The MacNeil/Lehrer Report; Living With Crime in America

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TUCSON RESIDENT: I haven`t had one good night`s sleep since the robbery. I just wonder are they going to come-- when`s the next time? I had to go out and buy a gun. one that I would be capable of shooting and protecting myself, not a little .22 where the person could still come after you -- something that could stop a person from coming any further.

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MacNEIL: Good evening. For months, news reports have been full of stories about the growth of crime in America. Attorney General William French Smith said recently that last year 30 percent of all American households were touched by some serious crime. According to one national survey, the fear of crime is outstripping the actual incidence of crime. Anxiety over the possibility of being a victim is becoming an accepted part of everyday life. It`s affecting the way people live, particularly in cities and towns that were unaccustomed to this fear before. For big-city residents, especially poor and minority Americans, the crime story is not new. What has changed recently is the extent to which crime has spread to smaller communities and frightened the middle class. Tonight, a film report on one such community. We sent a team to Tucson, Arizona, a prosperous and expanding city of 330,000.

MacNEIL [voice-over]: Tucson is also a place where crime hasn`t been considered much of a problem, but is now seriously on the minds of many residents.

2nd RESIDENT: I`ve come out here since 1947. It`s smaller and it`s the place for us. We wanted to be here. I no longer want to be here.

3rd RESIDENT: It`s no longer the town where you can leave the back door open and go out to the grocery store unless you want to come back and find you don`t have a television, a stereo, jewelry.

1st RESIDENT: We are getting new locks put on the doors, and on every gate, and keys made so that anyone who could be expected to come into our house will have a key. We won`t expect ever to leave the door open.

MacNEIL [voice-over]: What`s causing people in Tucson to lock their doors is a shocking increase in the crime rate. Murder alone was up I78 percent last year. And break-ins at homes such as this one helped account for a 63- percent increase in burglaries just for the first two months of this year.

3rd RESIDENT: The truck was stolen the week before Christmas, and then the house was just broken into-- three weeks-- it`s been about three weeks, now, three weeks ago. approximately. At the time when it happened, I felt violated, just totally violated. It was the thought of somebody breaking into your house, your own private domain. It`s -- you know -- helping themselves to whatever you have in here. It`s a bad feeling.

MacNEIL [voice-over; senior citizens` dunce]`. In Tucson one in 10 persons was the victim of a serious crime last year. The elderly are especially vulnerable.

ELDERLY WOMAN: I don`t answer the door. Anybody comes lo our door, I don`t answer. I won`t open the door to nobody. And I carry a .25 automatic al all times. I don`t trust anybody. You can`t. Sometimes the ones you think you can trust most is just the ones you can`t trust. So I don`t trust anybody,

MacNEIL [voice-over]: At the University of Arizona in the heart of Tucson, the city`s 50-percent increase in aggravated assault is affecting the attitudes of many students.

ALISA ARMSTRONG, U.A. Student Body Vice-President: A lot of times, especially with freshmen that are coming in from out of state -- freshmen women -- they`ll come down here, and the weather`s so nice here that people stay out all night, and they think they can just walk around anywhere, anytime they want. And that`s just not-- that`s just kind of a bad attitude, and we`re trying to try and change that attitude, and make them aware that they could be assaulted, they could be attacked. And I`d say over the last year or two, some of the things that have happened to make people aware are just rapes that have actually occurred on campus, and just in the surrounding University area.

MacNEIL [voice-over]: The Police Department is dealing with the rising crime rate with new tactics. The lieutenant driving this car heads the new burglary task force. He asked to be filmed in such a way that he would not be recognized. The task force idea is based on the fact that several hundred known individuals are committing most of the residential burglaries in Tucson. They haven`t been convicted because they haven`t been caught in the act.

TASK FORCE LIEUTENANT: And we pick a criminal and place him under intense surveillance during the daytime, starting early in the morning watching his house and his vehicle until he leaves. When he commits a residential burglary, we watch the entry, we watch him bring his loot out of the house, put it into his car; we let him get the car started, and then we take him off. [over radio] Check one, tack 50. Bobby, instead of 45`ing it. tell me where your target is, and I`m going to take a run by it. Somebody sitting on it?

2nd TASK FORCE OFFICER: He`s at the Gold and Silver Exchange at Midway and Corbett.

LIEUTENANT: Ten-four. How about-- what-- where was he?

MacNEIL [voice-over]: Using unmarked cars, plainclothesmen, and special radio communications, the task force has followed a new suspect -- or target, as he`s called -- to a Gold and Silver Exchange, in which he may be trying to sell stolen loot.

