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