Danger in the Safety Zone

By Jill Smolowe

"Paging Dr. Strong. Paging Dr. Strong." When that seemingly routine message squawked over the public address system last Monday evening at the Corona Regional Medical Center, nearly all employees froze. Just weeks earlier, the 148-bed hospital in Southern California had established new security precautions. Staff members now knew the potentially deadly meaning of those six words: someone with a gun was in the building.

The terrifying drama that unfolded over the next 10 minutes has become all too familiar not only in America's hospitals but in virtually all public places once regarded as safe havens. At 6:20 p.m., Sopehia White, 31, entered the facility and calmly made her way to the third-floor nursery where six infants lay. Drawing a .38-cal. revolver, White wildly fired six shots at nurse Elizabeth Staten, striking her in the abdomen and hand. The wounded Staten fled down a stairwell to the first-floor emergency room, with White in pursuit. "She caught up with Liz at the chart desk and pistol-whipped her. Then she shot her," says veteran nurse Joan Black, 62, who was in the triage area at the time. "She said ((to Liz)), 'You've destroyed my life. You've taken my husband and my kids. Prepare to die. Open your mouth.' "

As White took aim yet again, Black crossed the room and wrapped her right arm around White. "I figured if she could feel my body, maybe she wouldn't kill me," Black recalls. Tightening the hug, Black placed her left hand over the gun and began a soothing patter. "You're in pain. I understand, and we can work it out." After five, maybe 10 minutes, White told Black she would give her the gun. Only after police handcuffed White did Black break down in sobs. "I don't know why the hell I did what I did," Black says. "It was just instinct." Instinct, that is, born of experience. "I've taken handguns out of the purses of little old ladies, and I've had people take a swing at me," she says. While this incident had no tragic ending -- Staten survived the assault and is in stable condition -- Black is wary of what may happen the next time. "You can't deny rapid access to an emergency room," she notes. "But nurses are terrified."

So, it appears, are most Americans. Bingeing on a diet of local news stories that graphically depict crime invading once safe ports -- schools, restaurants, courtrooms, homes, libraries -- Americans are rapidly coming to regard the summer of '93 as a season in hell. Indeed, a spate of events in the past two weeks seemed to argue that no one and no place was immune, not a respected schoolteacher living in a small town in Texas, not even the father of a megastar athlete driving a car down the highway.

The epidemic of shooting sprees in malls, McDonald's restaurants and movie theaters has fostered the perception that almost no place is safe anymore. Fear has led to a boom in the security industry and the transformation of homes and public places into fortresses. "People are worried more. They're worried sick," says Amitai Etzioni, a sociologist at George Washington University. "There is a new level of fright, one that is both overdone and realistic at the same time."

Newly released FBI statistics show two different trends in crime rates: occurrences of violence in cities and towns with populations under 1 million are nudging upward, while such incidents are declining in the densest urban enclaves. In a TIME/CNN poll conducted last week, 30% of those surveyed think suburban crime is at least as serious as urban crime -- double the number who said that was true five years ago.

The broadening of targets to include suburban and rural preserves -- and the savageness of the crimes that fill the news -- has left far more Americans feeling vulnerable. "The fear is getting worse because there is no pattern to the crime," says James Marquart, a criminal-justice professor at Sam Houston State University. "It is random, spontaneous and episodic." These days, everyone has a story to tell. Says Pam Lychner, 34, who six weeks ago founded a Houston-based citizens' action group called Justice for All: "People used to know one crime victim. Now they know five -- or they are one themselves." According to the National Victim Center, victim-advocacy groups have multiplied nearly eightfold since 1985.

The past two weeks, in fact, provided a frightening new list of victims who found themselves suddenly vulnerable in places they thought they would be safe -- a burger joint, a mall, the courtroom, a car. Here is a brief catalog of unexpected mortality:

A CAUSE CELEBRE No one knew who "John Doe" was when they fished him from South Carolina's Gum Swamp Creek on Aug. 3. He had a bullet wound in his chest and no identification. Only two days later, after a car was found about 60 miles away, did clues and apprehensions start coming together. Last Friday, Chicago Bulls fans and friends went numb when they learned that John Doe was James Jordan, 57, the father of megastar Michael Jordan.

The senior Jordan disappeared after attending the North Carolina funeral of a friend on July 22. At the time, his family thought little of it: the elder Jordan often took off for days at a time without warning. Alarms began to sound on Aug. 5 when sheriffs in Cumberland County, North Carolina, found his car on a wooded back road. The red 1993 Lexus had been stripped of its tires, stereo system and vanity license plates. Though the windows were smashed, there was no evidence of foul play: no blood, no bullet holes, no ransom note. Then Cumberland County authorities learned of the John Doe corpse in a neighboring state.

Dental records confirmed the Jordan family's dread. Last week the FBI opened a kidnapping investigation, and a 16-year-old boy was arrested by sheriffs' deputies in connection with the stripped car. But as yet, the murder remains a mystery. What was the motive? Is there a link to the gambling allegations that have dogged the superstar? James Jordan was an infectiously affectionate man, known as Pops not only to his famous son but to friends as well. The most chilling possibility is that his death was just the result of another carjacking -- and that this could have been anyone's dad.

