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Bedeviled by long, hazardous hours, low pay, public abuse and unrealistic court decisions, policemen across the country are at an all-tim e low in morale. Is it any wonder that police departments are so dangerously undermanned that crime is flourishing? Our Alarming Police Shortage BY \ i\l JLLI AM SCHULZ M m ajor crim es a re committed during a typica l week in the city of Los Angeles. Twenty-five women are raped; fo ur citizens are murdered; 190 others are bea ten , kni fed or shot. Poli ce switchboa rds light up w ith reports of r 53 robberies, 445 stolen ca rs, 637 larcen ies involving $50 or m ore, and 1076 housebrea kings . Yet thi s orgy of law less ness is no reAection on the L os Ange les Poli ce Depa rtm ent. " We just don't have the m a npowe r to keep crim e in check," says embat tl ed poli ce chi ef Thom as Reddin . " We need 10,000 m en, but we ca n't even fi ll our a uthori zed st reng th of 5383." ORE THA N 2500 Officials in every sect ion of the co untry echo C hief Reddin 's complaint. Ameri ca is desperately underprotected - at a tim e w hen crime is grow in g six tim es fas t er than p op ul a t io n- a nd t he situ a ti o n is wo rsening rapidly. Demoralized by in a dequ a te wages, fr ustrated by judicial nitpicking , sickened by citize n apathy, poli cemen by the thousa nds are turning in their badges, whi le potentia l replacem ents look elsewhere fo r employm ent. A survey of 36 m ajo r departments from Bo sto n to Hono lulu di sc loses that not one is up to authorized st reng th. U.S . Ass istant Atto rn ey General Fred Vin son, Jr., puts the I �2 THE READER'S DIGEST nationwide police sh ortage at a frightening 50,000. On the Run. New York's 73rd Precinct - the teeming Brownsville section of Brooklyn-is a microcosm of the national problem. Last summer, the "normal complement" of 374 men needed to safeguard the area was short by more than roo. Bone-weary officers put in r6-hour days in the attempt to maintain law and order. But they were no match for ma rauding criminals. Homicides soared. Stores were repeatedly burglarized . Policemen themselves were mugged in broad daylight. "They've got us on the run," an exhausted patrolman said bitterly. "And they know it." To remedy the situation, ew York officials have la unched a highpowered recruiting campaign. But their problem is not unique. Recruiters from the Washington, D.C., police department comb the eastern United States, a nd cannot fill the nearly 400 vacancies on their 3100man force. Meanwhile, crime in the nation's capital increased 38 percent in a recent 12-m onth period. Behind the cold statistics are the individuals who suffer: the mercha nt forced out of business by repeated holdups; the pretty teen-ager disfig ured for li fe by a n assailant's razor; the young housewife thrust into widowhood by an armed robber - and you may well be next. For make no mistake about it: every gap in the "thin blue line" means that more citizens get hurt. This was demonst rated vividly in mid-1966, when hundreds of Chicago police were taken off their regular beats to quell potential riots in the tense Eighth District. During this time, the city's crime soared 29.8 percent over the previous year, with increases recorded in 20 of 21 police districts. The sole exception: the Eighth District. H igh Risk, Low Pay. The shamefu l events of last summer, during which more than 100 communities were ravaged by riot, have made the police manpower situation even more acute.For example, 20 men had signed up to take the examination for admission to the undermanned P lainfield, .J., police department. Then came that city's riot, in the course of which a young patrolman was stomped to death by a savage mob. Only five of the applicants showed up to take the test. Of the five, only two qualified. In nearby ewark, a policeman threatening to turn in his badge said, "They just buried the best man I've ever known" -this of Frederick Toto, a decorated policema n shot to death by a sniper during the July riot. 'Tm not afraid, but m y wife's near a nervous b reakdown." But the riots are only part of it. In recent months I have traveled from one end of the country to the other, interviewing former policemen as well as harried young patrolmen who at least for now, are stick ing it out. From their stories t hi s dep lorable f inanci al picture emerges : Although the Office of Economic �OUR A L ARMING POLICE SHORTAGE Opportunity puts the pove rt y level a t $3200 for a non -farm fa mily of fou r, patrolmen in Di ck so n , Tenn., start at $2400 a year ; in Durant, Okla., at $2760; in Glasgow, Ky., at $3000. Coeur d 'A lene, Idaho, pays its patrolmen an annual ·$5280, but requires them to work 54-hour weeks . Salaries in large r citi es, while hig her, are nonetheless disg raceful. In Seattle, cable splicers ea rn $375 a month more than poli ce men; Chicago electri cia ns receive $1.40 an hour more than the patrolman on the bea t; carpenters in N ew York comma nd 50 percent m ore per hour than patrolmen. M oreover, the cable sp