PUBLIC FORUM : LAPD CRACKDOWN ON SPEEDERS SAVING LIVES.

In response to the letter from Steven Levin re San Fernando Valley speed traps (Public Forum, Sept. 16): I want to set the record straight on the enforcement policies of the Valley traffic division and all the motorcycle officers who work for me.

Our goal is to prevent loss of life and serious injury. The overwhelming cause of traffic collisions is speeding; in fact, 85 percent of the citations we issue are for speed violations. This is one priority I established when I arrived here last January and the officers have been doing a tremendous job in making the streets of the Valley much safer for people to drive on, ride their bicycles on and walk along.

This year, 77 people have been killed in collisions; last year there were 109. The 32 people who are alive today are a direct result of the efforts of our officers to find and cite the careless drivers who speed on our roadways.

Contrary to Mr. Levin's complaints, we do not have six to eight officers hiding at a corner; rather, officers use radar to clock speeders on those streets, infamous for their high death and injury rates. Their presence does deter traffic violations and does assure the public that we care and we are doing our jobs.

In the Valley, more people are killed in traffic collisions than in all crimes combined. What we do is vitally important to making the community safer and the public deserves no less.

- Capt. Alan B. Kerstein

Commanding Officer

Valley Traffic Division

Los Angeles Police Department 

I agree with Steven Levin that the police should make their presence be known, besides giving tickets. However, I know of one corner in West Hills, at Platt Avenue and Haynes Street, where a policeman would get rid of all his tickets in one hour.

There is a pedestrian walkway, which is completely ignored by drivers. I have seen mothers with baby strollers run for their lives, because the cars will not even slow down.

The last straw for me is when I recently saw an elderly lady trapped in the middle of the crosswalk, not being able to complete crossing Platt. I wonder if six to eight motorcycle officers would be enough to take care of this increasing problem.

- John Pavia

West Hills

Warren Christopher 

As President Clinton's Cabinet continues to run for cover, I cannot help but still be disgusted by the fact that Secretary of State Warren Christopher has returned us once again to being the laughingstock of the international community, regardless of what the press puts forth.

I keep hearing of the Christopher Commission report that brought notoriety to this incompetent.

The Christopher Commission took in to consideration all data that met the panel's ideological fantasies, cast aside anything that did not meet its beliefs and came up with a left-wing, liberal, ideological liturgy of nonsense.

- Michael Hannin

Woodland Hills

Boycotting China

Thank you for A.M. Rosenthal's article in Viewpoint (Dec. 8) with regard to boycotting Chinese goods. I hope millions of people across the country read the article and follow its advice. Frankly, I have never understood why my government extends most-favored nation status to the Chinese government.

I have never bought goods of any kind that came from China. The difference is that I have never told the store employee or manager why. In the future I shall.

- John Pierson 

Thousand Oaks 

Low-paying jobs

Your Dec. 10 article, ``Study: Immigrants impact job market,'' was brief but full of meaning. A number of old cliches come to mind.

What kind of mess have we gotten ourselves into now? This exhaustive study points out that the ``growing clothing industry,'' among other industries that only create low-paying, low-skilled, no-advancement jobs, depends on continued high immigration.

At whose expense? For the benefit of whom? This signifies that these industries create virtually no new employment for U.S. citizens. It isn't the tax-burdened citizenry that ``needs immigrants'' - it is only the owners of these industries.

I think it's time to give it a rest, and ease off on the heavy immigration burden from the Third World. Let these types of manufacturers move their shops offshore if all they have to offer America is low-skill, low-paying, dead-end jobs.

- Stan Bass

Montrose

Moral relativism 

Re ``The trap of moral relativism'' by Diana Butler, Viewpoint, Dec. 15:

Her article was a thorough disappointment. As an ethicist she points out that two young adults committed a horrible crime because this society did not provide them with a moral center.

Butler goes on to reject the only real moral center in the history of civilized man, that of the Judeo-Christian ethic. She ends her article with an admission that she has no replacement for that ethic, she only has a vague criticism of its rigidity.

