Word: arsons
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Understaffed fire departments are usually too busy fighting fires to prevent them. But in response to the epidemic of arson, cities around the country are hiring more fire marshals. Largely under pressure from community leaders in Brooklyn, Mayor Abraham Beame recently authorized the New York City Fire Department to increase its force of investigators from 77 to 152-but that is still barely half the number of marshals experts believe New York needs to cope with its arson problem...
...Francisco's seven-man fire investigation squad had not been increased since it was founded in 1940. In July, however, the squad took on an eighth man, and two weeks ago the city formed a "combined services arson task force," adding the District Attorney, his assistant and an investigator from the D.A.'s office, plus a police inspector, to the fire department's arson team...
...insurance industry has begun to train its own arson investigators. With the aid of the federal Law Enforcement Assistance Administration, insurance companies and city officials plan to create arson information banks to help apprehend torches. Unfortunately, catching arsonists requires enterprising detective work-and luck. The U.S. Attorney for western Pennsylvania, Blair Griffith, for example, has won 20 arson convictions based on the federal crime of mail fraud. Griffith relied on an arsonist turned informant: Merrill H. Klein, 53, a self-styled "business consultant" who worked as a "broker" for landlords eager to torch their property. After pleading guilty...
...Bellotti with their own evidence that landlords and others were deliberately torching buildings in their community. Armed with these documented complaints, Bellotti ordered the state's criminal bureau to begin the probe that led to last week's indictments against what officials charge is the largest known arson ring in the U.S. One lesson of the Boston arrests is that in order to fight back against organized arson, the victims themselves may have to get organized and join forces with beleaguered -and all too often insufficiently interested-city officials...
...acts of violence. The terrorists and their sympathizers "are standing, rifle by foot, waiting to go into action," says Dr. Hans-Joseph Horchem, chief of the Hamburg division of the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution. In the near future, he predicts a rash of explosions and arson and at least one attempt to assassinate a leading politician or judicial official...