St. Louis- The 57 women who posed for the cover of this week’s Riverfront Times lay down and formed a human peace sign to protest the war in Iraq. Naked.

The controversial newspaper cover has caused several local businesses to remove the papers from their shelves – including a gasoline station in the Metro East area whose manager did so after a visit from local police.

“We put it out there knowing it was a provocative image, but never in my wildest dreams would I have thought that a police department would take actions to remove the publication from a newsstand,” Riverfront Times editor Tom Finkel said.

The Huck’s Food & Fuel at 4590 North Illinois Street in Swansea is usually the only place in the village of 10,000 where people can get a copy of the weekly newspaper. But Swansea police said the store manager discarded all the copies she had of the issue after they showed her a copy.

Police went to Huck’s at the request of Swansea Mayor Chip Gray. “I just didn’t think it was appropriate, and I’m not a prude by a longshot,” said Gray, who said a local pastor had complained about the nudity.

Swansea Deputy Police Chief Steve Krakowiecki said the store manager had received copies of the Riverfront Times but had not yet put them up when officers went to the store. “The most we would have done was to ask them to move them out of public view, but it didn’t come to that,” Krakowiecki said.

Huck’s store manager declined to comment.

Editor Finkel said the Riverfront Times received several calls from business owners asking that they come back and pick up the week’s edition because either they or their clients found it offensive. But he said this was the first case he’d heard of police taking a role in a business owner’s decision to remove the publication.

The women who posed for the magazine cover did so to bring attention to “Peace Out!”, a night of music dancing and poetry to protest the war, scheduled for tonight at the Center of Creative Arts.

“The police should have never gone over there. It wasn’t a police matter,” said Joan Lipkin, a “Peace Out!” organizer and one of the women who posed for the cover. Lipkin said they agreed to Riverfront Times’ request that they pose nude as a symbol of expression that was not meant to be sexual.