YOUTH AND THE POLICE

To the Editor:

It is unclear what fresh insight we are meant to gain from your June
25 front-page report that adolescent men who congregate on the street
to smoke marijuana and drink alcohol harbor animosity toward the
police who arrest them for it.

Their intense dislike of law enforcement probably comes from an
intersection of factors: that adolescent males are known to question
authority, that popular music and culture reflect and compound this
dislike and that they seem to enjoy doing something that is at the
present time illegal.

The paradox is that thousands of young minority males -- many of whom
are the ones so critical of aggressive policing -- are alive today
only because of the precipitous drop in the crime rate.

BRANDON DEL POZO Brooklyn, June 27, 2000 The writer is a police
officer.