li cer, e lect rici a n a nd carpente r work 35- or 40-hour weeks, with genero us ove rtime. The policeman toils ni g h ts and holidays, rarely with overt im e, often under in cr edibl e stra in , hi s li fe freq uentl y in danger. In 1966, 23,000 poli cemen were assa ulted in the lin e of duty. More appa lling than low pay to m an y po li cemen is the att itude of the publi c. "I'm willing to take m y chances w ith the punks and the hoods," says a vetera n policeman in Balt imore. "A ll I ask is a li ttle support from the average citizen." Yet, all too often, peop le "wa lk the ot her way." Fo r h::i lf ::i n hour, t wo membe rs of t h e C a li fo rni a Hi g h way Patrol teetered on the edge of a bridge 185 feet above Sa n Pedro Bay, st ruggling to save a man bent on suicide. Agai n and aga in they shouted for help to passing cars. Not one driver stopped, or even bothered 3 to ca ll for aid when he reached the end of the bridge. In another insta nce, a Sa n Fran cisco policeman attempted to arrest two drunks on a downtown street. Forty minutes late r he was ca rried into San Fra ncisco General Hospital, his cheek slas hed open, his nose broken . "The crowd just let them beat m e," he sa id . "People act as if the police were their enemies." Case Dismissed. A nother m ajor factor in the sorry state of police morale is th e se ries of vague and loosely wo rded Supreme Court rulings handed down in rece nt years. Consider these typical cases reported to the Senate Subcommittee on C rimin al L aws a nd P rocedures: • " Thi s fe llow went throug h a red lig ht a nd ran into me," an a ng ry motorist told the policem an dispatc hed to the scene of a traffic acci dent in Providence, R.I . " Is that so?" the officer inqu ired of the second motor ist. The latter ad mi tted that he had indeed run the li g ht. Later, the case aga in st him was thrown out of co urt . Why? Th e poli cema n had fa iled to notify him of hi s rig hts, as required by the Supreme Court's 1966 Mira nda decisi on,* before asking, " ls that so'" • An officer in Torran ce, Ca lif., picked up two young men on narcotics cha rges. Acu tely ::iwa re of Miranda, the pol ice man in formed the suspects, "Yo u have the rig ht to • Whi ch ,a ,·s that a suspect mu, t be info rmed of hi s right to silence, of his rig ht to a lawyer e,-cn if he cannot affn rd o ne. a nd of the fact tha t a nything he sa ys ca n be held .tga in !-i t hirn in court . �THE READER'S DIGEST the services of a n attorney during all stages of the proceedings against you." Tot good enough, Judge Otto Willett ruled in dismissing the charges. What the officer should have said, Willett declared, was, "You have the right to the services of an attorney prior to any questioning." The defendants left the cou rtroom gn nnmg . " itpicking of this kind h;r.; had a disastrous effect on our force," says Lt. L ee J. As hma n, head of the T orrance narcotics squad. "Some veteran officers have become so frustrated they've simp ly quit." Turnstile Justice. Just as demoralizing is the cava lier attitude that m any judges have toward juvenile crime. Co nsider the case 0£ Harry Sylvester Jones, Jr., a Washing ton, D.C., delinquent who was g iven an earl y release from reform schoolonl y to embark on a criminal career that included rape, auto theft and g rand larceny. Sentenced to prison three times in eig ht years, Jones was three times released on parole or p robation. Within seven m onths after he was released for the third tim e, he had raped two women at kni fe-point, stabbed a nother nine times as she knelt in church, and committed his third rape against a 54-yea r-old wom an he trapped in an elevator. Jones is ha rd ly unique. Police fil es in every state bulge with cases in which innocent members of society pay fo r the mistakes of unrealistic judges and pa role o fficers. The careers of Gregory Ulas Powell and 4 Jimmy L ee Smith, young Cali forn ians who had amassed 25 arrests by the time they were 30, are depressingly typical. On the night of M arch 9, 1963, en route to their fi fth robbery in two weeks, Powell a nd Smith were stopped for a defective taill ig ht by Los Angeles policemen Ian James Campbell and K arl Hettinger. The unsuspecting officers were promptly kidnaped at g u npoint, d riven n o rt h in to K e rn County an d m arched on to a deserted field . As the officers stood with their hands raised, Powell calmly fired a .32-caliber bu llet into Campbell's mouth. Hettinger whirled and ra n, miraculously escaping as Powell soug ht to gun him down and Smith pumped four more slug s into the dying Campbell. The lesson to be learned from that March night is the folly of turnstile justice. Campbell's killers were both- on parole. Eight tim es they had been the recipients of judicia l leniency in the form of conditional release, parole or probation. N or has their luck run out. C aptured within hours of the murder, the two were convicted a nd sentenced to death . But, last July, the Ca liforni a Suprem e Court reversed the convictions on the ground that the defendants had not been fully ad