2nd OFFICER: Okay, they are backing out. and it looks like he`s going to be going to the alley. Stand by for good directions.

LIEUTENANT: All right. We`re going to get in behind him and pick him up, all right?

2nd OFFICER: Wait a minute, wait a minute. He`s wailing to get across the street. I think. Yeah, he`s going to go north.

LIEUTENANT: See the Cadillac? That`s the target.

2nd OFFICER: Yeah, he`s going to check with--

MacNEIL [voice-over]: Although this surveillance might contribute to the eventual prosecution of this target, the police chose not to arrest him just then. To protect themselves from burglars still on the loose, homeowners in Tucson are seeking a variety of preventive measures. To start with, they can fortify their homes. The police offer free security advice.

POLICE OFFICER: First thing is. we`re not going to depend on this lock to lock the door with, okay `

HOMEOWNER: Good. yeah.

OFFICER: What we`re going to put on the door is a deadbolt but it has a thumb turn on the inside. You don`t have to have a key on the inside to open it up. If you look at this window, can you see anything beyond that bush at all?

HOMEOWNER: No.

OFFICER: You could take away the hiding space. That should come down to about so [rinsing his arm] height.

MacNEIL [voice-over]: For other residents, safety at home means bars on windows and doors. After four burglaries, this house is being outfitted with a $2,000 alarm system.

ALARM SALESMAN: To turn the system on, I program the number "5". Just press the number 5 twice. Now, if someone were to try to come in your home through that door, the moment that they open the door, they`re going to activate the alarm. Of course, the alarm is immediately transmitted to our central station, and we would be sending the police out to check on your welfare, and to check the premises.

1st RESIDENT: I don`t care how much you put on your house to protect it. If there`s a will, there`s a way that they really want to get in. they`re going to get in. And I just, you know, would like to be a little bit more mellow about it, and not be so afraid.

4th RESIDENT: I guess I`d like to live my life feeling as though I can trust people. I don`t like to feel that I must be paranoid. I find myself now walking through parking lots and looking over my shoulder to make sure that there`s nobody following me out to my car. And I feel ridiculous doing that. I feel as though I should not have to feel so vulnerable.

MacNEIL [voice-over]: And. at an Episcopal church, the city`s rising crime rate has had a discouraging effect.

Father KEITH KREITNER, St. Paul`s Episcopal Church: Well, this is a very loving congregation, and they have willingly followed leadership, and a role in which you try to reach out and help everyone. We keep our doors open so that we could be of service, and that we could be carrying on the work of the church. The ladies made sandwiches and bagged it up so that they wouldn`t-- people wouldn`t be inconvenienced. We gave it to them. We had Christmas baskets. Thanksgiving baskets, and all of this sort of thing that went on. And now what has happened with the crime, with the burglaries, with the vandalism -- everybody has withdrawn from this loving and generous feeling that they had towards helping each other. Now. they feel that we simply cannot afford to do this anymore because of what is happening to us. and they have forced us to take a negative attitude towards them.

ULRICH HAIBACH, Gun Range Manager [giving instruction]: Okay There`s seven yards. That`s just about the average of where most situations-- Drop the slide. Slowly squeeze. [Gunshot] Okay.

WOMAN AT GUN RANGE: I bought a gun for home protection, and I thought I`d better come and learn to shoot it. I just feel that if somebody breaks into my home and they`re armed and I`m armed. I`m going to do my best to protect myself.

Mr. HAIBACH: The gun is a last measure. It`s a last desperate attempt. It`s when you fear for your life -- when you`re in reasonable fear of your life. Then you-- then you can use it if you have made that decision beforehand.

1st RESIDENT: I had to go out and buy a gun, one that I was would be capable of shooting and protecting myself, not a little .22 where the person could still come after you--- something that could stop a person from coming any further. I told my daughter yesterday that there was going to be a gun in the house, and it was going to be visible, and guns kill. You do not play with them. And she`s-- you know, here she is panicky, you know. "I`m scared." I says. "Be scared. That`s the way you should be. But don`t be foolish. Don`t touch it." You know, whether we`re going to show her how to use the gun. I don`t know. That I haven`t discussed.

HUSBAND: Later--

1st RESIDENT: Later. I don`t-- it`s very scary. I just-- you know. like, when he does come home or something, I just wonder, you know, whether I`m going to have to shout. "Who`s there?" or something, you know, if I have the gun. because I am-- I`m going to be more aware, and I hope I don`t get panicky at night.

