Once, Just ONCE I would like the Times to give as much of a damn about a dead cop as they do idiots who get themselves killed. For those of us who've felt the pain, the list goes on and on from memory.... Brown, Gadja, Navidad, Kueridjian, March, York, Dallies, Ganz, Fraembes, Wrede, Kerbrat, MacDonald.... and that's just a few. Each of them snuffed out in cold blood by a peice of scum most people would cross the street to avoid, but whom the Times will bet its chest forever to protect from the tiniest chance of a slight.

Jack Dunphy's column does a few interesting things with the language. He talks very tough about how he feels about the LA Times and its "liberal" policies, but he oddly switches to passive use when he discusses the actual Margaret Mitchell shooting -- as if it was gun that shot the homeless woman, not the police officer holding it. He also makes pretty fast and loose with the facts of the case, using the phrase "blink of an eye" to suggest that the officers had no time to react to the situation when every investigation into the case showed that they unprofessionally allowed a very simple stop to gradually spiral out of their own control. What he fails to understand is that rational people CAN make moral judgements on a case like this. The police used lethal force to subdue an old woman with a screwdriver. Perhaps the Times is wrong on this subject, but Dunphy chose an awfully poor example to make his point. P.S. Love the site, the logo, everything.

The sad thing is, you actually think you know what you're talking about. I highly doubt that you've ever had a human being in a gun sight and had to decide "do I do or do I not" and realized - only for the moment it took you to ask - that you'd have to live with the former, and maybe not take another breath with the latter. I doubt you've ever truly been afraid for your life for more than an unfortunate high speed half-second of close call on a road. I doubt you've ever had to decide to take an action to save your life, and am quite certain you've never done so at the cost of another's life.

Sadder still, Dunphy is right. If Margaret Mitchell had killed OFC. Larrigan you would neither care nor remember.

This I can prove: In February of 1991, 2 weeks before the Rodney King incident, just a few miles from where King was beaten, an officer was killed by a drunk illegal immigrant as she stepped from her patrol car. The guy simply whipped out a pistol and (in the blink of an eye) shot her dead. To be sure, you don't remember her name or the incident. But, I'll bet you remember (I assume you are old enough and have been around this town long enough to remember) Darryl Gates describing the shooter as "a Salvadoran Asshole." Oh, the uproar that his comment caused. Oh, how little those who were offended cared about her life, or care today.

How do you keep an incident from "spinning out of control?" Do you put hands on a mentally ill homeless woman? Do you physically restrain, maybe throw to the ground, a little old struggling, feisty woman? When she pulls out a screw driver do you smack a little old woman with a baton, breaking a few bones, or maybe you pull out a gun and try to overwhelm her without actually hurting her or ending up on video tape "beating an old woman. " Maybe in trying "not to over do it" OFC Larrigan was trying not to be the next Stacy Koon. And, maybe in trying to avoid hurting her, he ended up killing her. You weren't there, you've not seen all the evidence and you wouldn't have a clue what to do in his shoes. But, you're the first to throw the book at him.

I suggest, the next time a cop stops you and walks up to you with his hand on his gun, before you think "Margaret Mitchell" maybe you should think "Tony Zaptella".... but, there's another name that means nothing to you.