MC DONALD'S MASSACRE Kirk Hauptmann, 18, had just bitten into his cheeseburger last Tuesday in the no-smoking section of the McDonald's in Kenosha, Wisconsin, when he noticed Dion Terres, 25. "I looked up and said, 'Oh, he's got a gun,' but I thought it wasn't real," says Hauptmann. Moments later, Terres yelled, "Everybody out of here!" and began shooting a .44-cal. Magnum pistol. As 10 panicked patrons dove for the exit door, Terres unloaded four shots. Two middle-aged customers were killed, and Hauptmann was shot in the right forearm. Terres turned the fourth bullet on himself, splattering his brain on the walls and ceiling.

Later police found a 40-minute tape in Terres' apartment. The rambling message pointed to several possible motives. Terres spoke of being under psychiatric care a few years ago and admitted to fantasizing about killing people for more than a year. The tape made reference to several notorious mass murderers, including Jeffrey Dahmer and Ted Bundy. It also referred to a 1984 bloodbath at a McDonald's in San Ysidro, California -- and police speculated that Terres' rampage might have been a copycat massacre. On tape, Terres stated, "Society screwed me, and now it's payback time." He may have been referring to the company that he claimed fired him in March, or to the 16- year-old girlfriend who dumped him in July.

As police continue to gather details about the disturbed and reclusive young man, those who survived Terres' perverse revenge are trying to resume their lives. Hauptmann returned to the same McDonald's the next day. "I had to go back," says the college sophomore. "My stomach was in knots, but it's still a public place."

MURDER IN THE MALL Paula Clouse, 43, and her 15-year-old son were among the dozen patrons who turned up last Tuesday at the Metro North Mall in Kansas City, Missouri, for the 5:20 p.m. showing of Robin Hood: Men in Tights. About 25 minutes after the theater darkened, the teenager allegedly took out a handgun and pumped four bullets into his mother's head. The boy then left the theater and strolled into the mall, followed by stunned onlookers. An arrest swiftly followed, but police have yet to come up with a motive.

"Apparently the parents were going through a divorce, and it was a very bitter divorce," says Captain Vince McInerney. "There were arguments over custody. The boy was living with his dad, and a younger sister lived with the mom and the mother's parents." The gun reportedly belonged to the boy's father; police have not determined whether the murder was premeditated or the father was involved. "Disputes used to be settled with a shouting match or a punch in the nose," sighs McInerney.

AN ASSAULT IN SMALL TOWN, U.S.A. Tomball, Texas (pop. 6,370), is the safe sort of town where many residents leave their front doors unlocked at night. The quiet middle-class community may rethink such nocturnal habits after the strangling death last Tuesday of 82-year-old Mildred Stallones, a retired schoolteacher. A respected member of the community who was known for her generosity to children, Stallones was found in her old frame house. Police are still trying to determine if rape was involved. Beyond a forced entry into the house, police have little to offer: no motive, no suspects, no signs of theft.

Until now Tomball has suffered only the occasional property crime. "This is a wake-up call for anyone in Tomball who may have got complacent about living here," says police chief Paul Michna. "Nowhere is safe." Since Stallones was found, some of the town's elderly citizens have asked to move in with their children. Stallones' former daughter-in-law, Kerri Harrington, has barely slept since learning of the murder. "Before, I felt safe," she says. "Now I know this horrible crime could happen anywhere to anyone."

COURTROOM CARNAGE Federal judges have been so jittery about courthouse crime that since the early '80s, most federal courts have been outfitted with airport-style X-ray machines, designed to detect concealed weapons. Even so, the bloodletting continues. On Aug. 6, a man scheduled to be sentenced for drug dealing stormed the federal courthouse in Topeka, Kansas, firing two guns . and lobbing pipe bombs. Before Jack McKnight, 37, killed himself by detonating explosives strapped to his body, he killed a security guard and wounded five people. "There's now a tacit assumption that people can vent their frustrations almost anywhere," says Dr. Allwyn Levine, a New Jersey psychiatrist. "We've become a much more lawless society."

While experts agree that the summer's rash of too-close-to-home crimes has deepened Americans' anxiety, they disagree on the triggers that have touched off the violence. Some believe the crime waves are cyclical (see box). Many fault Hollywood, which rushes sordid re-creations to TV and cinema screens before the corpses are even cold. "We have created a culture that increasingly accepts and glamourizes violence," says Dewey Cornell, a clinical psychologist at the University of Virginia. "I don't care what the network executives say. It does desensitize you." Others point accusingly at the media. "Every crackpot out there knows that if he can take an automatic weapon into a fast-food restaurant, the more people he can shoot, the more attention he's going to get," says Houston homicide sergeant Billy Belk. "So it encourages these weirdos."

