"Is There No Respect?"

It was a hot, humid evening, a night for frayed nerves and flaring tempers. Answering a call to Manhattan's Lower East Side, where a man had been reported roaming the streets with a rifle, a pair of New York cops last week began questioning a teen-age tough--and found themselves threatened by riot. A hostile crowd of some 200 persons milled around, a shower of bricks and other debris hurtled down from tenement rooftops. One brick, aimed at the policemen, struck and killed a bystander, Factory Worker Ramon Rojas.

That incident, for which two teen-age youths were arrested, was not isolated: it was part of a sharp, ominous increase in public violence against law officers in major cities across the U.S. In New York, during the first seven months of 1961, more than 1,400 policemen were attacked, some 350 required medical attention, and the casualty rate was running one-third more than last summer. In one case, while two patrolmen probed the East River for the body of a boy who had drowned, a gang of teen-agers stood on a pier and threw rocks at them. Later, when Patrolman Stanley Butch jumped off the pier in an effort to save a drowning man, the kids stole his hat, shoes, watch and $5, which he had left ashore.

Philadelphia and Detroit also reported an alarming increase in the number of attacks against policemen. In Los Angeles, where such assaults have almost tripled in recent years, some 300 cop fighters were prosecuted in the past year; their weapons ranged from nail-studded boards to soggy garbage and (in a home for delinquent girls) bedpans. On Memorial Day, a mob of 300 set upon 75 cops in a fist-swinging riot at Griffith Park started by a hassle over a teen-ager who had stolen a ride on a merry-go-round. Some weeks later in suburban San Gabriel, when police tried to enforce a ban against dancing after midnight. 300 guests at a wedding party swarmed to the attack with beer cans, whisky bottles, and the remnants of the nuptial feast.

Police expect occasional resistance from persons under arrest--but nothing like this. "The police cannot fight crime and the public at the same time." protests New York Police Commissioner Michael J. Murphy. And New York Magistrate Aaron Goldstein says in shocked bewilderment: "I don't know what kind of animals we have in this town. Is there no respect? Is there no decency?"

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