The Decline of Public Civility

Column One (June 30) speaks of the lack of public civility in dealing with government staff. With the passage of time, each staff person has more to do and finds it harder to be responsive to the public. On top of this, staffers have their ways to punish the public arbitrarily, cloaked behind law and regulation, either because they are irritated or because elected officials have directed them to mete out punishment.

This ties to “Business Group Seeks 35-Member City Council” (June 30). It is fallacious to think that increased access to elected officials will lead to public satisfaction. Elected officials will simply turn more constituent requests, initiatives and complaints over to an already burdened staff.

VAN AJEMIAN

Montebello

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I don’t think the problem is with an increasingly boorish public. The problem is with an increasingly intrusive government bureaucracy. Too many rules and regulations that are perceived to be arbitrary, unproductive and unfair have the effect of turning up the heat on a pressure cooker. Once in awhile someone’s going to blow.

LOWELL JAKS

Santa Barbara

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I am a librarian in the Goldwyn Hollywood Branch of the Los Angeles Public Library. The obvious lapse in manners by the public has ballooned into a downright threatening situation, especially as exhibited by the large number of drug addicts and street people we now cater to in Hollywood. Recently, I was forced to ask our security guard to remove an especially threatening patron from the library because of his behavior.

A few days later my place of business received a call from him saying that he and some friends were coming to “get Warren.” How should I react to that? Library administration has consistently refused to keep such people out of the library. We have all been required to attend a training seminar, and most of what was said is valid--but not 100% of the time. There has to be a balance somewhere, because the constant confrontations with an increasingly difficult public are beginning to take their toll on the mental and physical health of myself and many of my colleagues.

WARREN SEID

Los Angeles

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Having been a waitress and an elected official, I’m in favor of public civility. Blaming its decline, however, on baby boomers and the 1960s is enough to make me shout and throw things. (I don’t, though, thanks to my upbringing.)

Does Prof. P.M. Forni remember who was responsible for Watergate? That Robert S. McNamara knew the Vietnam War was unwinnable and kept pressing it, at the sacrifice of lives? What about the police murder of Fred Hampton, the police riot at the 1968 Democratic convention, the attack on marchers at the Selma bridge?

If the principle of authority received mortal wounds in the 1960s, they were self-inflicted and--thanks to television--the entire nation was a witness.

LARK K. BURKHART

Ramona