CRIME IN AMERICA

Evening Star, Issue 19805, 2 March 1928, Page 11

CRIME IN AMERICA

A NATIONAL SCANDAL ONE MURDER A DAY IN CHICAGO America no longer talks of "outbreaks” of crime or of crime “waves (writes the New York correspondent of the ’Observer’). Crime, excessive, startling, and unpunished, has become a normal condition of American life, and nobody even claims to offer an effective remedy. The present intensification of crime in Chicago—“ intensification ” is the best word for it—is duo not to conditions which exist there alone, but to the fact that conditions' normal in most other cities obtain there with greater force. The public mind has become dulled. Crimes which would keep England interested for days are dismissed with contempt. Murders, highway robberies, and kidnappings made no claim either on the public interest or the space of the newspapers. The crimes which do provoke interest and command columns of space such as no English newspaper ever dreamed of giving to anything less than the world war arc those of marital tragedy and murder with a sex interest, and, if possible, a mystery, reader assumed. No way of measuring crime in America exists. Its amount and extent are simply unknown, even to the authorities, and nobody believes that thev publish even the facts as they know them. No authoritative inquiry is over made into crime which does not come to the conclusion that the police records arc arranged in effect to hide the facts. The National Crime Commission presided over by Senator .Cowman, a termer Governor of Illinois, reports this week a. “ woeful lack of criminal statistics.” It has, however,_ its own opinion of the amount of crime, and says definitely that “the United Stales lias the most crime of any civilised country.” CHICAGO’S RECORD. Chicago offers a few figures, however. The average number of murders a, month during the past two years has been twenty-nine, and the numbers have been fairly steady. _ In the same period monthly burglaries and robberies have averaged 210. Even so, it is charged, for the sake of saving the face of the politicians in control, only 60 per cent, of crimes committed have been acknowledged by the police. Figures give no indication of the way in which crime has become the daily pabulum of the American citizen. The summary of the crime columns of the most “ respectable ” paper in Chicago for a recent Monday morning reads:— “Kills Rival As Tic Sits by 'Window; Shoots Self.”

“ Defiant Wife ’Tolls flow She Shot Husband.”

“Sixty Robberies Cleared Up at Police Sliow- up.” . , “Bridegroom Eight Days Found Shot; Dies.”

“ Flogged and Left in Auto Path Gang Hunted.”

Even so four oilier crimes of sucli minor interest that they were hidden on out-of-the-way pages are not included in the ghastly catalogue. Neither New York nor any other city can show a radically better record. Crime has its intelligence as well as law and order, and gangs of criminals move from city to city if the police arc becoming too active or an outraged public, is demanding 100 loudly that something should bo done. Texas affords an example of ibis public exasperation at this moment. The bankers’ association there has offered a price for. the bead ol every “hank bandit” killed. There is no reward unless the bandit is dead. , THE IMMIGRANT DANGER.

A great deal of crime is local in interest. New York has no interest in a San Francisco murder, and Chicago is so busy with its own murders that the most exciting crime in New Orleans will remain practically unheard of in Chicago. In ibis way tlm outlook of the public rcmains > sectional. Fach city, is only interested in and annoyed by its own crime, and as the wave passes from place to place active public interest passes too. In large areas of crime the ordinary general public takes no interest at all. One Italian immigrant can kill another and nobody cares very much. In Chicago, for instance, the general attitude towards the murders of Italians, Poles, and other immigrants engaged in bootlegging and other illegal industries has been quite frankly that the quicker such people kill each other oil the better. The point of view unhappily evades (he fact that criminals are made Taster than they can kill cadi other.

Tlio indifference of the public towards crimes is one of the most striking aspects of the case to an Englishman. 1 recently discussed at dinner with a. number of “Liberals” the case with which young men with guns robbed houses, shops, and offices. Every man present said quite frankly that if tie were involved in a “ holdup ” ho would make no effort at ail. Their view was that it was a police job, and that the private citizen would he foolish to risk bis safety even if be could help to secure the arrest of a dangerous criminal. It could never happen hero, as it did recently in England, that an outbreak of robberies of post offices was stopped by brave girls who threw themselves or other things at the robbers or simply screamed. THE INEVITABLE REVOLVE!!. One reason among others is the readiness of criminals here to shoot. Every carries a loaded revolver on Ids hip, and uses it often without any adequate reason. A young woman died in hospital a, lew days ago in Now York the policeman with whom she was dining after his duty was over let his revolver fall out. of his holster, and it wont off and shot her in the abdomen. Everybody agreed that it was an accident.j and ihe policeman was not prosecuted. Criminals not only carry revolvers, hut arc very ready to use them, and the mere idea, that they should hesitate to shoot a woman would never enter their heads. America is an enormous country, and criminals travel widely by means of motor cars, stolen if necessary. This makes them feel that victims in other cities are “ foreigners.” The fact that their victims are often of other races adds to this feeling, and so they are not restrained by any consideraion that their victims may be of their kind. ORGANISED CRIME. These are the outstanding aspects of unorganised crime, but the crime which is striking at the heart of America’s social and personal integrity is of a different nature, Crime, like everything else here, has been systematised and 'organised. The big crimes of today in America are not. hit-and-miss affairs. They are arranged beforehand. Each man’s share is known, he lias exact orders, and final arrangements for the disposal of the booty are made long before the robbery begins. Syndicates now extend from State to State. Men are moved by the com-manders-in-chief from one city to another. The way may be prepared, the spying done,” by natives, or. at least, by residents in the city where the robbery is to take place. Then at the- last moment men are brought in from another city. They may act under the direction of the natives ruin co-operation with them, but it is they as strangers who are responsible for the actual accomplishment of the crime. In an hour they are out of the city, moving towards different points to which they have been assigned, there to hand over the booty and report to agents who have travelled,’ perhaps, a thousand miles to meet them.