THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, July 10, 1995 TAG: 9507070560
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A6 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Editorial
LENGTH: Medium: 66 lines
If an alien force invaded the United States and did the same things that criminals and fools do day in, day out, we would rally against it - spend any amount to protect ourselves.
Over the past decade, 200,000 American citizens have been murdered and millions wounded. The FBI says 53 percent of killings are committed by strangers, which calculates to 106,000 killings by strangers in a decade, nearly twice the number of Americans killed in the decade-long Vietnam War.
And what is our response? Not much.
Federal, state and local-government spending totaled $8,921 per person in 1990. Of that sum, $299 per person, about 3.3 percent, went for all civil- and criminal-justice activities, including $128 per person for police protection.
By comparison, we spent $1,383 per person that year on national defense and international relations.
We increase defense spending in times of crisis and prudently refrain from excessive cutting of the armed services in times of peace. But we have not increased police spending to fit the growing need - to say the very least. We have not put our money where we say our worries are.
All the statistics presented here are taken from The Atlantic Monthly magazine cover story for July, titled ``The Crisis of Public Order.''
The article notes:
``In the 1960s the United States as a whole had 3.3 police officers for every violent crime reported per year. In 1993 it had 3.47 violent crimes reported for every police officer. In relation to the amount of violent crime, then, we have less than one-tenth the effective police power of 30 years ago; or, in another formulation, each police officer today must deal with 11.45 times as many violent crimes as his predecessor of years gone by.''
To return to the 1960s level of police per violent crime, Americans would need to hire 5 million police. (We have about 554,000 state and local police.)
What's happening is that businesses and well-off individuals have hired 1.5 million private security officers. We are headed toward - if we haven't already arrived at - a two-tier police system with ample protection for those who can afford it and scant protection for everyone else. For our nation to prosper, the entire public must be protected.
The Atlantic article is by Adam Walinsky, a lawyer and former legislative assistant to the late Robert Kennedy. He has worked since 1982 to establish the Police Corps, a police ROTC offering four-year college scholarships to the best and most-committed of our young people in return for four years of police service following graduation. ROTC has worked for the military. Why not for police forces?
Walinsky says we need at least half a million new officers, costing perhaps $30 billion a year, to begin to regain control of all our streets. The alternative is to abandon whole neighborhoods to the criminals.
A prototype Police Corps program is provided for in the 1994 crime bill. President Clinton says the bill will add 100,000 police officers nationally by the year 2000; experts predict 25,000 new officers.
With either number, the bill is a start, but only a start.
We're building prisons and filling them, but to protect ourselves we need far more officers on the streets preventing crime. by CNB