BROWN OVERREACHES

Editor -- During his tenure at City Hall, Mayor Willie Brown has
demonstrated that his long suits are deal making and consensus building;
great assets for a Sacramento pol, but not necessarily the best
qualifications for running a city. He has also shown a pragmatic streak
which shouldn't have surprised anyone familiar with his career in the
Legislature.

His urging of the Board of Supervisors that police should start taking
automobiles from drug buyers and ``johns'' suggests that his usually astute
political instincts may be starting to betray him. Could it possibly have
escaped his notice that just recently, opposition to forfeiture had induced
John Conyers, D-Mich., and Barney Frank, D-Mass., to cross the aisle and
join forces with bitter congressional enemies Henry Hyde, R-Ill., and Bob
Barr, R-Ga., in sponsoring a bill to severely limit forfeiture, a practice
which has come increasingly to be regarded as outright thievery by law
enforcement?

Brown's endorsement of forfeiture is cynical; it's a policy which has
resulted in police corruption without any significant improvement in the
``control'' of an incontrollable illegal drug market. Brown should be made
to pay a high political price for such cynical and irresponsible
grandstanding.

TOM O'CONNELL

San Mateo