That is like rejecting a home because its walls are too rigid and its interior too hospitable. Butler should have suggested that until the wise among us find a replacement for that ethic, our society would be better off returning to it, practicing it and enjoying its remedial effects.

By the way, how does a society that kills a million unborn children per year justify the arrest of two kids who killed a recently born child? Isn't this a prime example of situation ethics?

5- George Thompson 

Woodland Hills

Electric cars

Electric cars will never predominate in Los Angeles: They're silent. Yahoos, who seem to be becoming a majority of the population, won't drive anything unless it makes a purposeful racket.

On second thought, maybe it would work. Some yahoo entrepreneur could come out with a cassette of raw engine noise that drivers could blast on their stereos. The police, of course, would look the other way, as they do now.

- Joe O'Brien 

Panorama City

Flywheel fantasy

This is a rebuttal to the the letter in the Nov. 24 Public Forum by Daniel Matonak, who said that only when the car and flywheel are being tilted up and down or side to side is there stress and energy loss and since this type of movement is infrequent, flywheels can be used as energy storage devises on cars.

Matonak's statement, that the tilting of a car is infrequent, is unsubstantiated.

Flywheel movements due to shaking, rocking and tilting of the car are unpredictable and going in all directions at random. A slight tilt of the car may deal a heavy blow on a flywheel's bearings, because the spinning mass is forced to alter its plane of rotation.

Flywheels require robust protective casings. Should one disintegrate, fragments of the wheel could shoot throughout the car. It would be like carrying a bomb in the trunk. In the case of minor car accidents, all the stored energy could be suddenly released with catastrophic results to passengers.

In my opinion, the concept of using a flywheel as an energy-storage devise on cars is totally unrealistic.

- Stefan Jesman

West Hills

Paying for health care

Re ``Market shouldn't decide who gets health care'' by David Holland, Public Forum, Dec. 16:

Holland says that because Adam Smith held that ``there were some areas where the free market could not be relied upon to provide optimal distribution of resources,'' and health care ``is one such area.''

However, Smith does not use terminology like ``optimal distribution of resources,'' and Smith certainly did not think that health care was an area where public action was necessary.

Instead, the drift of Holland's letter is that the poor will suffer under free-market health care. No one with an understanding of Adam Smith, or of history, would say that. It is only under the free market that the price of goods and services falls to the point where they become affordable to all. In socialized economies, whether in the former Soviet Union or in the nationalized health care plans of Western Europe or Canada, the only way to contain costs is to limit the quantity or quality of goods and services. This effect is obvious in Canada or Britain and in our politically created health maintenance organization.

Holland says that in countries with ``single-payer'' health care, ``decisions are not made by politicians; they are made by qualified health-care workers.'' This is simply not true. A budget is a budget. And if a Canadian hospital goes on a ``holiday'' to save money, or you have to wait a month or more for a simple test, that decision is made by bureaucrats, not by ``qualified health-care workers.''

- Kelley L. Ross

Van Nuys

Recycling and scavenging 

Los Angeles city officials, with the issuing of new recycling containers, project an increase in the collection of recyclables by 148 percent (``Recycling containers will get heave-ho,'' Daily News, Dec. 10).

In typical city haphazard fashion, $32 million tax dollars have been invested in new barrels, yet not one cent is designated to stop theft.

Most people have no problem with recycling. What most people have a problem with is subsidizing scavengers who are no more than common thieves. By the time city trucks arrive, late in the afternoon, all that is left in the containers is what thieves don't want.

In an age of advanced technology, one would think that a recyclable container with an efficient locking device would be available. Until the city can recover all recyclables, this investment in barrels is laughable.

- Robert Sennett

Sylmar

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Photo

PHOTO Gunning for safety: One man's speed trap is another's opportunity to reduce serious injury and loss of life caused by traffic scofflaws.

David R. Crane/Daily News