Word: buffalo
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Vigilante justice in Buffalo...
...Fourth of July festivities had barely subsided in Town Garden Apartments, a housing project in Buffalo's low-income black section of the inner city, when Cecelia Williams, her two children tucked in bed, decided to visit her sister elsewhere in the complex. While she was away, a man in blue jogging shorts and a T shirt broke a window, climbed into the sparsely furnished home, and carried off Williams' ten-year-old daughter Andrea. Hours later, as police combed the area, Williams' husband Willie and a restive throng of worried neighbors crowded into the small apartment...
...demonstration of vigilante justice, in a widely televised version on Buffalo stations, evoked praise and sympathy from city officials to the man on the street, as well as controversy. "He should have kept on stabbing," said a bartender in downtown Buffalo. "He did what any father would have done, and he shouldn't be charged." Williams, a truck driver and avowed street minister, was arrested for first-degree assault. He spent one night in jail; a sympathetic judge freed him the next day on an unsecured $10,000 bond. "Cop after cop came up to him in the cell...
...sanctioning street justice strikes many in Buffalo as a scary proposition. "That kind of anarchy is no good for anyone, especially minorities," contends City Court Judge Wilbur P. Trammell, a black. Says Erie County District Attorney Richard J. Arcara, who is responsible for prosecuting Williams: "If you allow people to put themselves above the law, where do you draw the line...
...from counselors who help them vent anger and wage effective job campaigns. Bethlehem was the first big firm to give white-and blue-collar employees the same kind of help. It maintains "career continuation centers" for displaced people in Johnstown and Bethlehem, Pa., and in Lackawanna, N. Y., near Buffalo, site of an 83-year-old plant whose shutdown was announced three days after Christmas...