Support for the Professionals

Violence in America's cities, a burning issue in the nation today, seems likely to persist as a major theme through the 1968 presidential elections. With that thought in mind, Lyndon Johnson last week flew to Kansas City, Mo., to present the forgathered police chiefs of 350 U.S. and Canadian cities with his own program and prescriptions for coping with urban anarchy. To judge by the reception accorded him at the 74th annual convention of the International Association of Police Chiefs (see THE LAW), the President and the professionals are on the same wave length.

Johnson asked the cops' backing for two riot-related Administration bills: the "safe streets" act, now through the House but still in subcommittee in the Senate, which proposes better pay and training for police; and long-delayed gun legislation that would curb mailorder sales and require a degree of licensing for all small arms. Hitting out at lobbies like the National Rifle Association's, the President maintained that his firearms legislation was well within "due process and in keeping with our tenacious regard for the blessings of individual freedom."

Poisonous Propagandists. In response to the common feeling among police that federal crime and gun laws would infringe on local authority, L.B.J. assured the chiefs: "I did not propose that the Federal Government take over the job of dealing with crime in the streets. Washington cannot patrol a neighborhood in the Far West, stop a burglary in the South, or prevent a riot in a great metropolis."

Johnson's loudest applause--after the round that greeted his support for higher police pay--was evoked by his condemnation of racial violence in the slums. "Much can explain but nothing can justify the riots of 1967," he said. Condemning Black Power agitators, "whose interests lay in provoking others to destruction while they fled its consequences," Johnson declared: "These wretched, vulgar men--these poisonous propagandists--posed as spokesmen for the underprivileged and capitalized on the real grievances of the suffering people."

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