Crime & Counterforce

THE CITIES

The day after Christmas, Tuesday, Dec. 26, was what police wearily call a "typical" day in U.S. cities--perhaps a cut too typical. In Nashville, Tenn., armed robbers held up two of the area's banks. In Chicago, one of the city's 50 aldermen was shot twice in the leg by thugs as he walked the South Side streets, and, just three miles away, another alderman barely escaped from robbers by locking himself inside his garage and screaming for help. New York

City registered four murders in the 24-hour period. And in Miami, Police Chief Walter Headley declared: "This is war. We are going to use shotguns and dogs from now on."

Throughout urban America the scene was the same: a rising rate of increasingly violent and audacious crimes--met by a strong public outcry that something must be done. The call was to fight force with force--more police, more guns. Very often the crimes and the counterforce involved Negroes and ghetto neighborhoods, just the places where extremists have been making increasingly militant demands and threats.

"A Person Is Not Safe." City officials issued some of the sternest warnings in the nation's history against violent behavior. New York's Mayor John Lindsay promised to shake up police assignments so that, within a year, 40% more men would be walking beats (instead of riding desks). "We'll whack away at crime with every damn thing we've got," said Lindsay. Meanwhile, a county grand jury in Nashville urged that the death penalty and heavy prison sentences be imposed to halt "the avalanche of crime and arson that has come upon us," and suggested that the city's 488-man police force be increased by 250 more men. "Because it appears that we have reached a point in this community where a person is not safe in or out of his home," added the jury, "we recommend that consideration be given to the possibility that every person have a firearm, or firearms, in his home."

Chicago's Mayor Richard Daley took the opposite tack, calling for passage of stricter state and federal gun-control laws because "there are too many people walking around with guns. We cannot have rule by gun law in our streets." Daley told the city council that he would ask for as many more police as he thought necessary. He used the obviously exaggerated figure of 5,000 more police, and--while the council responded with cheers and a standing ovation --one of its leaders said that they would approve any addition, "7,000 or 70,000." The council was rubbed raw by the assaults on its two members.

Also upsetting was the threat by Negro Comedian Dick Gregory to somehow block the Democratic National Convention unless the city acceded to such demands as appointing a Negro to the "top echelon of the police department." Vowed Daley: "No one will take over a single street or a political convention, now or next summer."

Failure of Relations. Some of the hardest talk came in Miami, where three persons were killed in four days in robbery attempts in Negro neighborhoods. With the backing of Mayor Stephen Clark, Police Chief Headley announced that from now on patrol of the city's Negro districts will be expanded by 16 three-man "task force" cars and eight cars with police dogs. Said the chief: "Community relations and all that sort of thing have failed. We have done everything we could, but it has amounted to nothing." The only reason that Miami has avoided major riots, he asserted, is "because I've let the word filter down that when the looting starts, the shooting starts."

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