD Chief Charlie Beck responds to an L.A. Times editorial

The price of power

Re “Activists feeling burned,” April 6

Southern California has many large, empty rooftops that could easily support a sea of solar panels. Exploitation of this vast resource, which is already connected to the grid, should be a top regional priority.

Unfortunately, the decision-makers at our utilities prefer to stick with an outmoded business model that relies on corporate point-source energy production, in which solar power plants are substituted for coal-fired ones.

Why is the diffuse production of solar power on urban rooftops in sunny Southern California so difficult for utilities to contemplate? Their nonsensical thinking does not justify habitat destruction in our deserts.

Paula Schiffman

Los Angeles

Your article mischaracterizes the role groups such as the Natural Resources Defense Council play in solar energy development on public lands. This is certainly not a black-and-white issue, but we’re doing due diligence to ensure that solar projects are sited in a responsible manner that conserves the desert.

Just last month, the NRDC filed suit to block one poorly sited solar project, but it supports a set of projects in Imperial County. The latter projects are located on private, already disturbed agricultural land with relatively few impacts to wildlife, water and air quality, and they are close to transmission infrastructure.

When it comes to climate change, inaction is not an option and helping find the right choices is a responsibility. The choices are not easy, but we believe that by coming to the table, we can strike the right balance to protect our lands and address climate change.

Carl Zichella

San Francisco

The writer is director of the Natural Resources Defense Council’s Western Transmission Program.

Chavez Ravine, then and now

Re “Told to sacrifice,” April 5

The article states: “The removal of more than 1,000 mostly Mexican American families to make way for [Dodger Stadium] is a dark note in L.A.’s history.” It was a dark note, but the Dodgers didn’t make it.

After World War II, housing was a high priority. But private developers and some politicians attacked the Federal Housing Authority as being socialist.

The housing authority had acquired and cleared the land after promising the displaced residents that they would be able to return to Chavez Ravine once the housing project was complete. It never was, but not because of the Dodgers.

Affordable housing remains critical. Perhaps planners today should consider the space near Staples Center, now being considered for a football stadium, for affordable housing. It would be a boon for working people downtown.

Donna Wilkinson

Los Angeles

Roz Wyman, the former city councilwoman who worked to lure the Dodgers to L.A. from Brooklyn in the 1950s, says she has no regrets.

Of course she has no regrets. The displacement of all those people from Chavez Ravine did not interfere with her elegant lifestyle. Her comment that it was the first time the city pulled together to accomplish something is insensitive to those who were displaced from their homes.

In this day and age, individuals such as Wyman would never get elected to represent any part of Los Angeles. Thank God, at least in L.A. and most of California, that officials who think like her are slowly disappearing from the political landscape.

Homer Alba

Glendale

LAPD chief on settlement

Re “$4.5 million to a gangster?,” Editorial, April 6

The Times agrees with a civil jury’s decision that two Los Angeles police officers wrongly shot a fleeing gang member, and it endorsed the L.A. city attorney’s decision to pay the man $4.5 million to settle his claim. The Times praises both the verdict and the settlement as deterrents to police misconduct.

Unfortunately, this was a case in which the trial judge exercised his discretion to deny the jurors key facts about the plaintiff, his conduct and his subsequent statements while in custody. For that reason alone, the Los Angeles Police Department believes the city attorney owes our officers and the taxpayers an appeal of this wrongful verdict, rather than capitulation in the form of an excessive and unnecessary settlement. The Times, however, had ready access to all the facts, which makes its conclusions all the more perplexing.

Nowhere in the editorial, for example, did The Times mention that our department, which now conducts the nation’s most thorough investigations of officer-involved shootings, found that the two officers behaved correctly — a conclusion subsequently supported by both the department’s inspector general and the city’s civilian Police Commission.

Here are the facts: The officers were summoned to the scene of a drive-by shooting. Once there, they saw and pursued the vehicle from which the shots were fired. When the vehicle stopped, they saw the occupants — all of whom they reasonably believed were armed — fleeing. As the officers began to pursue the driver on foot, they heard gunshots behind them, which heightened their vigilance. After a chase on foot, the driver turned to face them and the officers — believing he had a gun — made the split-second decision to fire in self-defense. Should they have waited until they were shot or shot at before firing? Should they have allowed him to flee farther, perhaps taking hostages along the way or working himself into a place where the officers could not return fire for fear of hitting innocent bystanders?

These officers behaved courageously and professionally to protect the community from a dangerous individual who, minutes before, had attempted to commit a murder. While it is true that no gun was found at the scene of his capture, one of the facts the jury was denied — though The Times was not — was that a fellow inmate allegedly heard him boast that he had successfully tossed away his weapon as he fled. One of the other suspects stated the plaintiff was armed when he left the car.

Instead of paying off this individual, the city should appeal the judge’s ruling that prevented the jury from receiving all the facts. Our officers do not require deterrents to unprofessional conduct; respect for individual rights is integral to the concept of constitutional policing that now governs our department’s daily life.

Charlie Beck

Los Angeles

The writer is chief of the Los Angeles Police Department.

UC and the left

Re “Little evidence of UC ‘crisis,’ ” Editorial, April 7

It is difficult to compile evidence of professors’ leftist propaganda because students rely on these instructors for their grades. However, there is evidence that the faculties at University of California campuses consist overwhelmingly of liberals.

Due to my interests and donations to the UC system, I have gone to countless events, talks and classes. I know numerous professors well and am involved with UC student organizations.

I am a Jewish entrepreneur who succeeded as a furniture manufacturer, starting with $450 in 1972 in Los Angeles. The hostility found in UC classrooms to business, conservatives and Israel is extraordinarily damaging to students and all our futures.

Howard Waldow

Beverly Hills

Speaking out

Re “Obama-bashing Marine’s ouster backed by panel,” April 6

Since when is free speech not allowed for all people? Marine Sgt. Gary Stein, who posted comments highly critical of President Obama online, had the guts to say what many of us are thinking.

If Stein is fired because he used his freedom, then half of the country should also be fired. Then how would we manage our police departments, fire departments, hospitals and the security of our country?

Janice Mathes

Thousand Oaks