Word: goetz
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...York City story; it's a story of human nature," said Geoffrey Alpert, director of the University of Miami's Center for the Study of Law and Society. "It's something we'd all like to do. We'd all like to think we would react the way Goetz did." But Kelsey Dorsett, a black leader and president of the Miami-Dade Chamber of Commerce, is troubled by the glorification of Goetz. Said Dorsett: "I'm so afraid that the New York situation might serve as a catalyst to justify people taking justice into their own hands...
Walter Berns, a political scientist at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative Washington think tank, argued that the angry pro-Goetz sentiment, based on moral indignation about crime, is a healthy sign. "It's an expression of an honest and decent sentiment," he said. "Anger, coming from someone who has not been personally victimized by a criminal, is an expression of concern for fellow citizens. That expression should not be derided or despised...
Afew therapists thought that Goetz may have been pushed to violence by two traumatic incidents in his life: a previous mugging, and his father's trial on a morals charge. Goetz was attacked by a mugger in 1981 and thought his assailant had escaped justice. Actually the man served a jail term of four months. When Goetz was 13, his father, a wealthy businessman in Rhinebeck, N.Y., was convicted of sexually molesting two 15-year-old boys. After an appeal, the father pleaded guilty to a lesser charge, disorderly conduct. "One can hypothesize that the trauma his father sustained made...
...Georgia, Lumpkin County Sheriff Kenneth Seabolt has been raising money for Goetz. Seabolt did not condone the illegal gun, but said, "I'm glad to see someone who's got enough guts to stand up for his rights." The sheriff's actions outraged the president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the Rev. Joseph Lowery. "When someone sworn to uphold the law raises money to help a lawless individual, somebody ought to check into that," he said. "We want to make a hero out of Goetz, which was made a little easier because the four victims were black...
...sentiment for Goetz? "It may simply indicate that there are no more liberals on the crime and law-and-order issue in New York, because they've all been mugged," said Harvard Professor of Government James Q. Wilson, author of Thinking About Crime. "Therefore the normal partisan divisions no longer obtain in a situation of this sort...