PUBLIC FORUM FIRING THE CHIEF.

If I were mayor of Los Angeles and wanted to get rid of the police chief installed by my predecessor, I would just pick up the phone, discreetly contact my police commission appointees and say, ``He's out.'' I wouldn't make a public announcement before the ``impartial, nonpolitically motivated,'' closed-forum Police Commission convened.

That way I keep all my constituents, not expose the commission as puppets and, most of all, not further divide the city.

- Baxter Gerard

Los Angeles

Corporate LAUSD 

Re ``Building boondoggle'' (April 15):

Working from a property not far away, I decided to drive by (no guns) and have a look. What a ``pastige,'' to quote my late mother in Italian. A total mess. One massive structure with no parking. A total misappropriation of resources (a rental property as a ``remodeling job''). Paying rent for a derelict structure. Creating a lip-service bureaucracy ($3.3 million for voice and data services). Warehousing junk in a corporate structure.

There's no way that the structure will be habitable by May 4 (not a soul in sight). The ``police'' may well move in, but that's it. Somehow I get the feeling that the LAUSD has become L.A.'s depository for has-been structures.

- C.E. Janeke

Los Angeles

Just business

Re ``LAUSD settles Belmont suit'' (April 10):

Here we go again handing away money for a job not properly done. What I mean by that is that O'Melveny & Meyers gets off on the cheap. I have seen all of the memos, correspondence and such as shown in the two full boxes of the complete Mullinax Report on Belmont. Just go to the May 1990 letter from David Cartwright to the LAUSD and one line says that a state agency says that nothing should be built on that site.

This is business as usual at the LAUSD. Let us stop this paying for work not perfectly done.

- George Buzzetti

Pacoima

Tax day

I'm sitting here signing my income tax forms and looking at all my money the state and feds took from me. I work in a grocery store and see our tax dollars at work every day. I think everyone who is pregnant or has children can get in the Women, Infants and Children program. These mothers don't look like they are in need; they have beautiful clothes, jewelry, cars. I love when their cell phone rings.

How about my food stamp shoppers who buy chips, cookies, candy and soda. This has no food value, yet our government allows them to use food stamps to buy this. My favorite is the big spenders who cash their welfare checks to buy lottery tickets. Pretty scary.

- B.L. Cramer

Simi Valley 

One-third of everything

The April 10 letter of Jerry Hays hits the nail right on the head. If we can assume, as we certainly can, that the Valley's population is one-third of the entire city of Los Angeles (whatever the correct percentage might be), then we have certainly paid for and, therefore, own one-third of all city assets, City Hall, etc., both in the Valley and also in the entire city.

While it may be logical for us to pay two-thirds for Valley assets, it is just as logical that Los Angeles will then owe the Valley for our one-third interest in the obviously much more valuable assets, which we would be quitclaiming in Los Angeles.

- Lawson Brown

Van Nuys

Bonehead idea

I guess the traffic genius that came up with the idea to add ``right-turn-only'' lanes at many two-lane intersections doesn't drive. What a bonehead. So it's better to sit in another long line of cars waiting to get through the intersection than have two lanes available for traffic?

Now we have to often wait two or three light cycles. There was nothing wrong with the way it used to be. The only place this could be applicable would be at the few intersections that don't have a long-enough merge lane on the other side. Is this the kind of progress we want? Not me.

- Dave Petterson

Sherman Oaks

Little sense

Why in heaven's name can't Boston's learned, intelligent Cardinal Bernard Law understand that his transferring of sexual misfits masquerading as priests from one parish to another makes as much sense as a bank president transferring sticky-fingered tellers to other banks?

- Everett P. Harrington

Glendale

Goof for Oprah

Re Joseph Honig's opinion column (``Oprah balks,'' April 8):

Good for Oprah. She doesn't need to put her life in jeopardy in Afghanistan as the people Honig named (politicians, newsmen and soldiers). I'm sure she has donated a lot more than they have to the poor and underprivileged women and children of this world. Most of the people in Afghanistan, having no access to television or newspapers, do not know her unless they were told that she's a diva or a very wealthy woman. I'm sure the men of Afghanistan, especially the terrorists and the Taliban, would not appreciate having a self-made woman like Oprah in their country for more than 48 hours. In my opinion, it sounds like Honig is jealous of her wealth and importance to the American public. We don't need to sacrifice her life for President Bush's goodwill trip.

- Gloria Gowdy

West Hills

No moral constraints

What euthanasia is to elder care, the Saudi peace plan is to the survival of Israel. Under this proposal, the Israelis would retreat to the indefensible borders that tempted the Arab world to exterminate them in 1967. For their part, the Arab world promises peace after the retreat.

Jeff Jacoby nailed it when he wrote, ``For Arafat and his Palestinian Authority, negotiations are a tool of war ... They don't seek negotiations in order to stop the killing, they kill in order to make their negotiations more fruitful.'' The fact is clear that there can be no negotiations, in any remotely meaningful sense, when one side desires only victory and has no moral constraints on the tactics it employs.

- Richard Bussell

Santa Clarita

Moral high ground

Now is the time for Yasser Arafat to unilaterally declare the West Bank and Gaza Strip a sovereign Palestinian state. The next step should be to ask the Israelis pointedly but politely to withdraw from those lands. When they do not - as they most assuredly will not - the Palestinian people should commence - so far as it is humanly and practicably possible - a concerted, united, comprehensive campaign of civil disobedience, after the manner of Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King.

By doing so, they will finally begin to take the moral high ground, leaving the Israeli military state without a justification or excuse for its acts of oppression. Today, the state of Israel is an indisputable and irrevocable fact. But equally so is the moral obligation of Israel, the United States, and the international community to restore to the beleaguered Palestinian people their own sovereign state on their own lands, free of foreign oppression and encroachment.

- Kenneth Canatsey

Agoura Hills

Knowing the difference

Patrick O'Connor's April 14 ``View from the Valley'' cartoon depiction of equivalence between Palestinian suicide bombers, who deliberately kill and maim innocent citizens, with Israelis who are responding to such consistent murder and terrorism shows he does not know the difference.

Civilian casualties claimed by the Palestinians are negligible compared with what they would be if Israel used its might in the same manner as Arafat would. It's also a tragedy that the Palestinians do not realize that their worst enemies are themselves and their leaders.

- Victor N. Viereck

North Hollywood