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Policemen Under Fire

THE job of a policeman is not an easy one. He is called on to care for a variety of difficulties, and to put his life in jeopardy as well. Many policemen are killed in the line of duty each year, even in “normal” times.

However, these are not normal times. The job of a policeman is now more dangerous than ever. This is especially true in the United States. There, in a comparable period, twice as many policemen were killed in unprovoked attacks in 1970 as in 1969, and four times as many as in 1968.

In New York city alone, figures for 1970 up to November show that 38 policemen were shot, 46 cut or stabbed and 390 punched or kicked. More than 1,030 lost time from duty because of violence committed against them. In Detroit, such assaults increased 68 percent in a year. In California, murders of policemen have doubled. Elsewhere the trend has been much the same.

Why such an increase? One reason is the fantastic rise in crime. More and more persons have turned to criminal activities. This places the lives of policemen in greater danger as they deal with such individuals.

There is another factor, however, in the rising number of assaults, one that is even more ominous than the huge increase in crime.

Ominous Trend

In the past few years the United States has witnessed a swift growth of what has been called “Terrorism.” In city after city, policemen are being killed in cold blood. The way these particular attacks are carried out shows that they differ from the type that results when police apprehend a criminal who then resorts to violence.

For example, a Sacramento policeman was killed while riding in his patrol car, shot to death by a sniper who used a military rifle. In San Francisco a police station was bombed, killing one officer and wounding eight others. Three were killed on different occasions when they were issuing traffic tickets; in each case an assassin approached the unsuspecting officer while he was writing out the ticket and killed him with a handgun. In West Philadelphia a gunman walked into a police guardhouse and pumped five bullets into the desk sergeant as he sat quietly.

Thus, a Detroit policeman declared: “It’s like being in a guerrilla war.” Philadelphia Police Commissioner Frank Rizzo said: “This is no longer crime. This is revolution.” California’s chief deputy attorney general Charles O’Brien stated: “Law officers have become a special target for the terrorists and anarchists in our society. . . . I find it very frightening.” He called the “fantastic increase” in assaults “a clear and present danger to the government of the United States.” And Senator James Eastland declared: “An organized ‘war upon the police’ threatens to undermine law and order in the United States.” He added: “These deliberate attacks are too widespread, the incidents too numerous, the tactics too similar to suggest isolated acts of violence.”

In Cairo, Illinois, Police Chief Roy Burke said in September that snipers had fired at his car on six different occasions during the year. “It had so many holes in it I had to get a new one,” he said. Then in October, fifteen to eighteen men dressed in army fatigue uniforms attacked the Cairo police station three times in about six hours. In the third attack, hundreds of rounds of gunfire were poured into the station. Cairo’s Mayor A. B. Thomas stated: “What we have had tonight in Cairo is open armed insurrection.”

Why Is It Happening?

Why this increase in terrorism? Bill Moyers, former assistant to the president, said in Harper’s magazine: “In a hundred communities in every part of the country in a season of violence, no one​—Presidential commissions, state agencies, police, the participants themselves—​could say with authority, ‘This is why it happened.’”

Yet, there are factors involved that can be understood. For example, regarding the attacks in Cairo, Newsweek magazine reported that they were “an apparent act of retaliation for alleged police assaults on Negro residents.” It noted that militant whites “infuriated black elements by conducting regular, vigilante-style patrols of Negro neighborhoods. This time it seemed to be the blacks’ turn for exacerbating the tension.”

Lieutenant William McCoy of the Detroit police department told of printed instructions distributed among militant blacks. The instructions said: “When a self-defense group moves against this oppressive system by executing a pig [policeman] by any means​—sniping, stabbing, bombing, etc.​—in defense against the 400 years of racist brutality and murder, this can only be defined as self-defense.” Thus one main reason black “revolutionaries” give for their activities is resentment at the treatment they have received during centuries of slavery, prejudice and abuse.

There are also numerous groups of white “revolutionaries.” What is their aim? When reporters have had opportunity to talk to some of them, they make clear that they work to overthrow the established order, including the governmental arrangement. But no clear picture is given as to what they propose as a replacement.

What does this have to do with attacks on policemen by such groups or persons? A police lieutenant said: “The policeman is the most visible symbol of the establishment and the justice that it represents. The people who shoot at policemen do it because they can’t reach the Mayor, the President or even their wife to satisfy their pathological needs to get even.”

Are these “revolutionary” groups, both black and white, under any central direction or control? United States Attorney General John Mitchell described them as a loose conspiracy of radical and anarchist groups dedicated to the destruction of American institutions. William C. Sullivan, an assistant to the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s director, said that the FBI has no evidence that any one group, including the Communist Party, is responsible for the growing disorder.

One “revolutionary” told a Newsweek reporter: “The people have to be told that we’re not really a bunch of Communist murderers in disguise. We want change now. And nothing is at our disposal but violence. We can’t even demonstrate without getting clubbed and tear-gassed. Well, if we can’t live in peace, then the rich can’t live in peace. There will be all-out war within a year.” He said that one third of his group were veterans of the Vietnam war who used their military training in weapons and explosives for revolutionary purposes.

How serious do authorities regard the situation? A veteran Justice Department official described it this way: “Face it, we’re in what amounts to a guerrilla war with the kids. And so far, the kids are winning.” Many of the “kids” are children of middle-class parents. They consider themselves “counterculture patriots” and not criminals. They liken their activities to the revolutionaries who overthrew British rule in the American colonies, leading to the Declaration of Independence in 1776.

Where Will It Lead?

There is no doubt that individual policemen have been guilty of corruption, unfair treatment or even criminal activities. Law-enforcement authorities admit that. But what would happen if all policemen were taken out of the way in today’s society?

An example of what would likely happen was seen in Montreal, Canada. On October 7, 1969, Montreal’s 3,700 law-enforcement officers staged a seventeen-hour-long wildcat strike in a dispute over wages. The result was anarchy. During that period there was a staggering wave of robberies, burglaries and other crime. About one thousand plate-glass windows were smashed in downtown Montreal. Hundreds of stores, large and small, were looted. The editor of the Montreal Star reported that the major lesson was that all the citizens of Montreal discovered just how vulnerable they were without police protection. No one was immune. Rich and poor alike suffered.

However, this does not excuse policemen from their responsibility not to abuse their authority. When a presidential commission investigated campus violence, it noted that it was ‘mandatory for police to keep their cool and for their superiors to help them.’

Yet, the vicious escalation goes on. Those with grievances, real or imagined, often take it out on the police. The police, being human, at times respond with increasing toughness, which often makes others become more hostile to them. The result is a growing trend toward anarchy.

An official in Washington, D.C., concluded: “Unless something is done to reverse the present trend, this country is going to be in a civil war within five to ten years.” He noted that “people are getting fed up with this violence in the streets” and that a growing number of the public could be provoked to the point where they would approve the use of crushing repressive force. If that happened, what then? The official said: “What they would have left would be a fascist state.”