Fighting powers that be

Re: Charles Cherniss columns, April 19 and 24:

Despite his frequently truncated grammar, it is locally a morning habit to turn to Charles Cherniss' Star-News column for the fun and sense he often wrings from the local scene.

His April 19 unfortunate effort in support of the Eaton Canyon Pasadena Police Firing Range missed the mark and was a grievous disappointment. The column myopically and unfairly opposed the efforts of concerned citizens to bring common sense to the solution of safety and pollution problems caused by negligent city planning and Police Department inertia.

On April 24 Cherniss' contribution to the debate sparkled with an incendiary journalistic gem urging those threatened with armed thugs to call upon an "environut."

The "Eaton Canyonites" (Cherniss' term) do not, as he states, insist that the police firing range no longer belongs anywhere in Pasadena. (There's reputedly an available portion of the Arroyo Seco which would do very nicely.)

Nor, on the other hand, do the Canyonites necessarily oppose plans for the construction of an indoor-outdoor range. Their present concern is based upon a healthy, well-founded skepticism of the willingness and ability of the city to cure the existing problem by means of the construction of an indoor-outdoor range rather than either leave the canyon or bite the bullet, spend the money and solve the problem with a proper, fully enclosed indoor range adequate to police training needs.

Cherniss' closing jibe on April 19 is an attempt to analogize firing- range issues with the problems of the Roman Emperors. He quotes Tacitus, who wrote history in and about Rome, to the effect that the desire for safety stands against "Every great and noble enterprise." It goes without saying that although Charles Cherniss may regard the range as great and noble an enterprise as Rome, others may reasonably disagree.

John F. McKenna, Jr.

Pasadena