PUBLIC FORUM : AMERICANS OPPOSE DEALING WITH `BUTCHERS'.

President Clinton should understand that the American people want no dealings with our mortal enemies - the butchers of Tiananmen Square - no matter how much illegal money they have given to him, to Vice President Al Gore and to the Democratic Party.

In addition, the president has no right to take 1,200 big donors and party hacks with him on this absurd trip to Red China. This is our money he is spending.

It appears that we have elected another Neville Chamberlain to lead us toward the 21st century.

- Frank Drewe

Glendale

Re the Daily News Line question June 24, ``Do you think President Clinton should go to China?'' A better question is, ``Should he come back?'' We can hope, and there should be at least a fair chance, that his merit review will result in a promotion and reassignment to the home office.

- R.W. Holden

Topanga

The Daily News received 564 responses to the question - 18 percent ``yes'' and 82 percent ``no.''

Editorial rebuttal

``This isn't reform,'' Editorials, June 21, sharply criticized me for holding a ``secret'' meeting concerning neighborhood councils. The editorial was filled with inaccuracies.

After the elected Charter Reform Commission tentatively decided that the new City Charter should create elected neighborhood councils, Commissioner Paula Boland proposed urging leaders of citizen groups with differing views to come together to discuss the issue.

Boland suggested that such a meeting could help each group understand opposing views and might lead to a consensus on this very important issue. The entire commission endorsed the idea of asking business, labor, homeowner and community leaders if they wanted to meet with each other to discuss an appropriate role for neighborhood councils in the land-use and planning process.

The group that met did not include any commissioners or commission staffers. The private individuals who eventually met decided who, including the press or public, could attend. Neither the commission nor I held, or ever will hold, a closed-door meeting.

The elected commission simply asked those interested in an issue to talk with each other. Such dialogue is essential in producing a new City Charter capable of being approved by the voters next spring.

- Erwin Chemerinsky

Chairman, elected Los Angeles

Charter Reform Commission

Parks' bodyguards

Re ``Critics say Parks wrong to take 3 officers to Vegas,'' Daily News, June 22:

Critics complained about former Police Chief Willie Williams because he took a trip to Las Vegas and accepted gratuities. That seemed to have been one of the episodes that hindered his renewal for another five-year term as chief.

In comparison, the critics are complaining about the new chief of police, Bernard Parks, who recently went to Las Vegas but apparently was on a business trip. Although he obviously did not accept gratuities, the critics still found something wrong with Parks' trip to Vegas - that he had too many bodyguards.

What's wrong with that? It would have been very tiresome for two officers to provide top-quality security services over a 72-hour period, which was the length of Parks' full schedule in Vegas.

- Barbara Hobbs

Gardena

This is the chief of police who refuses to authorize concealed-weapon permits for responsible citizens?

This is a classic case of police-state hypocrisy if ever there was one - deny citizens the safety of a weapon, but take three extra guns when you travel.

- George H. Carver

Los Angeles

Views on Baptists

After reading all the letters in Public Forum on June 20, I'm a bit baffled about all the ``I agree'' and ``I disagree'' comments concerning the statement by the Southern Baptist Conference regarding the passage in Ephesians that instructs wives to submit to their husbands.

The issue is really not one of agreement or disagreement. It is actually an issue of participation or nonparticipation.

If you believe the Bible conveys the word of God, then there is little to discuss about the Southern Baptists' statement, because the passage in Ephesians is pretty clear. If one alleges a belief in the Bible as the word of God and then does not accept that wives are instructed to submit to their husbands, then that person is is simply a hypocrite who wishes to pick and choose what part of God's word to obey. Such an action places personal choice above God's instruction and thus leaves a person's professed faith empty of its true meaning and purpose.

On the other hand, if someone does not believe the Bible is the word of God, then the whole issue should be of absolutely no importance to that individual since it only applies to the people specified above, and faith in the word of God is strictly a voluntary arrangement.

- David A. Champion

Saugus

Subsidizing Viagra

This is in reference to ``HMOs declare Viagra support, Business, June 20.

While I sympathize with sufferers of impotence, I feel that at this time when the health care system and patients are struggling to attain reforms that concern matters of life and death, the problem of impotence seems to be of the least concern.

Viagra is still in the experimental stage. For every action of a drug there is a reaction. We still don't know what this drug will do on a long-term basis. I find Kaiser Permanente is very wise by concerning itself with coverage of more pressing health problems.

- Haydee Pavia

West Hills

Rejected settlement

I read with interest ``Council refuses to settle inmate's suit,'' Daily News, May 27, about my client, Donzell Wharry.

I was not surprised to see railing against such an outrage as paying a four-time felon $250,000 for his injuries by the Los Angeles police who ran him over, given that you have not gotten all the facts.

The officer who ran him over denies doing it. The other 15 officers, including supervising sergeants present, deny seeing either the actual incident or anything of the fleeing vehicle.

Wharry was not dealing drugs. He was convicted of ``sales in lieu'' of drugs. Wharry did not sell drugs to the officer; he sold aspirin to him.

There were 17 officers out on the street at 47th Street and Western Avenue trying to set up an arrest and all they caught was Wharry, trying to scam them into buying something that wasn't even a drug. This is how the public funds are being used.

The only reason the City Attorney's Office took this case to the City Council in an attempt to settle it is because of the very embarrassing, indefensible and unlawful actions by the police.

When a jury hears the evidence in this case, the city attorney knows the outrage value of this case will come home to the City Council.

- Ellen Hammill Ellison

Los Angeles

Air-conditioning schools

Re ``District doing its part to keep schools cool'' by Julie Korenstein, chairwoman of the Los Angeles Board of Education, Opinions, June 15:

I read with great interest the article in defense of the Los Angeles Unified School District by Korenstein. A few things jumped out.

Korenstein said, ``It is important to remember that we have been successfully managing installation of air conditioning in district schools for the last 26 years, making LAUSD a leader in the field.''

Does that mean that the San Fernando Valley Schools have not been part of the LAUSD for the past 26 years? Is that the reason Valley schools have been without air conditioning until now?

She concludes her article by stating that automatically concluding the worst about the district is at best irresponsible, at worst destructive to students. I disagree. The LAUSD has continually shown that the taxpayer should always expect the worst of the district, and the LAUSD is destructive to students.

- Don Emmer

San Fernando

`Pride of L.A.'

We were recently in the Los Angeles area. By chance, we picked up and read the article in your paper about El Camino Real High School (``Pride of L.A.'') June 13. It was a delightful article.

If more positive articles appeared in all our papers, the self-image of our young people might change for the better. Congratulations to you, the paper and your staff for such a positive article.

- Barbara J. McHenry

D.J. McHenry

Gettysburg, Pa.

Reservoir also is a classroom

I appreciated your important June 8 article on the conflicting interests of the Chatsworth Reservoir: wildlife vs. recreational space.

The only element left out of the equation is the value of the reservoir as an unparalleled outdoor natural history classroom and laboratory. It is an approved field-trip site for the Los Angeles Unified School District and has been used repeatedly for both graduate and undergraduate field studies in biological sciences, geology and paleobiology by faculty and students of CSUN, UCLA and UC Riverside.

Students who find ``canned'' chemistry experiments in their school laboratories unexciting have quite a different reaction when they are asked to check the quality of the water in the Ecology Pond at the Chatsworth Reservoir to see what levels of life it can support and what contaminants are present, and to describe other types of life they observe around the pond.

- Ann Hinckley

West Hills