Knights v. Crowns

Outside a slum-neighborhood high school in The Bronx, a cluster of Puerto Rican teenagers, members of the Royal Knights street gang, waited for their victim. When school let out. the hoodlums swarmed around John Guzman, member of the enemy Valiant Crowns gang, and started shoving and punching him. Guzman fled back toward the door of the school building. Royal Knight Edward Peres, 16, drew out a shortened. .22-cal. rifle and shot him in the chest.

The murder of John Guzman, 16, seventh teen-ager killed in street-gang violence in New York City in the past three months, fueled up already blazing feuds between Bronx street gangs. Two days after the killing, police headed off a massive outbreak of violence by nabbing ten Royal Knights allies who were waiting on a Bronx rooftop to ambush an oncoming invasion of the neighborhood by revenge-seeking Valiant Crowns. In the ambush arsenal: 20-gauge shotgun, .22-cal. rifle, two hunting knives, stacks of bricks, nine Molotov cocktails--gasoline-filled bottles with rag wicks, to be ignited just before the bombs were hurled. Wait Wanted. Against this grimly appropriate background, a U.S. Senate subcommittee, chaired by Missouri's Democratic Senator Thomas C. Hennings, started off an investigation of juvenile delinquency, with two days of hearings in Manhattan on what the Federal Government could do to help combat teen-age violence. Hennings & Co. heard plenty of suggestions--from Governor Nelson Rockefeller, New York's Mayor Robert Wagner, an assortment of city officials--but it was all pretty familiar, e.g., the Federal Government ought to curb interstate shipments of firearms, give the cities more money for youth programs.

Then up stepped Brooklyn's outspoken Judge Samuel Simon Leibowitz, 66, Rumanian-born, up from the slums, and never--as a celebrated criminal lawyer or judge--averse to provoking a headline. New York, he said, needed 1) a state law to slow down the inflow of penniless migrants by requiring a one-year residence --normal in most states--before a newcomer becomes eligible for relief payments, and 2) a civic campaign to discourage migration to the city from "all parts of the country and the Caribbean." Puerto Rican children, he said, flashing a sheaf of papers, account for 20% of the juvenile delinquency in the city.

In the Window. Next day the political chorus of opposition swelled to a roar. Manhattan Borough President Hulan Jack, a Negro, snapped that "it would be unfortunate if the most recent minority groups to arrive here were to be singled out by being deprived of the advantages former newcomers to the city enjoyed." Acting State Supreme Court Justice Emilio Nunez, Spanish-born, condemned his fellow immigrant, Judge Leibowitz, for an "unAmerican outburst." Missouri's Hennings said somewhat aimlessly that New York was doing a good job in the face of appalling conditions. "New York," said he, "is our show window, and we're proud of it."

In the same day's newspaper was the story of two Negro teen-agers who walked into a Manhattan elementary school, forced a teacher to empty her purse at knife point, and fled while her fourth-grade class screamed in terror.

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