HUSBAND: Well, I always announce-- I announce myself, even if I am-- If I am late, say, if I-- I`ve had an occasion where I did come home, was riding with someone, and didn`t have my doorkey. And i always make-- I always make it a point to announce myself, and tell her who it is. And of course, we have a little peephole in the door so. you know, there`s a-- it`s pretty safe. I`m there. I stand there, you know. She`ll turn the porchlight on. I`ll say it`s me. and she`ll look and sec that it is. Somebody`s kicking the door down -- that`s a different story. I mean, you`re in the house, and somebody`s knocking your front door down, I`d say shoot `em.

MacNEIL: [voice-over]: The growth of violent crime has also caused an increased level of stress among police. This incident started as a domestic quarrel. But when officers responded, the woman suddenly fired her rifle at them. They returned the fire, and she was critically wounded.

WILLIAM GILKINSON, Tucson Police Chief: I think many young people come into our police field with the purpose in mind to help people. And we all start out that way, and eventually, I think you`re familiar that many policemen become very cynical as time goes on. I think the officer feels this frustration level when he realizes he may not be able to do all of the things that he thought he would do. That he would not be able to stop the family violence at home, or he`s not able to resolve the gang problem and some kid out on the comer is stabbed. And our psychologist will tell us now because of the stress factor, the individual may experience some marital problems, some drug problems of his own. or alcoholism.

Dr. HAROLD RUSSELL, Police Psychologist: This is the first 10 days of March And we`ve already had over 60 counseling contacts. And most of it is in terms of job-related stress. And that`s in a commissioned officer force of approximately 500 or 600.

4th RESIDENT: For the community at large, the problem is going to be that, given the City of Tucson Police Department is losing manpower -- people power -- obviously, the police aren`t going to be able to solve the problem. It is going to have to-- I think the only hope is that which lies in people taking it upon themselves to try to do something -- to identify what it is that makes them vulnerable, and what they can do about it.

MacNEIL: [voice-over]: With the police having difficulty reducing crime, the people of Tucson have found new ways to protect themselves. The residents of this block invited the Police Department to help them start a neighborhood watch program.

AL BRITT, Tucson Police Crime Prevention Officer: This is your first in a series of neighborhood watch meetings. I`m officer Al Britt, I work with the Tucson Police Department crime prevention unit. You yourselves have shown that you`re concerned about your neighborhood. You`ve shown an interest in your neighborhood. After all whose neighborhood is it? Is it yours? Or do you come home at night, lock the front door, and turn the street out here over to burglars, prowlers, vandals? Neighborhood watch is exactly that -- neighbors watching after neighbors. It only makes sense. Who knows this area better than you? I mean, you live here. Some of you may have lived here for quite some time. We`re not asking you to go out and become vigilantes. We`re asking you to watch after your neighborhood. If you see something that is suspicious, call us. Let us take the action.

MacNEIL [voice-over]: Another novel program is called "88 Crime." It`s aimed at getting citizens to call in with information relating to crimes.

SUSAN MOORE, 88 Crime Program: The police are overburdened with cases, and thev don`t have enough manpower to handle the number of cases that come in. With this program we have leads on cases that the officers don`t have. For every crime that`s committed, there`s somebody usually besides the bad person -- the criminal -- that knows about what happened. And this is what we`re looking for -- the people that have knowledge of the crime to call us and help us solve it.

MacNEIL [voice-over]: The 88 Crime program films reenactments of crime incidents such as this fatal hit and run. and broadcasts them on local TV. This was a homicide re-enactment.

NARRATOR: On Thursday night. September 18th. Laura and some friends went to the Green Dolphin Bar on Park Avenue. She was seen talking to a white male, approximately 25 years old. He introduced her to a black male. They talked for a while and Laura left the bar at about 11:25. The black man left at the same time. That was the last time Laura Webster was seen alive. At 7:30 the following morning, her body was found wrapped in a sheet in the Santa Cruz River bed. She had apparently been thrown from the 22nd Street bridge.

Ms. MOORE [on phone with citizen informant]: 88 Crime.

MacNEIL [voice-over]: Calls resulting from these local broadcasts come into this office at the courthouse.

Ms. MOORE: There is a very large reward being offered in this case. Do you know what he was in jail for? And he said he snuffed some blond? He strangled her? What made you think that he might have done it in that time frame? Do you know when he went into jail? Or how he`d been in Tucson at that time? Why he was in Maricopa?

MacNEIL [voice-over]: At the University, the students have instituted their own crime prevention programs, including an escort service.

Ms. ARMSTRONG: What the escort service is is a service that, men will be able to walk women on different areas of campus in the evening lime. Then we`ll send over a male escort with an I.D. badge on, and he`ll be able to go over and walk with that woman to wherever she needs to go, whether it`s over to the computer center, from her dorm to the library, or back from the library to her dormitory or sorority.

