Pubdate: Wed, 11 Mar 1998 Date: 11/03/1998 Source: Houston Chronicle (TX) Author: James M. Grace In his Oct. 28 Viewpoints letter, "Grand jury used the facts," the Houston Police Officers' Union president, Hans Marticiuc, accuses the public of not using their heads. His boys storm Pedro Oregon Navarro's home, clearly ready to shoot the man because of some rumored activity told to them by an informant, and Marticiuc is worried about others being carried away by their emotions. Officer Marticiuc stands for a principle which is becoming absolute in law enforcement: never admit you were wrong. The macho code of refusal to back down, even from the most hideous miscalculation infects everyone from the U.S. attorney general on down, and is the consequence of decades of propaganda defining police work as a war against internal enemies. In a free society, law enforcement is not war. Its purpose is the protection of the citizen, not the conquest of the population. The aim should be wherever possible to reduce violence, not automatically to exercise overwhelming force. Where the lines are so sharply drawn, it is little wonder courageous juries are hard to find willing to find for the "other side." In any case, condemning the officers involved misses the point. Some may be thugs attracted by the seek-and-destroy mindset of the war on drugs and some may be brave men thrown into a desperate situation made worse by bad policy, but atrocities like this will be inevitable until voters ask politicians to defend their rights rather than posing in front of slamming prison doors. James M. Grace, Houston