Crime in New York

In “The Price of Safety in a Police State” (Opinion, April 11), Amy Wilentz argued that an increased police presence and an enforced intolerance of public decay have not reduced the crime rate in New York. Rather, she believes that this change has occurred because people have taken back their blighted neighborhoods themselves (!), drug use has dwindled to nothing (!!) and the criminal element has apparently been embarrassed into decency and respect (!!!). In fact, this remarkable change has occurred in spite of the New York police and Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani. Wilentz described them as an evil, white male authority, analogous to the repressive, totalitarian Haitian regime. Since the officers who allegedly committed brutality are bad, the whole policy must be rejected before a dictatorship emerges!

Sorry, Ms. Wilentz, but not everyone in our society respects public property or is law-abiding. The improvement in public safety and the courage to upgrade public property (i.e. the upholstered seats which Wilentz ridicules) are due in large part to Mayor Giuliani’s “get tough” tactics on minor crime. We could certainly use that in Los Angeles.

CHARLES L. SCHNEE

Los Angeles

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Wilentz’s article about Giuliani and his NYPD brotherhood in blue warmed my heart. I was especially touched by her comparison of Giuliani to the late Francois Duvalier, president for life of Haiti. Because it was the brutality of Papa Doc that most came to my mind when I read the story of Amadou Diallo’s senseless and obscene slaughter.

Thanks for the article, even if the so-called important press tried to pretend for at least four weeks that there was no story.

JENNIFER BELL

Sacramento