Snipers in Ambush: Police Under the Gun

THE shadow is sinister, and the darkness is spreading. Through a summer largely free of ghetto rioting on the broad scale of the 1960s, there have been mounting numbers of isolated incidents of guerrilla-style attacks on policemen in many U.S. cities. In July, a white officer on Chicago's South Side was shot and killed as he sat in his patrol car filling out a report. In Omaha in mid-August, one policeman was killed and seven others injured when a bomb exploded as they investigated a report of "a woman screaming." Two weeks ago, in a largely black district of Los Angeles, a policeman had his skull creased by a bullet moments after he heard the shout, "You're a dead mother--" Last week the ominous tempo quickened, with deadly attacks on policemen in several cities.

In Illinois, a state trooper patrolling a predominantly black housing project was shot by a sniper. In San Francisco, a bomb blew up a patrol car as two policemen checked out a burglary report. Four cops sustained minor shotgun wounds in an apparent ambush staged by Mexican Americans in Riverside, Calif. In New York City, an officer investigating a report of gunfire at a Brooklyn yacht club was shot in the right arm; he was the city's fourth officer to be sniped at in less than a week, and a nightlong hunt through the surrounding swamps failed to yield a suspect. Worst of all, within a scant three days, one Philadelphia policeman was shot dead pointblank and six others were wounded in a series of apparently unrelated incidents. A gunman, whom police described as black, walked into the guardhouse of a West Philadelphia park and pumped five bullets into Sergeant Frank VonColln, 43, as he sat quietly behind his desk. As always when one of their own is killed, the police acted quickly. Within five days after VonColln died, five suspects were in custody; two others were still being sought.

For the city cop on the ghetto beat, constant tension has long been commonplace. But in 1970, there is a new and special kind of peril; in his patrol car or on the sidewalk, the policeman knows that at any moment a sniper's rifle may be trained on him from an unlit alley or a nearby rooftop. Thus far this year, 16 police officers have been killed in unprovoked attacks, more than double the FBI-computed total for all of 1969 and nearly four times the annual average for the past ten years. At least 57 have died in the line of duty so far this year; 86 such deaths were so identified in 1969, an alltime record.

Off-the-Pigs. Even in a nation increasingly numbed by violence, there is something particularly chilling about the specter of widespread assault on the men in blue. Says James Riordan, chief of the patrol division for the Chicago police: "People believe that an attack on policemen is really an attack on society. It's the symbol of authority that's being attacked." Clarence Coster, of the Justice Department's Law Enforcement Assistance Administration, agrees: "It's this whole confrontation with the Establishment, and the policeman is the most visible part of that Establishment."

Still, most major acts of violence against the police are probably not deliberate or planned terrorism. They appear to be the work of isolated, unstable individuals. If there is not a conspiracy afoot in the classic sense, however, senior law-enforcement officials do feel that there is a kind of climate of incitement that is new. Since many of the incidents have taken place in black ghettos, some top cops point to the influence of the Black Panthers. Says a top law-enforcement official: "This isn't a case of some Panther big shot telling the party chapters that the time has come to go after the cops. There is no overall coordination of the shootings. There isn't any doubt, though, that the sniping is the direct result of the Panthers' 'off-the-pigs' propaganda. The Panthers, with all their talk of killing policemen, have escalated violence. It's beginning to build into warfare."

Contagious Example. Edward Kiernan, president of New York's Patrolmen's Benevolent Association, finds the attacks "part of a cold, logical, hard-eyed revolutionary strategy." Berkeley's Chief Bruce Baker thinks that a militant sees headlines about ambushes of police and concludes: "I'd better get in on this." Between the two views--the conspiracy theory and the suggestion that attacks on cops are only isolated and unrelated--Dr. John Spiegel, director of Brandeis University's Lemberg Center for the Study of Violence, sees something in the middle. He believes that an incident in one city can set a contagious example that will be followed elsewhere.

