Street Crime: Who's Winning?

We have launched an all-out offensive against the forces of crime, against the forces of drugs, and we are beginning to win.

--Richard M. Nixon

TO the nearly 1,000,000 Americans who have been physically attacked this year, President Nixon's statement in Atlanta last week must have sounded strange, even as election-year hyperbole. Any victim of criminal violence was more likely to be moved by the question Senator George McGovern posed to a campaign crowd in New York. "I want to ask you," said the Democratic candidate, "do you feel safer after four years of Richard Nixon? Mr. Nixon and his Administration are [trying to] mask a record of astounding failure in the field of crime behind a veil of law-and-order rhetoric, which grows more strident as the muggings and murders and rapes in our cities continue to rise."

According to the FBI's latest statistics, violent crime is indeed more prevalent than at any time since 1930, when the agency began keeping records. Throughout the '60s, the annual incidence of violent crime rose from 160 to 393 per 100,000 inhabitants; murder increased 70%, rape 113% and robbery 212%. Although the need for law-and-order accounted for some of President Nixon's more vehement campaign oratory in 1968, the 3 1/2 years of his Administration have witnessed an increase of more than 30% in major crimes, in most of which the victim gets no state compensation. And as San Francisco Police Lieut. William Koenig observes, "the big change over ten years ago continues to be in viciousness."

Numbers Games. There are, to be sure, many questions about the reliability of all crime statistics. Police Chief Jerry Wilson of Washington, D.C., who reports a reduction in major crimes from 202 per day to 96 since 1969, admits that the figures can be manipulated up and down at will, though he denies any such tampering in his own department: "Where did 202 crimes a day go? I mean, I didn't eat them!" One answer comes from the accounting firm of Ernst & Ernst, which recently audited the D.C. police records and found that more than 1,000 thefts of over $50 had been purposely downgraded to below $50. That made them petty larceny and dropped them from the roster of major crimes. Princeton Political Scientist David Seidman, who helped conduct another study of Washington, adds, "The police tend not even to record crime they believe they have little or no chance of solving." Even more misleading, according to experts, is the fact that many, perhaps even most crimes are never reported to the police at all.

However the statistics come out, most citizens today feel that the social contract has been all but rent by the savagery of U.S. crime (see box next page). Yet Nixon's chief adviser on domestic affairs, John D. Ehrlichman, strongly disagrees. "The social contract lives," he said in an interview. "We have brought the rate of increase of crime down. The country is in materially better shape than when we took over." And, in fact, although the key crimes of rape and aggravated assault are still increasing, the FBI's latest statistics show that the growth in all crime slowed to 1% for the first six months of 1972, compared with 7% for the same period last year. There are even signs that the rate may actually decline during the second half of this year. Already, robbery and auto theft have decreased by 4% each. As Nixon said, citing those figures, "If we get the chance, we will turn it around."

Reports from each of TIME's U.S. bureaus largely confirm the FBI figures and suggest that the U.S. crime rate, though cruelly high, is finally leveling off. While crime continues to rise in rural and suburban areas, Washington, New York, Detroit, Chicago, Los Angeles and San Francisco are among 72 cities reporting an actual drop in major crimes. "I am not what you would call a starry-eyed dreamer," says Detroit Commissioner John Nichols, "but I am tempted to say that law enforcement is on the eve of a golden age. Now we are getting the money we need, we are developing the expertise we've always needed, and we are getting public attention and interest." Adds Wayne County Sheriff William Lucas: "A while ago the criminals were driving 1970 Cadillacs, and we were chugging after them in 1928 Fords. Last year they were driving 1972s, but we were in 1970s. We are getting professional--fast."

One problem with Nixon's oratory about "law-and-order" is that the President of the U.S. has little direct responsibility for crime in the streets (except in Washington, D.C.). Nixon can inveigh against "permissive judges," as he recently did, and he can appoint to the federal judiciary men he considers of sterner stuff, but federal courts normally do not try muggers, just as federal police do not normally pursue murderers. What the President can do is to urge Congress to provide money, and that Nixon has done.

The centerpiece of the Nixon program is the Law Enforcement Assistance Administration. Only four years old, LEAA has already received $1.5 billion; it will get $850 million next year. Much of this money has been distributed as grants to various states, with state officials deciding how to spend the funds. "It's allowed us to do more than we could ever have done without it, from computerizing crime information to tripling the serving of warrants," says Los Angeles Lieut. Dick Bongard. Citing new educational programs for officers in the social sciences, criminology and police management, as well as the purchase of new and better equipment, Boston Police Superintendent Jeremiah Sullivan says, "We've gotten a big boost from LEAA."

On the other hand, LEAA funds have also been dissipated. In Fort Lauderdale, Fla., for example, each of 34 deputies got a new police car for use on and off duty, ostensibly to increase a local sense of police presence. Cost: $150,000. The popularity of antiriot hardware prompted Winona, Minn., to use $9,000 in LEAA funds to outfit its 37 policemen with riot gear, although a nearby National Guard armory had plenty of similar equipment. A study of organized crime in Illinois uncovered information that was already in the files of the Chicago crime commission. "There has been a tremendous amount of public money flushed down the LEAA drain," says Northwestern Law Professor Fred Inbau, a self-described hardliner on law-and-order.

