Word: crime
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...York City's subways, the subject of innumerable horror stories, conjure up hellish images in the minds of out-of-towners. But while many crimes occur in the tangle below ground, the 81-year-old, 24-hour-a-day system faithfully carries about a billion riders a year, three-quarters of the nation's rapid- transit passengers. An average of 38 felonies are committed each day, only 2.6% of the city's total crime...
Since February, transit police have guaranteed that there will be one officer on every train from 8 p.m. to 6 a.m. They have instituted sweeps of subway stations, a kind of underground rapid-deployment force that in 33 months has detected 9,000 incidents of crime. The current transit police force, which has 3,800 officers, is the largest ever for New York and the biggest in the country. Meanwhile, with subway workers threatening another strike, passengers are just hoping the trains will keep running. "The subway system?" said one young rider. "It's New York...
With the fear of crime and the public frustration at the justice system rising, it is not surprising that many Americans applaud Bernhard Goetz and yearn to strike back at criminals. But an apt warning to such citizens comes from Hubert Williams, director of police in crime-plagued Newark, N.J. "We can give up our Constitution in return for our safety. If you give police unfettered rights, I assure you that crime will drop. The price will be a garrison state. As a policeman, I think that is a price we cannot afford...
...anger. The criminal-justice system is not working in America. It is absurdly slow, overburdened, understaffed, inefficient, random in its selection of who is to be punished. From the muggers' and rapists' perspective, the uncertainty of imprisonment, indeed the likelihood of avoiding it, is actually an incentive to commit crime. Out of 550,000 reported crimes in New York City in 1983, police made 106,000 arrests, but only 13,500 suspects wound up behind bars. Observes Circuit Court Judge Lawrence Richter Jr. of Charleston, S.C.: "The Goetz incident is just symptomatic of what's going on everywhere. People...
...initial praise for Goetz's dramatic act starkly underscored an increasingly hard-line attitude toward crime in recent years. More than 1,500 citizen crime-fighting groups have sprung up in 38 states, determined to be "nosy neighbors" and serve as the eyes and ears of police. Local spending on police increased by an impressive 65% between 1978 and 1983, according to one survey of some 600 U.S. cities. Despite some resistance to the huge costs, fully 35 states have embarked on prison-expansion programs. State legislatures are enacting laws to limit parole, stiffen sentences and provide new rights...