A church behind my home has been making a exceedingly-joyful noise unto the Lord for many years now, to the dismay of sleepy neighbors. For years, neighbors have made repeated calls to police to get the church to keep the peace but police have been understandably reluctant to get involved.
At a police-organized community meeting with church leaders Friday evening, neighbors aired their concerns about the noise and church leaders offered solutions. Neighbors even offered to help raise money. It seemed everything was on track to work together.
It didn’t last long, though. The very next night, a group renting the church blasted the neighborhood with music again, causing neighbors to call police again. This time, police entered the church and shut the celebration down. It was 10:30 PM.
The pastor of the group renting the church blasted the police response as racist, and characterized the neighborhood as a “white neighborhood,” though neither is true. Among others, she sent her response to WTVD, which did a story. Reporter Ed Crump asked for a neighbor to be interviewed and I accepted his offer.
I thought Mr. Crump did a fine job with the story and his point about the visiting pastor not being notified is probably true. Since the story ran, the inflammatory post from the visiting pastor has been removed from the church’s Facebook page. I see tonight the story’s headline has also been changed to remove the racist charges and stick more to the facts.
I’m hopeful the church and neighbors can continue to work out our differences and become good neighbors again.
People attending a celebration on the eve of Martin Luther King Junior’s birthday say actions by a Raleigh police officer were racist and violated their civil rights.
It happened at the Glorious Church just northeast of downtown Raleigh Saturday night. A group had rented the church but didn’t know about an ongoing dispute with neighbors over loud music late at night.
Just the night before, church leaders and neighbors had met and begun working out their differences. So, when neighbors heard loud music the next night they called police.
via Organizers upset after MLK event visited by police | abc11.com.