Who can Arrest You?

Sometimes I think this whole world

Is one big prison yard.

Some of us are prisoners--

The rest of us are guards.

--Bob Dylan

In the lobby of a large Chicago office building, a rotund, well-dressed black man is leaning across the cigarette counter, teasing the female clerk, whom he apparently knows. He pinches her cheek and she squeals. As he leans farther and farther across the counter, the vent of his suit coat opens, revealing a fat, blue-black Smith Model 19 .357 revolver snugly holstered to his belt. People stare at it but say nothing. The man finishes his fun unaware that his hog leg is showing, buys a candy bar and walks away smiling.

A number of things came to mind later. For one thing, the registered guns in Chicago alone numbered more than half a million in 1975, enough to outfit 30 Army divisions. To get the total number, including unregistered guns, double, triple or quadruple the figure, as the mood strikes you. If you include the rest of the country, there are more than enough guns to arm every man, woman, child and foreign tourist. That seems an equitable arrangement, since anyone who walks the streets of a major city unarmed does so at considerable risk. So maybe this guy's just a reasonable and cautious individual. On the other hand, Chicago is the world-famous capital of gangsters. He could simply be someone's lieutenant, chauffeur, hit man or bodyguard. A third alternative: Crime is on the upswing. Maybe he's in the habit of committing crimes and needs the handgun in his line of work--a tool of the trade, so to speak. However, I finally decided he must have been a cop and that I wouldn't have been justified in calling the cops to have him disarmed. The reason is that the place--every place--is crawling with cops.

There is no question whatsoever in the minds of people who know me that I am paranoid. But that doesn't alter the fact that approximately one out of every 75 people in the civilian labor force works for the security industry--and it is an industry. It is five times larger than the two-billion-dollar-a-year mortuary-and-funeral industry, although I suppose there's some poetic justice in that. The vast numbers of police in this country make our 379,748 M.D.s look like some obscure little group of stained-glass-window repairmen. The total number of cops in city, suburban, county and state forces alone is half a million. Add to that another half million private police, approximately 33 Federal departments and agencies employing nearly 170,000 people in police-type activities and emergency forces of 900,000, and you have one impressive group. And comparing the money spent on security with the Highway Trust Fund is like comparing General Motors with The Rolling Stones. Ten billion dollars was spent in 1974 for security, about $50 for every citizen in the country. That is several billion dollars more than all foreign countries spent in 1974 buying arms from us.

I can safely say that I am a remarkably law-abiding citizen. I keep well clear of your "major crimes"--murder, grand larceny, kidnaping, interfering with a flight crew, armed robbery, high treason and forcible rape. The statute of limitations ran out long ago on any lesser crimes I might have committed: possession of a controlled substance, shoplifting (I admit, when I was a kid I stole cigarettes from Henkin's grocery in Houston), borrowing a car with intent to cruise, loitering, vagrancy, vandalism, demonstrating without a permit, drinking under age, creating a public health hazard and/or nuisance, and so on. And as far as your minor crimes go--well, let me just say that I received a citation from the driver-services department of the Illinois secretary of state's office, for superior driving habits after going three years without a moving violation. Now that they are putting people away for parking tickets, I scrupulously pay or avoid them. I even walk with the light.

Yet I am constantly aware of the likelihood that I will get in trouble with the law. When I see a policeman, I often feel itchy, like I'd rather be elsewhere. And I ask myself, is this rational? Am I suffering from a neurotic condition? Is the place, in fact, crawling with cops? Are they really out to get me? The answer to the last two questions is yes--emphatically. The security industry (it includes all cops in all forms) admits that the average white man's chances of getting arrested sometime in his life for suspicion of a crime other than a traffic violation are two in five. In cities, he runs a 58 percent risk. For black men who live in large cities, the chances of getting arrested begin to approach one in one. So I have concluded that, indeed, the place is crawling with cops.

The National Security Agency (NSA) is the largest police-type Government agency, with an estimated 25,000 employees and a 1.2-billion-dollar annual budget (not part of the ten billion dollars already mentioned), making the CIA's $750,000,000 look puny by comparison. Although the NSA doesn't admit to having any armed, sworn, conventional policemen, it does feed information to other agencies. For example, 1100 pages of NSA documents on U. S. citizens were turned over to the CIA's Operation Chaos--and CIA agents do carry guns and whisk people away. (I say this in spite of the fact that I called the CIA and was assured that no CIA personnel are allowed to carry guns or to detain citizens, which is patent bullshit.) So we can view the NSA as the cops' little helper, though if we do that, it complicates the situation somewhat, because other little helpers include A.T.&T., I.T.T., Western Union, RCA and a smattering of other global businesses that like to cooperate with the Government ... which would make almost all of us cops in some way.

