REVISE VAGRANCY LAWS SAY EXPERTS

(continued from Page 4)

The suggestion that police officers should be made financially responsible for false arrests, through bonding paid for by the communities, was made by several speakers during the two-day hearing.

Philip Erbsen, a member of the criminal law and procedure committee of the State Bar, said Los Angeles police arrested 15,000 persons last year and then let them go after taking fingerprints and photographs. He urged legislation to provide for destruction of arrest records when a person is not taken to court.

Other witnesses suggested a study be made of the practice of booking arrested persons as en route to some other city, merely to hold them for further investigation. Attorney John Adams, Jr., representing the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, assorted, for instance, that the "en route" booking is purely fictitious in most cases and that such arrests are made in minority populated districts.

Attorney General Edmund G. Brown defended "detention" and booking "on rcute and retention of these records as well as those "held on suspicion" in police and State files.

Lawrence Speiser, San Francisco attorney and counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union, pointed out the unfairness of a person's having to go through life with an arrest record standing when his case has been dismissed. Speiser maintained also that in the case of illegal arrest, it should be the individual's right to resist such an arrest, He expressed the extremely high Bost of bringing action for false arrest against police authorities.

Regarding future legislati on, Speiser made the following concrete recommendations:

1.

2.

Police should inform an arrested person of his arrest at the time of booking.

Police should inform the arrested individual of his rights concerning bail.

17