SOCIETY HAS ANSWERED ITS QUESTIONS ON VIOLENCE
Plain Dealer, The (Cleveland, OH) - July 26, 1995
Author: Dick Feagler

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Thirty years ago, the knife murder of a New York barmaid named Kitty Genovese plunged America into an anguished national seminar about crime.

Ms. Genovese was stabbed 17 times outside her Queens apartment building. Her cries for help were heard by many of her neighbors, yet no one came to her rescue. And there is no record that anybody even called the police while she was screaming.

Back then, there was no echo chamber of round-the-clock tabloid talk shows to cash in on the exploitation of horror and misery. Even so, the name Kitty Genovese became a name that America knew. Editorial writers and commentators thundered their concerns from coast to coast. Ms. Genovese became more than a victim. She became a symbol. Her life came to its sudden and violent end not with a period but with a question mark.

From time to time an event occurs that forces America to look into the mirror and ask itself blunt questions. The questions that America asked itself back in 1964 were these:

Have we become so accustomed to acts of violence, and so puny and powerless in the face of them, that we greet them with nervous apathy? Have we begun a numb retreat from a war we feel we can't win?

It is good when America asks itself hard questions. Unfortunately, such questions are usually treated as rhetorical. So the issues that the Genovese murder raised 30 years ago were not frankly answered. But now, time has answered them.

In the 1960s, America had three police officers for every violent crime committed. In the '90s, there are three violent crimes for every police officer. In order to make the police-criminal ratio the same as it was 30 years ago, we would have to add 5 million cops to the national police force.

As some civil rights activists have pointed out, violent death has found its favorite hunting ground in the inner-city black communities. Black people are murdered at seven times the rate of whites. The Department of Justice reports that one out of every 21 black men can expect to be a homicide victim. That's a death rate double that of American servicemen in World War II.

In 1990, the rate of homicides committed by whites was 5.7 per 100,000 population. The rate by blacks was 44.7 per 100,000. African-Americans and whites are uncomfortable with these numbers for reasons quite apart from their self-contained devastation. In a society where racial polarization is the No. 1 domestic problem, uttering such statistics opens the door to charges of racism.

But Rep. John Lewis of Georgia, a famed African-American civil rights veteran, pulled no punches in a speech before Congress.

"All across the nation, black communities are under an assault of crime and violence that is without precedent in our history," he said. "Under the savage assault, it is not too much to say that the low-income black community is disintegrating and violence and crime are the order of the day."

So the questions raised by the Kitty Genovese murder have been answered. Yes, we have become accustomed to acts of violence. Yes, we feel puny and powerless in the face of them. We fight them mainly with speeches as we retreat and abandon more real estate to lawbreakers and their helpless victims who can't afford a moving van and a high-priced home in a safe suburb.

But, from time to time, something happens that jerks us awake. The murder of Vincent Drost in Lakewood two weeks ago was such an event. I live in Lakewood, and I wrote about Drost and said I would continue to write about him.

I've had plenty of company. TV and print journalists have done many stories on the Drost slaying. And, because Drost was white and his alleged murderers were not, some blacks and whites have complained that the Drost murder or its attendant notoriety were about color.

But I think Drost's death was one of those events that forces all of us to look into the mirror. And what we confront is a society that must be changed. A society in which African-Americans are the biggest victims with the smallest megaphones. Forced, as usual, to wait until fear strikes the suburbs and action is demanded.

The action can begin in small ways. Several of the 300 people who called me after Vincent Drost 's death urged me to read an article titled "The Crisis of Public Order" by Adam Walinsky in the July issue of the Atlantic Monthly.

The statistics in this column come from that article. It's my turn now to urge you to read it and to read the speech by Rep. Lewis reprinted in the same issue.

The screams of 100,000 Americans killed by strangers in the last decade are in Walinski's piece. Read it and you will have to admit you hear them. That's a start. Then we'll talk some more.

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