As for the question of whether or not they are out to get me, you may judge for yourself. The FBI alone processes on the order of 29,000 fingerprints a day. What for? In 1974, 9,100,000 arrests were made in the U. S. Arrests are on the rise, so it's possible that the 1976 figure will approach 10,000,000. Does this mean that five percent of the people in this country are criminals? Not exactly: Only 81 percent of those arrested in 1974 were even prosecuted. That means 1,729,000 of the arrests were mistakes, a number greater than the population of Houston. If all those people got together and talked about it, that would be one angry group. But of the 81 percent who were prosecuted, only 61 percent were convicted as charged. Nine percent were convicted of a lesser charge. Put another way, during one year, about 3,900,000 people not only were wrongly arrested but were hung up in the courts for a considerable length of time, paying lawyers and spending a goodly sum of our tax money. And that number of people is greater than the population of Chicago. Are they out to get me?

In law enforcement, 43 percent in muffed arrests is not a score that inspires confidence. Something is obviously wrong. Perhaps we live in a police state.

"Police state: A country or other political unit in which the government exercises rigid and repressive controls over the social, economic and political life, especially by means of a secret police force." The secret part shouldn't give you any trouble. The New York Times reported recently that there are 10,000 undercover cars in New York City on any given day. When questioned about this, the officials who had released the figure revised it downward to 1100 with no explanation. The figure came out because those cars were getting and not paying their parking tickets, costing the city about $3,300,000 a year. The cost of tickets for all government cars was about $6,000,000. If every government car averaged ten dollars a day in parking tickets, that would work out to 16,438 cars--though not necessarily all undercover. Then there are the undercover guys who have to walk.

•

A man on the way to his father's funeral pulled his car to the side of the road, apparently to control his grief, and a state highway patrolman, who was mistakenly informed the car was stolen, shot and killed him. --A.P.

The most common justification for having all these police is that they are needed to stop crime. The arrest vs. conviction rate puts the lie to that, but it is also known that while the number of police per citizen has been steadily going up, so has the crime rate. The number of police seems to have no effect on the number of crimes. Furthermore, during a recent police strike in Albuquerque, the crime rate actually went down. There are several possible explanations for this. One is that criminals play fair. Another is that the police themselves commit most crimes. It's also possible that Albuquerque is such a dangerous city even the criminals were afraid to go out without police protection. In the end, no one knows why the crime rate dropped.

But there may, in fact, be arguments for decreasing the number of police. For one thing, they are dangerous. In 1974 in Chicago, for example, police shot and killed 33 citizens. None of them was punished for the shootings. Citizens, by contrast, killed only four policemen. All four citizens were tried and convicted or else were summarily shot. According to one (continued on page 112)Who Can Arrest You?(continued from page 108) study, Chicago cops were responsible for more than half of the total police slayings of citizens in eight cities. Los Angeles police killed 37 in 1974; New York, 47; Philadelphia, 24. These figures are in a range typical of large-city police forces. I tried to find out how many citizens were killed by police in the entire country in one year, but no one would say. Either the matter is so trivial that they don't keep count or the number is so large that releasing it would be embarrassing. Either way, such incidents are investigated by other police. A state's attorney's office usually sends out an investigator as well, but in 1974, only one officer was criminally charged in connection with such a shooting. If we use the same rate of error that was exhibited in arrests (which may or may not be applicable--no other rate was provided), we can assume that 19 percent of these shootings were outright mistakes or murders. And an additional nine percent of the victims were shot for lesser crimes. When a policeman kills a citizen, there is usually a lot of talk about how dangerous the job is. However, in a study published by Paul Takagi in 1974, it was pointed out that it is more dangerous to be a farmer (the accidental-death rate is 55 per 100,000) than a cop (33 per 100,000). Furthermore, the study shows that some cops are shot with their own guns, occasionally by fellow officers. It is interesting to note that cops kill blacks at a rate nine or ten times higher than the rate for whites and way out of proportion to the difference between black and white arrest rates.

Who are these cops? What can they do to you? Where do they come from? The Constitution has provisions for states to set up their own police forces. State constitutions in turn provide for cities to set up theirs. If you and a few of your friends want to go out and get some land, apply to the state for a charter, fulfill a few requirements of the state's constitution, you can have your own police force. Gonzales, Wyoming. The Gonzales Police Department. If we shoot you, we investigate your death. What are our powers? We can get our mayor (me) to authorize us to purchase class-three firearms such as automatic weapons, grenade launchers, machine guns, tanks, bazookas, sawed-off shotguns. We can then form our own S.W.A.T. (Special Weapons and Tactics) team, in case we have a terrorist problem. If we have a bigger problem, we can get the state to call out some of the estimated 500,000 Army and Air National Guardsmen or some of the 400,000 Federal Reserve forces. In short, we could waste you.

