F.B.I Head Hits At Public Apathy

Press, Volume XCVIII, Issue 28992, 5 September 1959, Page 13

F.B.I Head Hits At Public Apathy

(Rec. 11.20 p.m.)

WASHINGTON, Sept. 3.

The director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Mr J. Edgar Hoover, lashed out today at Americans who stood idly by while hoodlums “prowl the streets” and turned parts of the nation into a “no man’s land’’ of violence and terror.

Writing in the F. 8.1. “Law Enforcement Bulletin," he urged private citizens to do all they could to help the “smell patrol” of law officers trying to cope with an army of “depraved murderers, robbers, sex offenders, and kidnappers.” Even as Mr Hoover's article was published, his F. 8.1. agents arrested two Washington men and charged them with having seized two young women at knife point on a Washington street early last Sunday, and having taken them into a woods in nearby. Maryland and assaulted them repeatedly. Both of the 23-year ola women were clerical employees of the F. 8.1. They were driving home after a dance when the men invaded their car at a traffic light. If convicted, the men—one a 30-year-old bachelor and the other married and the father of two —face death under the Lind-

bergh kidnap law. The F. 8.1. entered the investigation because the two women were taken across a State line.

In his article, Mr Hoover described as “shocking” an F. 8.1. report showing that the number of murderous crimes in the United States increased by 9.3 per cent, last year. He also noted that the report showed the highest crime rate in the nation’s history. Mr Hoover reprimanded citizens who have a “detached attitude towards crime.” “This country’s citizens.” he wrote, “must awaken to the fact that the war on crime is not just the battle of the law enforcement officer.” Mr Hoover said; “Every citizen has a stake when hoodlums prowl the streets brazenly committing atrocities which appall even veteran police officers. No-one is immune from the attacks of depraved murderers, robbers, sex offenders, and kidnappers. “Often the law enforcement officer’s battle is a lonely one, and too frequently the citizens who should be his allies are indifferent and apathetic,” he said. The F. 8.1. director said he had been “repeatedly shocked recently by the alarming number of instances reported from throughout the country in which local law enforcement officers have been mercilessly gunned down by hoodlums.” Today in Brooklyn, 18-year-old Dominick Scuderi suffered severe knife wounds in the side when he and three companions were attacked in the street by 15 other youths. Mr Nelson Rockefeller, New York State’s Governor, today called a meeting of State officials to work out “a more effective co-ordination” of organisations battling youthful crime. Teenage “wolf-packs” have taken four lives in the last two weeks. A youth and a 15-year-old girl died on August 20—the youth from stab wounds and the girl from a shot through the head —and two youths were slain last Sunday in the teeming tenement area of New York’s West Side, known as “Hell's Kitchen.” In Manhattan, police picked up the last of 15 Puerto Ricans sought in the knife slaying of two teenagers in a playground last Sunday. He was a husky youth wearing a bright floral shirt and identified only as “Hector.” Six of the othj r 12 have been booked on homicide charges, four for unlawful assembly, and two for juvenile delinquency. „ , The Mayor of New York (Mr

Robert Wagner) has announced that he would add 1080 new men to the police force in the drive to stamp out violent flare-ups of the young hoodlums. He said yesterday the force would be increased to its fully authorised strength of 24.508 men. New York City is spending 60 000.000 dollars a year to fight juvenile delinquency, according to the “New York WorldTelegram.”