SAWED-OFF JUSTICE

Ex-Beverly Hills police officer Lynn Franklin quit the force after 20 years when a big fence he nailed got off with probation and a $1000 fine because he had heart trouble, his wife was ill, and ""the defendant cries a good deal."" The man had fenced $1,200,000 worth of jewels in eleven months, Franklin asserts. In his view crooked, alcoholic, incompetent, corrupt judges are the root cause of the failure of the courts, and it is in the judiciary that the war against crime is lost. Time and again Franklin details cases where, he claims, he turned in convicting evidence on a savage criminal and the judge let him walk because of a technicality. ""Justice is blind because the judge is blind to the con games lawyers and criminals play. And when it's all over, he goes back into that ivory tower he calls his chambers, he takes off his robe and hangs it up, he pats himself on the back for being such a great servant of the people, and he splits out the back door."" That's the tone of Franklin's grievance: he's sore, and his kicking-doors-in, back-of-my-hand style lets you know it. His father and mother, he tells us, ""lived proudly in a time when a thief was called a thief and not 'sir.'"" Call it a pitch for rough justice.