Quality-of-Life Police Issues

Re “Brutality in the Name of Public Safety,” Opinion, Aug. 24: How ironic! Now that the other shoe has fallen, Joseph McNamara and other ex-cops who feed at the academic trough are wasting no time in slamming the New York Police Department’s policing style, particularly its attention to quality-of-life issues such as prostitution, vagrancy, vandalism and petty drug dealing.

But aren’t these concerns precisely what preoccupies so many members of the “community” (as in community policing, the hazy, feel-good approach that McNamara and others have so vigorously espoused)? “Zero tolerance” for petty infractions may not be wise, but it is not the “exact opposite” of community policing--it is its inescapable conclusion.

Joe, if you want the police to be responsive to the public, you’d better be ready to deal with the consequences of this increased concern. Maybe you and your colleagues ought to rethink “community policing” before it’s too late.

JULIUS WACHTEL

Garden Grove

McNamara’s commentary regarding the NYPD’s alleged brutality vis-a-vis the Haitian immigrant implies that the situation was created by Mayor Rudolph Giuliani and NYPD management’s emphasis on “zero tolerance” of de minimis criminal conduct such as broken windows and graffiti. According to McNamara’s hypothesis, this program caused the police to categorize all criminals as “the enemy,” as opposed to distinguishing serious predatory criminals from common everyday criminals.

This theory is obviously flawed; torture is not and cannot be countenanced anywhere in our society.

DIANE L. KARPMAN

Los Angeles