Fallout from a Shootout

"We got guys with rifles out here. Help, help." Patrolman Richard Worobec's desperate plea relayed over Detroit's police radio net brought 50 officers to his aid within minutes. But for Worobec's partner, Michael Czapski, it was too late. He lay dying in the street, his body punctured by seven bullets; Worobec himself was seriously wounded. Convinced that some of the shots had come from the nearby New Bethel Baptist Church, the police charged through the doors, firing as they entered. Inside were more than 150 men, women and children attending a meeting of a local black militant group. Before the police fusillade ended, four men were wounded, and all the adults were rounded up and taken to headquarters.

In racially tense Detroit, the incident might well have flared into a riot. Instead --at least so far--it has turned into a bitter debate over the conduct of Negro Judge George Crockett, 59, of the city's Recorder's Court. Wakened at 5 a.m. by the news of the mass arrests, Crockett hustled to police headquarters while the prisoners were still being processed. He moved into a small unused office, set up a makeshift courtroom, began reviewing each case. He ordered that 16 of the prisoners be let out on $100 bail and 22 be held, before Wayne County Prosecutor William Cahalan arrived to protest the releases. Cahalan insisted that police needed more time to run the paraffin tests that could determine whether any of the 142 suspects had recently fired a gun. Judge Crockett said the tests were being administered unconstitutionally because no lawyers for the suspects were present. He also obviously felt that the indiscriminate mass arrests violated constitutional rights. But after heated arguments, he suspended the hearings.

By the time of more formal proceedings later in the day, the police had finished their investigations--and Cahalan's office asked that all but twelve of the prisoners be released. Although most of the twelve had shown a positive result in the paraffin tests, Crockett held only two, one charged with possession of a tear-gas device, the other with assault with intent to kill. Neither was charged with shooting the two officers. There was also another aspect of the case. Crockett had told Cahalan to appear personally in court, and Cahalan had not. "It is my considered opinion," said the judge, "that the prosecutor is in contempt of court. An affront to the court is always a serious matter, and this is a personal affront. I am persuaded it has racial overtones."

No Vicarious Pleasure. To much of the press and public it appeared that Crockett had precipitously ordered wholesale releases and then gone out of his way to slap down the prosecutor. To Crockett, the angry protests were no surprise; he is not a stranger to controversy. A 1934 graduate of the University of Michigan Law School, he first caught the public eye when his freewheeling tactics as a defense attorney in the 1949 trial of eleven Communists earned him a four-month jail sentence for contempt of court. He continued to be active in civil libertarian causes, and was called an "enemy collaborator" by right-wing pamphleteers when he ran for his judgeship in 1966. All through his judicial career, though, he has enjoyed great popularity among Detroit's Negroes--and even among a few of the city's whites.

Crockett's approach has put him in direct conflict with Prosecutor Cahalan before. During the 1967 race riot in Detroit, Cahalan recommended prohibitively high bail for everyone whom the police arrested. Crockett was the only judge who ignored him, a course that experts now agree was the proper one, from both a legal and sociological point of view.

Policing the Police. Just six weeks ago, the judge defied convention again by suspending the sentence of a three-time loser. The man admitted to doing an armed robbery, but he had apparently been beaten by the police after his capture. Crockett decided to teach the police a lesson and said so. "I think the only thing we can do to bring a stop to that is to prevent the police at least from getting whatever vicarious pleasure there is out of beating up a person and then seeing the person being sentenced. So it's my position that I can take into consideration in imposing sentence what the police did to the man after he was arrested."

For their part, the police make no effort to hide their opinion of the judge. More than 250 off-duty cops and their wives picketed the courthouse last week to protest his actions in freeing the shooting suspects. In response, 100 Negro college students circled police headquarters next door in support of Crockett. At a press conference later in the week, the judge sought to clarify the events. He pointed out that "the vast majority of those released, approximately 130 persons, were released with the prosecutor's concurrence." He also announced that he had decided against pressing the contempt-of-court charge against Cahalan. Nonetheless, the debate continued. Crockett does not come up for re-election until 1972, but the state senate asked for an investigation of him.

Lost in the emotional side-taking is the basic and provocative question that Crockett's rulings have raised: What are the limits on a judge's duty to check the police? Crockett thinks that if judges --particularly black judges--are not especially vigilant, no one will be. The chief justice of the Michigan Supreme Court has already stated that he does not agree. "What we do in the courts ought not to be directed to the changing of police practices," he said a few weeks ago. "At least we should not let the prisoner go as a means of punishing the police."

Despite the opposition, Crockett is hardly likely to change his ways. Even as the police picketed outside his court, the undaunted judge was at work on the bench dismissing a concealed-weapon charge on the ground that the general police practice of stop and frisk was unconstitutional.

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