VOLUME • 68 NUMBER • 9 SEPTEMBER 1985 publication. and reuse for required Permission AIDS: DFMS. / THE Church PLAGUE Episcopal the THAT of Archives LAYS 2020. WASTE Copyright AT NOON JOHN FORTUNATO Letters point guns at small children, yet this too newspaper, the police are just plain Police act warranted is necessary as the police try to freeze all reckless. I have just received your June issue and activity in the smoky darkness and con- Is it simply because Dolores Langford would like to commend you and your fusion so that they don't inadvertently and her sons are "untrained" in the layout artists who make the magazine shoot someone except when absolutely tactics of the police that they exper- especially pleasant to read. The articles necessary. Ironically, there is a godly ienced terror during the ram incident? Or are timely and well written and are an attitude behind all of that ungodly terror! does terror follow when your house invaluable tool in my efforts to develop The ACLU, NAACP and religious shakes, grenades explode, guns point at well-informed opinions on the issues leaders do have a point in protesting you and you can't breathe — no matter facing myself and my congregation. The Police Chief Daryl Gates' media party. who you are? writers may, by and large, be playing out To invite the media to record a police Cocaine has surely made its way into publication. in left field, but I think they're still in the action where guns and grenades are middle class and wealthy neighborhoods, and ball park. involved is nothing short of insane, es- but the tank won't. When it's only "those I would like to comment on Joan pecially where safety is the motive for people" who live "there" who are at risk, reuse Howarth's police tank article. She re- the action. Reckless endangerment is not the risk seems acceptable. If the police for ferred to "unwarranted" suspicion that what the police did to the house or mistakenly rammed through Rev. Ax- led the LAPD to batter their way into a people, but what they did to the media berg's living room wall where his children suspected drug site. The use of the word representatives. The chief also risked an were playing, he might be as shocked required "unwarranted" is misleading. The po- information leak that could have fore- and angered by their tactics as the un- lice entered the premises on the au- warned drug dealers who may have been initiated and the untrained. (All the thority of a search warrant obtained in the house under investigation. police would need to justify the warrant from a judge. Warrants are not obtained Permission The Rev. Keith F. Axberg is an unidentified informer accusing him on a police officer's whim, but are issued of narcotics activity.) when the police produce sufficient ev- Colville, Wash. The Fourth Amendment of the Con- DFMS. idence to convince the judge that a crime / has been or is being committed by a Howarth responds stitution prohibits unreasonably dangerous specific person in a specific place. The searches and seizures. A search warrant The police do have a difficult and im- is just that — a warrant to search — not Church warrant does not guarantee the police portant job in keeping drug trafficking will find who or what they are looking permission to destroy a home and ter- out of our neighborhoods. The goal of rorize the occupants. The LAPD had no for, but it does help guarantee that the both the police and the community is to search or arrest will not be frivolous. judicial authorization for the tank and Episcopal create an environment where children grenades, and no knowledge of who was What Howarth neglected in her report can grow up in safety without the threat the inside at the time of the attack. The use of of the incident, when she focused on the of wanton violence. The "five terrified of a tank and a battering ram on the home five terrified occupants of the premises, occupants" described in the article are of an unarmed and unwarned family is was that the police were simply trying to the very people the LAPD are here to unreasonably dangerous, and we fer- Archives put a dent in the drug trade that destroys protect. vently believe that free citizens must thousands of lives and homes. To the How strange that Keith Axberg can never be trained to think otherwise. 2020. untrained, the tactics of the LAPD may fear for the safety of the press — who Joan Howarth, ACLU seem reckless and destructive, but they were present at the incident voluntarily Los Angeles, Cal. are designed specifically to save the lives and outside the zone of attack — but not Copyright of both police and suspects, as well as for the safety of the innocent women and saving the evidence. children who were taken by surprise as From awshucks school It is precisely the terror of crashing the objects of the raid. It is sure good to see St. Paul's letters battering rams and exploding stun gren- In that system of justice, once you are being edited and refined by Abbie Jane ades that disorients heavily armed drug in a location where police suspect Wells of Alaska ("Witness author pens dealers (as well as women and children) criminal activity, it is the "godly at- a book," June issue). John Wayne long enough for the police to move in and titude" of the LAPD that leads to en- couldn't have done better. It looks to me control the situation. It may seem dangerment of your life; but if you are like she's up to being the Artemus Ward strange to the uninitiated for police to endangered because you work for a of Contemporary Criticism: a champion who can cut through the intellectual sometimes what it doesn't but would the Gospel — or Paul — as there are complexity of Paul's ideas — ideas which have if the right folks had been there to people to do it. Likewise, there are as have led to Luther's mischief as well as put it all down. many ways to "interpret" what I have John XXIII — and show it up for the The Rev. John A. Bright written as there will be people to read it. crotchety chauvinistic superficiality it is. San Francisco, Cal. The debate over human interpretations Not since Thomas Jefferson rewrote the Bible or since Ronald Reagan took on of Scripture will continue unabated as the abortionists, flayed opponents of long as humanity lives — and long may it school prayer and exposed the lazy poor, Wells responds live. Which it won't if we don't rid the has the awshucks, shoe-shuffle school of If the Rev. John A. Bright "can find that earth of nuclear weapons of indiscrim- open-eyed mawkery been used to such much to criticize in the one-column inate and immeasurable destruction. publication. stimulating effect. It's just too bad St. "Contradictions" excerpt from my book, Abbie Jane Wells and Paul isn't around to take his medicine: he's going to have a field day when, or if, Juneau, Alaska Boy! would she make him look silly in a he reads the whole thing! As for his "like reuse TV debate! something Paul might have said while for Of course, some might want to argue a talking to James and Peter and making couple of things — like when she says them a little more liberal," I can find no Worship inspires poem The occasion which "inspired" the fol- required Jesus liked the way a child accepts faith, place in any of the four Gospels where by which she interprets him to mean we lowing poem was a Sunday morning Jesus said to James or Peter or anyone, worship service which included the old should be childish. Confused old Paul, "Now, listen here; there's gonna come she says, wants us to put away childish standby, "Onward Christian Soldiers." along a man named Paul and he's gonna Permission things and be mature — a word Jesus As a member of a fairly progressive also uses. Also, she suggests an in- have the last word on everything. Y'all congregation, especially in matters of teresting idea about who wrote the gospels listen to him, you hear?" (By the same peace and nuclear freeze, I am con- DFMS. / and why: saying that they were penned token, I can find no place where Jesus stantly frustrated by our tolerance for by authors who were closer to the source says, "There's gonna come along a wom- music with bad theology. A recent lecture by Walter Bruggeman suggested the use Church than Paul who didn't always get things an named Abbie Jane Wells, ditto, ditto, straight. "Getting the story straight and ditto!") But I can find where Jesus said of the psalm form to creatively grieve putting it down as we know it" sounds Peter was the rock upon which he would personal loss. This is my result: strangely like something Paul might have Episcopal found his church. Could it be that, ac- said, maybe while talking to James and cording to Jesus, it was Peter rather than Upward not onward the Peter and making them a little more of Paul the early church should have The songs of my youth torment me liberal by pointing out the internal in- listened to? My fathers' hymns chill my bones consistencies in their Judaistic approach and kill my spirit.