Many experts dig deeper -- but the roots they pull up are a messy tangle of societal ills. "We have a whole generation of kids suffering from neglect," says sociologist Stephen Klineberg of Houston's Rice University. "There is no one at home when they return from school, and this neglect in socialization results in increased violence." Others cite neglect's twin evil, child abuse, or that distant relative, school truancy. Liberals decry poverty; conservatives fault the decline of family values.

As the experts argue, many Americans are taking safety matters into their own hands. "When people are besieged with new reports of crime every day, the perception grows that, by golly, maybe the cops are ineffective," says crime expert Marquart. "It reinforces the perception of the criminal-justice system not working, and the next thing you know, people are mobilizing to protect themselves."

In the past five years security precautions have increased at hospitals, schools, shopping malls, offices, courthouses and even libraries. And for good reason. Within the past year, librarians have been attacked and killed behind their desk in Sacramento, California, and Buckeye, Arizona. Incidents of violence against health-care workers have increased 400% since 1982, says Ira - A. Lipman, chairman of the National Council on Crime and Delinquency and head of Guardsmark, Inc., the nation's fifth largest security company. "Companies are very concerned because one incident in a shopping mall can destroy business."

Across the U.S., companies that offer security devices report booming sales in both low-tech paraphernalia (Mace, burglar bars, door alarms) and high-tech apparatus (video doorbells, motion-detection devices). Meanwhile, existing forms of high technology are being pressed into the services of security. Cellular phones are popular not only with businessmen but also with people who fear being stranded because of auto trouble or attacked while on the road. As their cost goes down, many are buying them for emergency use only.

Last year an estimated 16% of all U.S. homes installed electronic systems. Video surveillance is becoming more popular. Says Steve Gribbon of the Alert Centre Protective Services, a Colorado-based security company with 200,000 customers in 48 states: "Five or six years ago, only estates in the $700,000- to-$1 million range used them. We're now seeing them in $200,000 homes." Says Anthony Potter, a private security consultant in Atlanta: "In the past, people thought home-security systems were too expensive -- that it was only for people with diamond collections." But, he adds, "they are seeing that it is not that expensive. It cuts their homeowner's insurance." Many are also thinking of gun ownership. Says Potter: "I know a lot of people who five years ago would not have thought about asking me about guns. Now they're asking me what kind they should buy."

"Many people who are most fearful of crime have the least reason to be fearful," says James Q. Wilson, a social scientist at UCLA. "If you map the fear of crime and map the actual crime range, you note that they don't overlap." But, he says, "that doesn't mean people are irrational. It simply means that everyone is aware that we live in a far more dangerous society and, in fact, the self-protective measures they take do tend to protect them. They are acting correctly, rationally."

From coast to coast, people are sealing off their homes and neighborhoods with iron gates, razor-ribbon wire and iron spikes. The home of Billy Davis in Pico Rivera, southeast of Los Angeles, offers a glimpse of the paranoia that is fast turning homes into fortresses. His two-story frame house is outfitted with motion-sensitive floodlights, video monitors, infrared alarms and a % spiked fence topped with razor wire. A metal cage surrounds the patio. Bars adorn every window. A Doberman pinscher guards the yard. And a security guard patrols the driveway. "The wrong people are behind bars," says Anne Seymour of the National Victim Center. "People are putting themselves behind bars because we as a nation have failed to put the right people behind bars."

While such precautions make some people feel safer, others worry about the "Balkanization" of America. "All of this leads to a breakdown of any sense of community," says Camilo Jose Vergara, who has been photographing the gradual fortressing of urban areas over the past 20 years. "Each family tries to make a living within its own fort and is unconcerned about what goes on outside." Moreover, homegrown solutions often breed new problems. When neighborhoods barricade themselves in, they often cut the access of police, ambulance drivers and fire fighters. When public institutions, like courts and libraries, erect barriers, the concept of access in a democratic society is threatened.

In the end, gates, gadgetry and gizmos may not be enough. "I don't think you can build gates high enough to eradicate the fear," says Los Angeles city councilwoman Rita Walters. "You've got to eliminate the source of the fear." Until then, the public arena can suddenly become a coliseum of blood sport. No place is sacred. All sanctuaries are suspect.

CHART: NOT AVAILABLE

CREDIT: From a telephone poll of 500 adult Americans taken for TIME/CNN on Aug. 12 by Yankelovich Partners Inc. Sampling error is plus or minus 4.5%.

CAPTION: Do you worry about being a victim of crime?

Has the amount of crime in your community increased in the past five years?

How much will increasing the number of police reduce crime?

Do you favor the death penalty?

Should there be a five-day waiting period before anyone can buy a gun?

Are stricter gun-control laws a necessary part of any anticrime bill?

Would you favor building more prisons, even if your taxes would be raised?

CHART: NOT AVAILABLE

CREDIT: [TMFONT 1 d #666666 d {Source: FBI}]CAPTION: CRIME REPORT

Worst cities, with population over 250,000, in murders, rapes and robberies; rate per 100,000 in 1992

Change in violent-crime rate, 1992 over 1991

With reporting by Julie Johnson/Washington, Elaine Lafferty/Los Angeles, Ken Myers/Cleveland, Lisa Towle/Raleigh and Richard Woodbury/Houston