Mr. Lynch complained (Letters, Feb. 16) about the unnecessary arrest and subsequent costs of his son’s arrest for walking home drunk? On the same page, Sheriff Geoff Dean explains the law as it is applied in like cases as follows: Law enforcement’s role is to enforce the laws put before us by the legislative bodies.

It is not law enforcement’s role, and should never be, to take the interpretation and application of the law into our own hands.

Well, I wonder how religiously, how steadfast this legislative law would have been applied if Mr. Lynch or any member of his family had been found to be law enforcement personnel.

Police in my hometown, Pittsburgh, would have taken him the four blocks to his home, and if he had been found drunk far from home he would have been taken to the nearest jail where he could call home for somebody to pick him up. If not picked up, jailed overnight and fined the current amount by the sergeant/magistrate in charge.

No arrest, no fingerprints, no court appearance, no records, therefore none of the costs (i.e., bailiff, court stenographer, judge) that a court appearance would necessitate.

In 1953 or ’54 the Pittsburgh chief of police visited Los Angeles and was shown the works by the LAPD. In an interview I read in the Los Angeles Times, he said “If we arrested everybody in Pittsburgh for every little thing like you do here, we would have to build 10 new jails.”

California laws are not just to prevent crime; their purpose is, like the parking meters in Los Angeles, to make money for the people in the city, county and state law enforcement.

Albert V. Weaver
Newbury Park