Daryl Gates funeral: 'This is going to be huge'

Patt Morrison writes that Monday's closed-casket viewing at the Police Administration Building — and Tuesday morning funeral at the cathedral — "will be the closest thing to a state funeral that Los Angeles could have." That may be stretching it a fair bit, given what we just went through with Michael Jackson, and the street love for Randal Simmons in 2008, but she's probably right when she says of the Daryl Gates rites "this is going to be huge. H-U-G-E."

In fact, I think that if there were enough water in the L.A. River, they would put the chief’s coffin on a flaming barge, and, like Vikings, push it, ablaze, out to sea.

Gates died April 16 at age 83.

David Cay Johnston commentary on Gates