From the Wool-sack
| Publication year | 1985 |
| Pages | 1011 |
| Citation | Vol. 14 No. 6 Pg. 1011 |
1985, June, Pg. 1011. From the Wool-Sack
The ACLU has done it again. Having supported the unruly classroom by opposing one minute of silence a day, it has now come out against law enforcement. The police chief of the City of Los Angeles has discovered that an effective tool in combatting the increasing manufacture and sale of drugs, is an armored personnel carrier (tank) or, to be exact, two tanks. In an effort to combat cocaine rock houses which have recently sprung up in Los Angeles, from which a cocaine substance known as "rocks" is sold, the police chief has resorted to the use of tanks and, as a result, the ACLU and neighborhood groups are bent out of shape.
Before telling you of their concern, a word of explanation is in order since some of my readers may wonder how it is that the Los Angeles Police Department ("LAPD") happens to have on hand a couple of tanks. The use of tanks by the LAPD is not, after all, the same thing as the use of Saabs by the Aspen Police Department. Saabs have front wheel drive which is useful in snow country and, more to the point, fit in rather nicely with the image Aspen has of itself. Not only do tanks not comport with a Californian's image of the LAPD, but they are hardly needed to get around town given the paved streets with which Los Angeles is blessed. Why, then, does the LAPD have two tanks on hand? The answer is quite simple.
In the summer of 1984, Los Angeles was the host of the summer Olympics. Unlike many people who, when they are about to act as hosts, have lots of cookies and lemonade on hand, the LAPD deemed it appropriate to have a couple of tanks on hand. That way, so they thought, if anything untoward happened during the Olympics, the LAPD would be equipped to cope with it, assuming the untoward event was the sort of an event with which the proprietor of two tanks could effectively deal.
The Olympics are now history and everyone knows that the LAPD did not use the tanks. There is, however, a limited market for used tanks, and rather than attempt to sell them, the LAPD decided to find another use more directly related to its day-to-day functions. The use which it hit upon was using the tank as a weapon in...
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