Just a Rampage

"Just give me a week's time -- one week,"Mayor Frank Sedita told a delegation of Negro youths. "Give me a chance to get the message across. I will tell them that your grievances are just and that we'd better get some employ- ment," It was too late for pleas or promises. Buffalo, a hard-nosed manufacturing and port city on Lake Erie, rocked for the first time to the nights of violence and disorder that have already af- flicted so many other cities this year and for three hot summers before.

Buffalo's four nights of travail began with the stoning of a bus at the end of a sultry day. A rock-throwing mob quickly gathered, shots were fired by snipers, and fires soon broke out. The same violent tableau was repeated the next three nights. "One minute it's a mob," said Police Commissioner Frank Felicetta. "Next, it splits into eight gangs heading eight different ways." Yet Felicetta refused to call "it" a riot. "Rampage," he said, "is a better word." The toll: 78 injured, more than 200 arrested, at least $100,000 damage.

The ghetto atmosphere was also illuminated last week in a study prepared for the President's Commission on Law Enforcement. In a survey of three cities--Chicago, Washington and Boston--the study found that four out of every five white policemen working in Negro neighborhoods have prejudiced attitudes toward Negroes. The report estimated that 45% of the white police (and, surprisingly, nearly 10% of the Negro police) showed near pathological hostility: "These scum aren't people". . ."We oughta gas these niggers--they're ruining the country." Though the survey found that police are rarely "unprofessional" in their contacts with Negroes, the conclusion was inescapable that this antipathy is felt by ghetto dwellers and itself contributes to riots.

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