Space-Age Vigilantes

The plot that launched a thousand westerns starts with the town's God, fearing merchants up to their sleeve garters in fear and frustration. The black hats are many and merciless, the lawmen feckless and few. The community antes up for its own gunmen, and the action begins. Now, in real life and modern dress, the city of Houston is playing out the old melodrama.

Despite the space-age image that Houston seeks to convey, a group of businessmen has hired shotgun squads to protect their retail establishments from the holdup men--called hijackers in Texas--who have been terrorizing the town. The need was obvious. There was an average of 190 armed robberies a month last year. During the first four months of 1967, the figure leaped to 290. The police department, starved for funds by a penurious local government, has been of little help. Other cities of 1,000,000 or more have an average police-citizenry ratio of about 1 to 320; Houston's is 1 to 700. And its 1,350 underpaid men must patrol 446 square miles, third largest municipal territory in the country.

No Moonlighting. Houston's vigilante force was hired by Guy Robertson, president of the Pilgrim Dry Cleaning and Laundry Co., whose 102 city branches were subjected to 20 stickups in 1966 and 33 so far this year. "I can't find people to work in my stores," he complains, "because they're scared someone's going to stick a gun in their bellies." Desperate, Robertson last month contracted with the Clyde Wilson detective agency to supply a posse of private guards toting twelve-gauge shotguns loaded with No. 1 buckshot. Two other dry cleaning-laundry chains bought into the arrangement, and six additional businesses with retail branches requested the same protection when enough men could be recruited. For his manpower, Wilson relied primarily on off-duty city policemen.

A few days after the stakeouts began in the rear of Pilgrim stores and parked cars near by, the story made headlines in the Houston papers. Then Police Chief Herman Short claimed he had heard a rumor to the effect that there would be a $1,000 bounty for each hijacker killed. While Mayor Louie Welch said he had "no objection" to the idea of the squads, Short ordered his men not to moonlight for Wilson--though they may still take such part-time jobs as saloon bouncers. "Houston police," Short declared, "do not hire out as executioners for anybody."

Long-Standing Pleas. Short's ban on police participation in the shotgun squads forced the detective agency to hire retired cops, and the private security force that started at 70 now numbers fewer than 50 men. Nonetheless, the vigilantes have already earned their keep. Their presence has forced the city government to reconsider long-standing pleas to increase the size of the regular police force. And in the first three weeks after the guards had been hired, the three dry-cleaning chains suffered not a single robbery.

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