Friday, Jan. 05, 1968

New Powers for Police

As Attorney General, Nicholas Katzenbach used to grumble: "If I hear that another woman has been raped, I just know that within 30 minutes I'm going to get a call from the White House: 'I thought I told you to clean up that crime situation.' " Lyndon Johnson knows that the alarming rate of crime is growing in im portance as a national political issue, and that the latest FBI statistics are rather harrowing. In the first nine months of 1967, crimes in the U.S. increased by 16%, with street robberies up 27%, bank robberies 60% and murders 16%. Washington was close to the top, with murders increasing by 19%, rapes 24% and robberies 64%. Three-Hour Questioning. Granted that the statistics result partly from more efficient police detection and more careful reporting of crimes, there is no doubt the U.S. rate is climbing or that the President puts a high priority on doing something about it, particularly in Washington. Last week, the President signed a tough District of Columbia anticrime bill, which is only some what softer than a measure he vetoed last year on constitutional grounds. At that, this year's bill will doubtless be picked over meticulously in the courts. Among other things, the bill gives Washington a stiff antiriot code. While Johnson praised this provision, he questioned two others. One is a clause setting minimum sentences for certain crimes -- rather than leaving sentences to the discretion of the court. The second is a provision that allows police to question a suspect for up to three hours before bringing him before a magistrate. Any confessions obtained in this period would be valid.

Debate Over Delay. For ten years, since the Supreme Court's Mallory decision, police have been obliged to bring suspects for arraignment "without unnecessary delay." The trouble is that the court did not specify a time limit for questioning, and one lower court has held that even five minutes constitutes "unnecessary delay." It remains to be seen whether the three-hour provision can now survive in the courts.

Even with his reservations, the President signed the bill because "no more serious domestic problem faces America than the growing menace of crime in our streets."

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