Readers React: Why block traffic in L.A. to protest what happened in Ferguson?

To the editor: Who are these people who stop freeway traffic as a way to protest the non-indictment of Ferguson, Mo., Officer Darren Wilson for the death of Michael Brown? These people who sat in the middle of intersections and threw bottles did an incredibly unsafe thing. This behavior just turns people off to their cause. (“More than 300 arrested in 3 days of Ferguson protests in L.A.,” Nov. 27)

I thought the Los Angeles Police Department showed incredible restraint. I don’t know that I could do the same.

Los Angeles has seen its own riots and a police force that has made changes as a result. Although the LAPD isn’t perfect, there have been vast improvements. L.A. didn’t deserve this kind of disrespect.

Bernadette Manion, Los Angeles

..

To the editor: Here in Los Angeles I have read of arrests during relatively peaceful protests. These people demonstrate because a portion of the American population knows it can’t protect its children from possible homicide when they encounter authority.

This puts Brown’s death in perspective in a nation that had its last recorded lynching in 1981. The victim, Michael Donald, was a young African American man who would have been my age now had he survived.

We must understand how an entire community experiences this kind of policing. What does it say to an entire portion of our population when some police action today resembles what the Ku Klux Klan once did?

It is impossible to argue the virtue of the rule of law to a population that does not feel protected by that law. We need leadership to establish the law’s legitimacy with something more intelligent than force.

John Moody, Silver Lake

Follow the Opinion section on Twitter @latimesopinion