MacNEIL [voice-over]: For an increasing number of Tucson residents, living with crime means being a victim.

PAUL FORGACH, Victim Witness Program: Probably the most neglected person in the criminal justice system has been the victim. The victim has been disregarded: his feelings have been disregarded. Information has been lacking to the victims. They`ve been so disgruntled and so frustrated with the criminal justice system that they probably would not participate in the criminal justice system again. So one of our goals is to help them to make that a good experience so that they`re more willing to testify in court.

MacNEIL [voice-over]: Paul Forgach. coordinates Tucson`s unique victim- witness program which helps victims recover from trauma, and makes sure they provide effective testimony in court. On this day. Forgach counsels an assault victim. He was grabbed on the street by three men. and brought to this spot in the desert.

VICTIM: After I was kicked around some, and I was thrown down on the ground, the guy climbed up on me, put his knees on my arms and shoulders, and he stuck his thumbs in my eyes. He just grabbed my head, you know, and started pushing his thumbs into my eyes. After I was laying there. 1 couldn`t get up any more. I was just kind of laying there, and the guy straddled me. and he urinated on me. you know.

Mr. FORGACH: You think he was trying to make sure that you`d never see again?

VICTIM: It seemed to me that way. If I hadn`t of screamed out and told him that 1 was blinded at the time, he may have literally pulled my eyes completely out of my head. He wanted to make sure that I was blinded and maybe couldn`t identify him.

Mr. FORGACH: Have you ever been in a courtroom?

VICTIM: Not in a jury trial, no.

Mr. FORGACH: One thing you might want to do is just come by and let us kind of show you a courtroom, let you sit down in the chair, and sort of get you familiar with those surroundings. Would that interest you?

VICTIM: Uh huh.

Mr. FORGACH: And when you do go to court, you`re going to sit in the witness chair and they`re going to swear you in. and you`re going to be sitting right across from that defendant, and you`re going to have to identify him. And say, "Yeah, that`s the guy that did it." And how do you feel about doing that?

VICTIM: Well, I haven`t seen this guy since the assault. And my main concern is possibly, you know, his friends and family would also be in the courtroom, and do you think I would have to give my address over the stand, and you know, would I have to announce-- welt. I know my name-- would I have to announce my address in the courtroom?

Mr. FORGACH: You`re saying that they may get back at you: they may visit your house. What do you feel they might do?

VICTIM: Well, it would be like a retaliatory type of thing. I think. You know, like James Cagney. "I`m going to get you because you got my big brother," you know. That type of thing.

MacNEIL (voice-over}: That assault victim, like many other Tucson residents, came to the sunbelt to escape the problems of northern cities. Now. the alternatives seem few.

1st RESIDENT`S HUSBAND: I think I could move to a small town and I would still have that fear in the back of my mind that there`s a potential possibility that I could get robbed.

JOHN LONG, Arizona Star: You could go to maybe a Jackson Hole, someplace in some mountain in Montana. Mt. St. Helens -- but very few places in America thai you can probably still go and avoid crime.

MacNEIL: Now, for perspective on how people are coping with crime across the nation. It comes from Wesley Skogan, Associate Professor of Political Science at Northwestern University. Mr. Skogan recently completed a four- and-a-half-year study on victimization, fear, and reactions to crime for the Center for Urban Affairs. Mr. Skogan. Tucson citizens -- at least the ones we saw -- seem very activist. Is that typical, or do some communities just accept their fate, and not attempt to resist it?

WESLEY SKOGAN: Robin. I think Tucson seemed to be really a typical city. You saw a mixture of more innovative, citizen-based activities to try to prevent crime in the neighborhoods along with a mixture of some new police activities and new police programs to attempt to do something about the crime problem.

MacNEIL: Are those citizen activity programs more useful because they actually do reduce crime, or more useful because they reduce the fear level in the citizens, and let them feel that they`re regaining control of their neighborhoods?

Mr. SKOGAN: I think our research would indicate pretty clearly that it`s really the effect of these things on community morale that are in the long run the most important. What happens when communities lose control of events that take place there is that fear begins to spiral: crime grows because people withdraw from community life, from community participation, and as a result, fear of crime can cause further escalating crime rates. When people get involved in the kinds of activities that we`ve been looking at here in the film, and when the police are involved in these kinds of innovative activities, what happens is that communities can gain a sense of control over events that are taking place there. They can begin to assert their values, and to control things that take place. And this is very important in holding together communities, to keep cities from splitting apart, keep people from moving to the suburbs, and to maintaining people`s morale.

