Letters to the Editor: Make cops live in the neighborhoods they police. Then we’ll have reform

To the editor: Columnist Sandy Banks offers five suggestions for police reform. Here’s a sixth: Have officers live in the communities they police.

Making officers stakeholders in their bailiwicks would end the “garrison” mentality plaguing our big-city police forces.

While the current police establishment will balk at such a radical change, it can be accomplished through a program along these lines: Offer veteran officers relocation incentives that would include generous housing and education stipends. Center recruiting efforts around qualified local candidates with housing and education incentives tied to remaining in the community for a prescribed period of time.

The mutual respect developed from such an approach would return real meaning to the Los Angeles Police Department motto, “To protect and to serve.”

Let’s be bold in our resolve to improve the policing culture.

Nick Lewis, Los Angeles

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To the editor: A fundamental role of authority is protecting property rights. Without property, there is no exchange, no economy and no society.

Last summer’s unrest involved three groups. The first was made up of political activists who organized protests on social media; the second was a small contingent of anarchists who monitored the activists and showed up to do damage; and the third was a significant number of criminals who organized in loose, opportunistic ways to steal property.

I watched as merchants across the street from my home in downtown Los Angeles were looted repeatedly until their businesses failed. If we want to ensure the right to assemble and protest, then we have to fund the police sufficiently to protect us from lawlessness.

James E. Moore II, Los Angeles

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To the editor: The culture of policing needs fixing. Police brutality seems to be growing across the country. The killing of George Floyd was just one example.

Perhaps most important is exercising greater care in selecting candidates for our police academies.

There are people who grew up fixated on power — the power of the uniform, the power of the gun, the power of arrest — and are ready for action. Let’s put some of our more discerning psychologists and psychiatrists to work so that these power-hungry people don’t get anywhere near the police academies.

George Epstein, Los Angeles