A Crisis and a Calling

The outnumbered troops hoped for cooperation from the civilians they had come to liberate. But instead of hugs and flowers, they got shrugs and scowls. Behind locked doors and barred windows, wary residents weighed options: remain tacitly loyal to those who rule by fear or speak up and risk a bullet in the back of the skull?

This was not a battle for Basra or Baghdad but a search for witnesses to a drive-by shooting in Los Angeles in which community activists futilely canvassed a mid-city neighborhood for information on the March 23 killing of 13-year-old Joey Swift.

The boy stepped into a blur of bullets as he left a Bible study class. Which makes it all the more appropriate that a new anti-gang effort here will be led from pulpits, with forces encouraged to rise up from the pews.

When Police Chief William J. Bratton made stemming gang violence a priority, he acknowledged that the police couldn’t do it alone -- in part, the rap went, because years of disrespect by police made people in black and Latino communities view the Police Department as “an occupying army.”

On Thursday, at Bratton’s invitation, the Rev. Eugene Rivers, who co-founded a coalition of preachers to fight street violence in Boston, will try to rally church ministers and youth group leaders in Los Angeles. Many L.A. churches, of course, have long-standing youth ministries. Some counsel gang members. Many bury them. But as a group, according to the host of the meeting, Bishop Charles E. Blake of the West Angeles Church of God in Christ, the churches tend to come together only during a crisis.

As an outsider, Rivers will no doubt offer this fresh perspective: Wake up! ... The crisis never ended. He may even be able to help dedicated pastors and church members find new strength to tackle the important community-building jobs the police were never equipped to do.

Such cooperation is urgently needed. This weekend’s toll included a Metropolitan Transportation Authority mechanic shot on his drive home from work; a father killed in front of his 6-year-old child; a 69-year-old woman shot in the head. On Friday, students mourned the death of a basketball coach who had volunteered to replace the coach killed a month earlier. Police say both were shot down by gangbangers who confused them with rivals.

Many black church leaders haven’t forgiven Los Angeles Mayor James K. Hahn for firing then-Police Chief Bernard C. Parks, now a city councilman. If Rivers can get them to work with Bratton, it will go far toward winning hearts and minds in these battle-weary communities.