officers - The Black Vault

••
FD·350 (Rev. 5·8·81)
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•(Indicate page, name of
newspaper, city and state.)
(Mount Clipping in Space Below)
Letters to The Times·
Rockwell on· ,
t
.: Polic·e Beating
I
..
• I am appalled and embarrassed that
Llewellyn Rockwell identifies himself as a
;·· libertarian ("It's Safe Streets Versus Urban
Terror," Column .Right, Commentary, ..
March 10). There is nothing Libertarian
about the notion that police ar.e empowered.
i· to act as judge, jury and dispens~r of
f.. punishment.
~ What becomes apparent from viewing
~. the beating of Rodney King is that if the
; police had felt threatened by his "resis­
;. tance" to arrest, they had sufficient num­
~ bers to restrain him with handcuffs. What
: "is even more apparent is that this was p.ot
their concern or interest: The object was
~sport. If the primary rationale for the
existence of police departments is the
, preservation of civilization, then it seems
apparent that the Los Angeles Police
Department has lost its raison d'etre. For
there is nothing civilized-or libertarian-about
making sport of tl).e beating of ·
another human being, no matter his suspected
behavior.
JOHN VERNON
Libertarian Party of California
V~nNuys
• As .a lawyer representing victims of
police abuse, a member of the board of
directors of the Police Misconduct Lawyers
Referral Service and an avid student of
Ludwig von Mises, I read with much
;_J interest Rockwell's article on the police
i beating. Apparently, Rockwell concludes
> that beatings like that suffered by King are
necessary to prevent crime. Given Rockwell's
position as president of the Ludwig
von Mises Institute, his views imply that
Ludwig von Mises subscribed to the conclusions
and methodology espoused by
Rockwell. I take great exception to Rockwell's
article, for reasons not the least of
which is it besmirches the methodology
~ and principles taught by the late Prof. Von
~ · Mises, in my opinion one of the premier
economists and great minds of the 20th
Century.
I was too young in the 1950s to appreciate
t4e degree of police• brutality that
existed then, but I will accept Rockwell's
.assertion that brutality was common then.
However, his thesis-that police brutality
then accounted for the lower crime rate in
;'! the 1950s-is unsupported. Surely a signif­
- icant increase in crime rates since then is
LOS ANGELES ·IT':iiMES: ·•
~~~:~n: THURS • , lflAR 21 , 19 91
METRO SECTION, PAGE 6
Title:
Character:
LETTERS TO THE TilfillS
ROCKWELL ON POLICE
BEATING
ctas':ification:
attributable to the ever-escalating "war on
drugs" and other similar law enforcement
policies enacted and enforced to prevent
individuals from freely engaging in voluntary
activities, e.g., drug use, gambling,
. prostitution. As any student of Von Mises
should know, laws designed and enforced ·
to prevent individuals from freely engaging
in voluntary activities must be condemned
on economic grounds .. Not only do
these laws deprive ·individuals of what
.:,they Q~~m to be.in_their.~sUnt~!'~~t.~_t!le
Submitting Office:
IDS ANGELES
CIVIL RIGHTS
80-33 B
lndexin;::g:.:.: -----~:::::::;;:::------,
SEARCHED'--- INDEXED•---1
S~RIAIJ~EO·-----,..,..,., fiLED~ ........--t
MAR 2 6 1991
FBI LOS ANGELES J .....
~ :cost of criminal enforcement is high.
{ Rockwell need not bemoan the passing
: .of the practice of police beatings in the :of a law breaker1s JU. st that-harid ·
• paddy wagon. That practice is alive -and
-wrmg
well and flourishing in our Southern Cali- ing ?Y ~he brothe~s of ~he cri~inal, pros
fornia communities. Just ask Rodney King. pectmg by th~ Pohce ~I.sconduc_t Lawyer
. . DONALD W. COOK Refer:al Se:~ce,_ pub~ICity. ~eekmg by th1
Los Angeles j Amen can C1v1l Liberties Umon.
>\ . • · ·· Please tell the urban warrior that it i.
. ,• Thank you so much for printing the some 'very easy to .avoid unpleasant encounter!
. 16 column inches contributed by Rockwell. with the police. Just don't break the law!
Though he was "out-printed" by about 40 • T. BRUCE GRAHM
•.'inch(!S to 1 in that edition, he was the ?nl:Y 1
Port Huenem<
one that seemed to remember that crumnals
must be deterred. Granted that King's
captors may have been a little overzealous,
... such experience should normally tend to
deter the working criminal. ·
At the other extreme under Column Left
on that page, writer Carol Watson proposes
that law enforcement agencies should not
use their full resources when someone
attempts to . "evade" proper -authority.
What sort of world does she invite if to
escape confrontation the criminal elects
simply ~o "evade"? I say call on the dogs or
· whatever it takes to uphold authority.
Thank you, too, for Patrick Buchanan's
remarks r~mi.nd~ng us that all this o~tbreak
of h1stnomcs over the apprehensiOn
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