John Lacoste, deputy police chief in Emeryville, Calif., echoes that view and suggests that the origins of the epidemic are not exclusively black. "If a group like the Weathermen create an atmosphere of tension and hate," he argues, "it is much easier for a black man who has possibly been abused--or thinks he has been abused--to go ahead and 'execute' a policeman, especially when different black groups advocate these 'executions.' "

Moral Dilemma. In Philadelphia, the Rev. Paul Washington, black rector of the Episcopal Church of the Advocate and a man on good terms with many militants, calls the attacks on police "a kind of Samson syndrome" among individuals who find themselves without hope but can ventilate their sense of frustration by blindly striking back. Last spring a TIME-Louis Harris survey discovered that 40% of blacks between 14 and 21 felt that violence was probably necessary to win their rights; far fewer of their elders agreed. As a whole, the black community seems to oppose guerrilla fighting against the police, but many militant black leaders who are not Panthers express plenty of sympathy for the tactics of ambush and sniping.

At the Congress of African People in Atlanta last week, a meeting of black nationalists in search of a new and more constructive stance, the consensus of the delegates was that in the black revolution it is inevitable that some police will die, regrettable as that is. Many felt that they themselves would not take rifle in hand, but that they could not seriously object to the spectacle of their fellow blacks doing just that. Chester Lewis, a Wichita lawyer who is general counsel for the black nationalists' congress, observed: "It's unfortunate that so many brothers feel so alienated that they have no other recourse but to strike out in this way. And who am I to stop him? That brother knows his own anger better than anyone else."

Washington Post Columnist William Raspberry is no Uncle Tom, but last week he damned the assault on the police as self-destructive. "Cop killing is not revolution," he wrote. "Sometimes it's more like suicide. It doesn't take many senseless attacks to get Americans to the point where they will condone virtually any retaliatory move on the part of the police." TIME Correspondent Joseph Boyce, a black who spent nearly five years on the Chicago force, notes: "As a former policeman, I'm placed in a moral dilemma. I am aware that there is a necessity for 'law and order' in its most unadulterated sense. But I am also aware of the need to eliminate what has been a double standard in dealing with blacks and whites. I wish I could say that the sniping will stop. I cannot."

End to Anarchy. Police in many U.S. cities are taking or demanding steps to protect themselves: working increasingly in two-man teams rather than alone, establishing special crews of marksmen available for anti-sniper duty, asking for the right to tote shotguns in their squad cars (see box). But some thoughtful cops concede that such measures are not the solution. Says Chief Lacoste: "If someone is really interested in killing a policeman, there is not much you can do about it. There are only so many precautions you can take and still be a functioning police department."

One of the sources of irritation between cops and ghetto residents is the tough treatment that blacks often get from the police. Last week, after the Philadelphia police deaths, police raided three Black Panther headquarters and at one of them forced the male blacks to strip on the sidewalk for a search. To ease tension during large-scale demonstrations, John Spiegel of Brandeis suggests a variation of the student marshal system used to cool the crowds during the May 1 pro-Panther rally on the New Haven Green. If neighborhood marshals were put to good use where confrontation is likely, they might be more effective than cops from outside. The problem, says Spiegel, would then be "put in the hands of people who want to see crowds stay orderly for their own sakes--because they live there." Last week, at Mayor John Lindsay's urging, New York City took a step along similar lines by authorizing the presence of lawyers as neutral observers during mass demonstrations.

The basic problem, however, runs much deeper. If the cycle of hatred and mistrust and revenge on both sides--police and blacks alike--remains unbroken, then the police can only be reduced to the role of combat soldiers in a widening civil war. "They have to realize," says Coster, "that the harm they inflict will return against a colleague tomorrow." He adds glumly: "The policeman's rapport with the minority community is gone." Only if it can be reestablished, at considerable sacrifice to the dug-in positions of both sides, is there a chance for an end to this form of anarchy in the ghetto.

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