Word: arsons
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...suspicious fires that occurred between 1973 and 1976, including one that led last year to a Pulitzer-prizewinning photograph of a woman and little girl plummeting from a collapsed fire escape (the woman died, but the child survived). Last week the police came up with enough evidence to bring arson indictments on 35 of the fires that destroyed property worth $6 million and killed three people. Massachusetts Attorney General Francis X. Bellotti denounced the torch ring as "a conspiracy to burn down Suffolk County for profit." Added Stephen Delinsky, head of the state criminal bureau: "This is just...
Whether for profit or for revenge, arson has become one of the most deadly, costly, and, for law enforcement officials, maddening crimes in the country. Deliberatley started fires now exceed 100,000 a year, up 400% since 1967. Last year there were 6,776 reported arsons in New York City alone. In Chicago, arson has tripled in less than three years, and in crime-plagued Detroit it is up 12% over last year alone. But the most shocking statistics come from San Francisco, which has experienced a 700% increase in arson in five years. Says Lieut. James Mahoney, chief investigator...
Cheap to commit, perhaps, but staggeringly expensive for society to endure. Officials blame arson for more than 1,000 deaths and 10,000 injuries a year. Insurance companies estimate that in 1976 arson cost $2 billion in claims. As a result, fire insurance premiums have risen sharply in the past five years. Adding other, related costs such as business failures, loss of jobs and tenant relocation, Walter D. Swift, vice president of the American Insurance Association estimates last year's total arson price tag in the U.S. to be between $10 billion and $15 billion...
...Arson is a barometer of urban decay," says New York City Deputy Chief Fire Marshal John Barracato, "and most city fathers are ashamed to admit they have this problem." But the ruinous dimensions cannot be hidden. In New York City's South Bronx, where Jimmy Carter took an impromptu walking tour earlier this month, there have been more than 7,000 fires in the past two years. "The destruction is reminiscent of the bombed-out cities in Europe," says Bronx District Attorney Mario Merola, who was a navigator in World War II. Chicago's Humboldt Park area...
...estimated 40% of arson nationwide is economically motivated, as in the Boston cases that led to last week's roundup. Blazes are set by quasi-professional "torches" hired by landlords, real estate brokers, store owners, or welfare tenants who want to be relocated. The purpose, as New York Columnist Jimmy Breslin has put it, is to "build vacant lots for money." Charging up to $3,500 or a cut of the insurance money, the torch frequently mixes a brew of acid and sophisticated oxidizing agents to ignite a chemical fire that is all but impossible to trace...