Word: goetz
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...DECEMBER 22. 1984, an electronics expect named Bernhard Goetz became a hero by pulling out a gun and shooting four teenagers who, he told the conductor of the IRI subway train on which he was riding, tried to rip him off. Then he went to New Hampshire...
...most vocal critic has been New York Daily New columnist Jimmy Breslin, who charges that had the teenagers been white and Goetz Black, rather than the other way around, the public would have taken a completely different view of the situation. But Goetz's predilections aside, the likelihood of two dozen randomly chosen Manhattan residents all being racists is slim at best--more likely, those 23 grand jurors are subway riders...
...Liberal Haven. New York Gov. Mario M. Cyomo and New York City Mayor Edward I. Koch left compelled to warn the citizenry that the state and city administrations by no means condoned taking the law into one's own hands. The citizenry appeared to take exception to this, giving Goetz a warm welcome and offers of financial assistance when he was extradited from New Hampshire, where he had surrendered to police several days after the incident...
Last Friday, a 23-member grand jury indicted Goetz on four charges--all related to weapons possession. The New York Post went wild: "BERNIE COEIZ." He certainly did the indictment included nothing about attempted, nothing about attempted murder, despite the fact that one of Goetz's victims remains in a coma and is paralyzed from the waist down...
CALLING WHAT GOETZ did illegal possession of a handgun sends a message exactly counter to Cuomo's and Koch's warnings immediately after the crime. He committed an act that could have led to the death of his aggressors, and was not indicted for it--an action that gives some credence to the charges of public racism levied almost immediately after the shooting...