MacNEIL: Would you-- as you said, fear can lead to or be a part of a spiral of violence and destruction. Is there then, would you say. constructive fear and destructive fear?

Mr. SKOGAN: Very much so. Certainly, to a certain extent, a bit of anxiety and watchfulness is very important. It`s important that citizens be careful and watchful when they`re going about their daily activities. But there clearly is a point at which the spiral of crime and fear can take on a destructive tone where-- we saw the minister talking about the decline of organizational life in his community -- about how people had withdrawn from public, collective activity, how organizations were finding it harder to find participants. We saw several people testifying about how they had become more suspicious and more withdrawn, more watchful and really overly careful in routine, day-to-day activities. Now, when you get this kind of community withdrawal, and you get this kind of decline in community participation, then the consequences are very serious. Very serious for communities.

MacNEIL: What are the consequences?

Mr. SKOGAN: The consequences can be--- well, we saw here even in the case of Tucson, of people wanting to leave the city, to move away. And this is one of the factors that has been behind increasing suburbanization around our big northern industrial cities.

MacNEIL: More typical of the older, decaying city centers in the Northeast than in places like Tucson.

Mr. SKOGAN: Very much so. What we`re seeing in Tucson is really the urbanization of America. As the country has been picked up by the state of Maine, and people are all sliding south and west in this big demographic revolution that`s taking place, cities like Tucson are becoming more like the traditional cities of the north and east.

MacNEIL: If fear can have its destructive side, are Americans more afraid of crime than they need to be?

Mr. SKOGAN: I think that there`s a great deal of what we might call formless or inchoate fear-- people`s concern about social change, anxiety, racial tension -- things that become translated as fear of crime. And that this kind of concern really doesn`t have many creative outlets. Certainly, when people are concerned about particular kinds of crime, when they`re concerned about the risk of burglary in their neighborhood, when street crime -- vandalism -- becomes a problem, and they get mobilized behind particular activities aimed at preventing or reducing particular kinds of crime, that`s very good. In that kind of case, concern about crime makes a very positive contribution. But this kind of formless fear which causes the suspicion and the sense of frustration because people don`t know what to do -- they have no mechanism for dealing with those kinds of concerns -- that`s the kind of fear that`s really destructive. That`s the kind of fear that doesn`t lead to any creative or imaginative kinds of crime reduction activities.

MacNEIL: There has been an awful lot of attention to crime, particularly violent crime, in the last few months in the media. Are the American media, taken as a whole, making Americans more afraid than they need to be to be constructive in the way they are dealing with crime?

Mr. SKOGAN: I don`t think so. I think that, while certainly the media have not been very constructive in the sense that they tend to focus on kinds of crimes that are uncommon in everyday life, and they tend to focus on the kinds of victims who really aren`t often victims of crime. So in that sense the media have been portraying a very unrealistic picture of crime. I`m not sure the extent to which media presentations really affect people`s estimates of their own risks and perceptions about crime in their own neighborhoods. Our own research would indicate that, in fact, when you get close to home and when you talk about people`s neighborhoods and concerns for themselves and their family, that they`re relatively unaffected by what they see in the media, what they read in newspapers and what they see on television. Now, the case of Tucson is interesting because we saw that dramatic reenactment of crimes that was taking place. And I think, based on our work, that that kind of personalization, where people were encouraged on the media and on the news to think of themselves as being like the victims that were` being portrayed-- I mean, the crime was really being displayed as in a soap opera. This is a reenactment that makes the crime look more like that melodrama that comes across until about noon every day.

MacNEIL: Is that a useful thing to do?

Mr. SKOGAN: I think that this is certainly bound to generate more fear and anxiety.

MacNEIL: And not direct it into constructive channels?

Mr. SKOGAN: Certainly the presentation gives people no clues as to what they could do to protect themselves. It gives people no clues as to the kinds of things that could help alleviate these kinds of crimes. It was really directed much more at heightening their anxiety.

MacNEIL: And to lower the level of people`s anxiety, you need that specific kind of knowledge of what they can constructively do -- such as some of those other citizens were doing -- is that it?

Mr. SKOGAN: That`s exactly right. I think the citizen education programs like we saw people gathered together in someone`s living room with a specialist coming, talking to them about the kinds of problems that really, typically occur in their neighborhood -- that kind of education is very important.

MacNEIL: Well, thank you very much for joining us this evening. That`s all for tonight. Jim Lehrer and I will be back tomorrow night. I`m Robert MacNeil. Good night.