If the President wants more police, he can appoint them. All he needs to do is get Congress to appropriate the money, as it did when Nixon decided he wanted the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA). Then he just names a few people, gives them guns and away they ride with full power.

There are at least 2200 DEA agents. The IRS has 2577 armed special agents. The Treasury Department operates Customs. There are a possible 6000 Customs agents empowered to carry guns and arrest you. They can also impound your property and refuse to give it back. A pilot I know named Lorraine Denby recently flew back from Canada in her private plane. When she landed, the Customs agent wasn't there to meet her as he was supposed to be and the tower told her to come in and wait for him. When the agent showed, he told her leaving the plane was a crime and he was going to impound it. She may never have seen her $30,000 Cherokee Arrow again. Fortunately, she calmed the man down and convinced him she hadn't run any heroin into the country. Lucky he didn't put her into the "big computer." There are currently 500 terminals hooked up to the Treasury Enforcement Communications System in San Diego, designed to scan "lookout lists." If you're ever going through Customs and they ask your name and birth date, that is what they are doing. In a few seconds, they'll have a readout from the FBI, the National Crime Information Center, the National Law Enforcement Telecommunications Systems (linking local law-enforcement groups with the Federal Government), the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, the Internal Revenue Service and Interpol. And since the National Security Agency has been known to monitor phone calls and cables of a minimum of 7605 people and groups in the U. S. for such things as drug trafficking, terrorism and foreign support of civil disturbances (whatever those are), it is entirely possible the big computer hooks into the NSA as well. God forbid you're on the wrong side of one of those agencies, because the Customs man is authorized to arrest you on the spot for virtually any crime committed anywhere in the United States.

Any publicly appointed policeman can impound your property, but it's easier for some than for others. For example, if the city cops tow your car away, it's usually not very difficult to get it back. But the IRS has 6520 revenue officers who play fast and loose in their scavenger hunts for valuables. A painter, working on the house of someone being investigated by the IRS, had his Porsche parked out front when the agents went by. They took it. The painter was associating with someone who owed the IRS money. He didn't see his sports car again for more than half a year. IRS agents are empowered to carry guns and arrest you.

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms is part of the Treasury Department. It was established to bust moonshiners, gunrunners and--I don't know--chain smokers? There are 1700 armed agents of that bureau. The Secret Service has 2224 agents. There are 70 Treasury Security Force Officers guarding the U. S. Treasury. U. S. marshals number 94 and carry a force of 1700 deputies. The Border Patrol employs 1800 officers. The CIA refuses to reveal how many people it employs, but figures commonly seen in the press are in the range of 12,000 to 16,000. Who they are, what they do, is anybody's guess, but, as recent investigations have shown, they should be considered armed and dangerous. People involved in police-work employed by Federal agencies number 169,625. Almost every agency you can think of has police. To name a few: the Department of Agriculture, the Department of Commerce, the National Bureau of Standards, the Office of Minority Business Enterprise, the Defense Intelligence Agency, the Defense Mapping Agency, the Department of Health, Education and Welfare, the Department of Housing and Urban Development, the Bureau of Mines, the Bureau of Indian Affairs, the Civil Disturbance Unit of the Department of Justice, the Department of Labor, the Department of Transportation, the Government Printing Office, the Bureau of the Mint, the Atomic Energy Commission, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Library of Congress, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the National Gallery of Art, the U. S. Postal Service--all have cops of one kind or another. Then there are agents of individual states' departments of natural resources and, the largest single group, private police.

There are about 500,000 private police in the U. S. Companies such as Brink's, Andy Frain and Purolator employ many of them for hire. Many are self-employed, hired guns. The Rand Corporation studied the private guard, for example, and described him as an "aging white male, poorly educated, usually untrained and very poorly paid." The private investigator, it said, is younger and usually has finished high school. "The training a private guard currently receives before beginning work is typically no more than eight to twelve hours, and many guards ... receive less than two hours' training." Put in simple terms, according to Rand, we have an armed, ignorant army of half a million, legally operating within the continental United States. And Rand Corporation is not known as your typical group of raving paranoids.

In a study of plant guards, Rand found that 29 percent were given guns. Only eight percent of the plants, however, had trained the men in the use of firearms. Rand devised a questionnaire to see how likely these private police were to make a (continued on page 196)Who Can Arrest You?(continued from page 112)"mistake" in the line of duty. Over 99 percent made at least one mistake. The average was over ten mistakes. More important, over 97 percent made "major mistakes," which means actions with potential criminal or civil liabilities (such as shooting or maiming someone). On the average, there were 3.7 major mistakes per man.