The Administration has also made a major effort to curb the drug traffic, since addicts are blamed for as much as one-half of all big-city street crime. Pressured by Washington, Turkey has banned the growing of opium poppies, and the U.S. has increased its force of customs officers. The Administration has also been urging local police forces to give urine tests to all arrested suspects. Under this proposal, discovered drug users who agree to compulsory treatment can have their prosecution delayed, and eventually the charges may be dropped; a version of the idea was adopted last week by New York Police Commissioner Patrick Murphy.

Despite Nixon's various plans and programs, the job of crime fighting remains a problem for local police--and local citizens. On that level, increased attention to community-relations programs often helps to alleviate citizens' fears and frequently brings a bonus in citizen cooperation. In Chicago, after nervous civilians organized nine radio patrols of their own in a racially changing neighborhood, police met with the groups in an effort to avoid the danger of vigilante action. "A rapport developed," says one officer, "and the patrols have helped beyond description." Detroit Commissioner Nichols, who appears at a black radio station for a weekly talk show, Buzz the Fuzz, is convinced that public attitudes are changing. "They no longer necessarily believe that the police can do no right," he says. During one recent raid on a Detroit dope pad, the arresting officers were stunned when neighborhood people came out on the street to applaud.

Concentration of police efforts is another tactic that can pay off handsomely. In Holyoke, Mass., two years ago, a team of twelve cops was permanently assigned to a lower-class neighborhood (10% black, 40% Spanish-speaking, 50% white ethnic) and given full responsibility for all criminal cases in the area--from start to finish. John Goss, assistant to the chief, says, "That gave the cops a sense of satisfaction. And the people soon began calling on them without fear. The result is that violent crime has disappeared from the neighborhood." In a successful Los Angeles version, a patrol car manned round the clock by three trios of officers is assigned to a single neighborhood.

Defenses. Specifically to combat street crime, both Detroit and New York have tried using decoys. New York's Deputy Inspector Anthony Voelker told his squad that "anything that is legal, moral and works is satisfactory." The result has been a patrol of blind men, little old ladies, Santa Clauses, cripples, garbage men and rabbis, all armed cops. The squad's sentimental favorite is Policewoman Mary Glatzle, known as Muggable Mary in honor of her having been attacked more than 35 times.

Despite such innovations, even the most optimistic police officials admit that a significant part of the change in crime rates reflects an enforced change in American life. The new auto steering-wheel locks, for instance, get credit for much of the drop in car thefts. The same sort of result is achieved when taxi drivers carry little change to be robbed of, and when their cabs are equipped with bulletproof partitions. Young women who live alone are safer when they keep dogs in their apartments; welfare clients are foiling mailbox thieves by picking up their checks in person; and elderly Boston women are going to morning Mass in self-protecting groups of ten to 20. One of the most important contributions to the new style of defensive living is one of the simplest: more and more cities are lighting up at night. New sodium lights, which double the illumination of normal street lamps, have proliferated. Last week New York Mayor John Lindsay announced that $15 million would be spent putting sodium lights on 1,200 miles of the city's streets.

But defensive living and improved police techniques deal only with one end of the criminal-justice system. Police have long been able "to produce more arrests than the courts and prisons could dispose of rationally and efficiently," says Criminologist Hans Mattick of the University of Illinois in Chicago. For reasons of both deterrence and fairness, "speedy law enforcement is most important," says Phoenix Lawyer John Frank. "The Administration could do a hell of a lot more in that area." Funds are needed for more judges, expanded courtroom facilities and better administrative techniques. Furthermore, penologists agree that the entire prison system needs to be overhauled for the benefit of society as well as that of the inmates. Today's penitentiaries produce ex-cons who are often more violent than when they went in.

Rash. Little of the Nixon-inspired war on crime has been directed beyond front-line measures. "The whole program operates on the assumption that crime is a superficial rash," says Harvard Law Professor James Vorenberg, former executive director of the President's crime commission, and now an adviser to George McGovern. "Continuing denial of opportunity, combined with the anonymity of city life, is destroying the social pressure to abstain from crime." Guessing that the odds against catching the average burglar "are no better than 50 to 1," Vorenberg suggests that "crime may seem like a good bet for those whose lives are little more than a struggle for survival."

He is, of course, calling for greater social justice, a plea that is often met by the firm cry of "permissiveness." Berkeley Criminologist Jerry Skolnick observes, "It is like a symbolic battle--between those who want to appear tough and those who want to appear soft." What works is what matters. Northwestern's Inbau, for instance, favors stiffened sentences and reduction of technical legal defenses, but also points out that some potentially effective "soft" approaches have not been tried--notably, enforced gun-control laws and elimination of police responsibility for some "victimless" crimes like gambling and vice. Inbau credits the Administration with having created a feeling that something can be done about crime. But for precisely that reason, whoever is President next January is going to have to do a great deal more.

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