Rodney King Verdict

Would the rioting and looting have taken place if the gang members and poor people had work and were paid for it? Aren't they simply hopeless, desperate and enraged? MANFRED KRUTEIN, Irvine

Linden Waddell of Silver Lake recalled the day 16 years ago when she saw someone placing a pink angel on her walkway. "What's this?" Waddell asked. "Angel delivery," the visitor said before scampering off. Waddell didn't know it at the time, but she had just received one of 4,687 plaster cherubs -- 10 in every square mile of the city -- that were deposited free of charge in Los Angeles by artist Jill D'Agnenica and her merry band of friends.

Growing up in the 1950s, most elementary school children of all races were taught to respect authority, to salute the flag when it was presented to us, and to always know that if we found ourselves in trouble, if there was an emergency, "the policeman is your friend."

Let's just do away with juries. Let's let prosecutors tell us who did it. Or let's give the system over completely to judges, or even to the police. If we trust police officers enough to empower them with badges and guns, why not trust them as well on questions of guilt and innocence? Or maybe we should try something more creative, more in tune with modern times. Say, let's call in the pollsters and let their high science decide these cases. Majority rules, right?

Injustice was not only done, but seen to be done. All thoughtful citizens should applaud. The jurors considering the beating of Rodney King had two options. They could have accepted the arguments of the prosecution and the apparent evidence of the video footage and convicted the four Los Angeles police officers. Amid rousing cantatas to "the basic fairness of the system," life would have continued on its usual unfair course.

On April 17, a federal jury convicted two of four Los Angeles Police Department officers charged with violating the civil rights of motorist Rodney G. King. The guilty verdicts came nearly one year after the officers' acquittals in state court sparked the deadliest rioting to hit the United States in this century. Police and community leaders are now left to ponder the verdicts' implications for law enforcement. What message should police take from the verdict in the Rodney G.

Controlling the action. Those are the words that stuck most in my mind after the second Rodney King verdict, because they seemed the most incredible of any spoken at either of the two trials. Yet, that was the phrase that Sgt. Stacey Koon used to justify the police beating of King. Most incredibly of all, the Simi Valley jurors bought it.

They are immigrants from different parts of the globe. They did not know one another before the incident. They have not met since. A Korean and an Israeli, two people who just happened to be together at the precise moment when American rage, home-grown and blind to anything but skin color, exploded the afternoon of April 29. Sammy Botach said he went back last week looking for Joung Hi Kwon.

For the Kids: KCET has produced six 30-second spots in which children's host Shari Lewis tells parents to talk to their children about the rioting that followed the Rodney King verdict. The spots are airing nationwide on PBS.

I just had to explain my tears to my innocent 7-year-old son. The Rodney King verdict blared across the airwaves, sending cold chills down my spine. I had to explain to him that skin color doesn't make a difference in who a person is. I had to explain to him that the job of a policeman was to protect people, while living within the same laws. I had to explain to him the concept of a trial and to define the word travesty . I had to explain to him why anger at the verdict was violently spilling into the streets of Los Angeles.