vised o f their rig hts, and ordered a new tria l, perhaps p roviding a noth e r oppo rt u nit y to prove tha t crime does pay. " The. weakness in our handling of re peating offenders has caused vet- �5 OUR ALA RMIN G POLICE SHORTAGE eran law-e nforcement officers to of a nonparti sa n crime comm ittee. throw up their hands in despair," Mobili z ing public support, the comsays FBI Director J. Edgar H oover. mittee won an imm edi ate $rooo pay " Worse, it makes ou tsta nding you ng hik e for Cincinnati 's policemen, men reluctant to enter the law- with promises of m ore to come. enforcement profession at the ve ry Today, a bi t m ore than a year later, tim e their services are so gravely m orale is m eas urably improved. needed." Resig nations and retirements have A Major Commitment. Wh at can been slas hed by two thirds, and the we do to close the dangerous "police force is aga in attracting ambitious gap"? Two steps are clearl y called yo un g recru its. "We've got to unfor : dersta nd," says John Held, " that 1. We must pay th e police a Living yo u ca n't stop crim e wi th an underwage. James Ro ye r, father of two, ma nn ed police force whose morale resig ned from the C incinnati police has been broken." 2. T,Ve must provide th e police the department in the summer of 1966. "My ran k is that of police specialist," moral su pport they so desperately he wrote. "My sa la ry, after -nine need. Througho ut the countr y, poyea rs, is $7507- I have no union , no lice efforts to improve community g uild and ve ry few rig hts - civil or relation s have been undermined by otherwise. Our city perso nn el offi cer a co n cer t ed campa ig n of ab u se. classifies me as se mi-sk illed labor Commonest charge is that of "police my co llege degree, g raduate work, brutality." Yet a tas k force of the adva nced train ing and yea rs of pro- Pres id e nt 's Cr im e Co mmi ss ion, fess ional ex perience notwithstand- whi ch w itn essed 5339 " police-citi zen ing . Private industr y has offered m e encounters," during 850 eight-hour a substa ntia l sa lary increase and an patrols, fo und only 20 cases in which opportunity fo r advancem ent. I re- police were fe lt to have used ung ret that thi s co uld not be ac hieved necessa ry force. " Th at is a reco rd of as an employe of the people of Cin- . sa ti sfactory perfo rm ance in 99.63 percinn ati. " cent of the sa mple under stud y," Jim Royer was not a lone, as City says syndicated newspaper columCou nc ilm a n Jo hn E. H e ld w as ni st Jam es J. Kilpatrick. "What shocked to nnd . M any of the city's other occupa tion or profession boasts outstand ing poli cem en we re q uit- a better record ?" To counterbala nce the work of poting the force to acce pt hig her-paying jobs as g ua rd s, truck dri vers, lice-baiting grou ps, F red E . Inbau, sa lesmen. Crime was up sharp ly; the professor of crim inal law at Northnumber of offenses culmin ating in western University, recently formed a rrest was down 25 percent from a n organ iza tion ca lled A mericans the preceding yea r. for Effective L aw Enfo rcement "to H eld led the ng ht for the creatio n represent the law-abiding p ubli c and �THE READER:S DIGEST its embattled protectors." Enthusiastically supported by many of the country's top experts on crime and punishment, AELE will defend , among others, policemen it considers unjustly accused of brutality; draft m odel anti~crime statutes; and argue major cases in the nation's courts. Meanwhile, in Indi ana polis, a band of housewives has demonstrated that anyone may enlist in the battle for law and order. Stunned by the brutal slaying of a 90-year-old woman, a group of women residents initi ate d the Indian apo lis AntiCrime Crusade in March 1962. Since then, enlisti ng more than 60,000 women in its ranks, the Crusade has won badly needed pay hikes for the Indianapolis police, lobbied for effective anti-crime measures and sat in on more than 80,000 court cases to keep local judges on their toes. Its dogged efforts have helped to curb Indianapolis crime and have 6 won the kudos of the President's Crime Commission. The exodus of policemen can be stopped. Thousands of young men can be persuaded to make law enforcement their career. But it will require a major commitment from ordinary citizens across the land, not only in dollars but in spirit. As Rep. Joel T. Broyhill, of Virginia, has said, "In part because we, as ordinary citizens, have waited too long to fight back, a pol ice uniform today is the target for epithets and abuse. It is time to ask our decen t citizens for collective action; our public officials for more backbone; our courts for more reality. We must stop this nonsense not tomorrow, not next week, but today." Rep rints of this art icle arc available. Prices, postpaid to one add ress: 10 - 50¢; 50 - $2; 100 - $3 .50; 500 - $ 12.50; 1000 - $18 . Address Reprint Editor, The Readers Digest, Plcasamvillc, N.Y. 10570 REPRINTED FROM THE JANUARY 1968 ISSUE OF THE READER ' S DIGE ST ©1967 THE READER ' S DIGEST ASSOC I ATION , I NC., PLEASANTVILLE, N. Y. 10570 PRIN TED IN U.S.A. �