Who these guards are, where they come from, who controls them are questions that remain to be answered. No state has a comprehensive law for regulating private cops. Some states have virtually no laws concerning private police. In such a state, you can start your own police force without even bothering to become a city first. Gonzales Security Agency, for example. Then maybe I could get a few armored cars and take money out of banks. And I could certainly get some interesting information: Private police have access to police and FBI records. A security executive quoted by Rand: "Although it's illegal, from time immemorial we have paid the city police department for police records."

That kind of inside information should give private police a good measure of flexibility. But then what will they do with it? No telling: More than half of these private police did not know what their powers are. When asked, 31 percent thought it was a crime if someone called them pig. Less than half of them knew that the only arrest powers they have are the same ones any private citizen has. Seventeen percent said they would use "deadly force" to stop someone from committing a felony. The only problem with that is almost none of them knew the difference between a felony and a misdemeanor. Twenty percent were willing to use deadly force to stop extensive property damage. Deadly force means that they would shoot you.

Warning No Trespassing

Armed Guards On Duty

Will Arrest Violators

Pape Security Service

That sign appeared on the construction site of the new Water Tower Place on Michigan Avenue in Chicago. Is it legal if they arrest you? Probably not. Is there anything you can do about it? Probably not. Actions and claims by citizens against private police are generally not settled by payment of damages to the claimant.

When state and local regulatory agencies were asked by Rand to report complaints against private police, 17 of them responded. They reported 55 shootings, 22 violations of gun laws, 13 incidents of assault, 34 cases of impersonating a public police officer and eight murders. It is legal to resist unlawful arrest by a private police officer, but you probably shouldn't try it unless you happen to be a public policeman or he happens to be in traction.

With a significant degree of regularity, private police also engage in wire tapping, bugging, invasion of privacy, trespassing, theft and impersonating public police. Half the licensed detective agencies in one state were once under investigation simultaneously for possible violations of bugging and wire-tapping laws.

There is no system of legislation to cover the half million private police in the U. S. Their powers for the most part turn on the citizen's willingness to give consent. A property owner may legally prevent you from entering his place or eject you (a Frain usher can, for example, make you leave a Stones concert). But any force used must be what is cleverly known as "reasonable." In other words, if you refuse to leave the theater, they may carry you out. That is reasonable. They may not shoot you. That is unreasonable. If, however, you hit one of the guards when he tries to carry you out and he then shoots you, that may be judged a reasonable force by a court. It would be up to the judge and jury.

Under the temporary-detention guidelines (i.e., probable cause), the private police may ask you some questions. For example, a floorwalker thinks you are shoplifting. You, of course, do not have to answer his questions. Furthermore, it may be illegal for him to question you in public, as it could constitute slander, which is an actionable offense similar to libel and invasion of privacy. But in most cases, in order to get you into a private place to question you, he must have your consent. Therefore, to clear up the matter, he might want to search you. His right to do that is extremely unclear. It may or may not be legal, but even if illegal, it's probable that your only recourse is a civil or criminal suit, unless you can convince the D.A. to pursue a criminal-assault charge. In any case, if the guard does search you, it must be done with the least force and embarrassment possible. In other words, if you are walking down the aisle in Saks, checking out the double knits, and a fullback in plain clothes flashes his shield, tosses you against the wall and pats you down while all the customers watch, that private policeman may have committed a crime and, if so, you have as much right to act as a private policeman and arrest him as he does you (i.e., none--unless what he did was, in fact, a crime, in which case you have the power to make a citizen's arrest). Unlike public police, who are bound by law to inform you of your rights, private police may proceed without so much as a "May I?"

•

Charles is a white musician who plays in a black neighborhood. While unloading sound equipment behind a night club one afternoon, he saw two blacks running toward him and did what any smart white boy would do in that part of town. He went into the club and shut the door. A few minutes later, the two men came into the club through another door, drew guns, grabbed him and dragged him into the rest room, where they were about to hammer on him with their firearms when the club owner came in and said Charles was OK people and to leave him alone. They were undercover cops, publicly appointed. They were not about to tell him his rights. And he had no way of distinguishing between publicly appointed muggers and private, run-of-the-mill muggers.

Stories like this abound. During the 1968 Democratic Convention, police stopped a man in downtown Chicago and asked him where he was going. He told them he was on his way to the convention. They asked who he was. He said Winston Churchill. They knocked his head in with a billy club. He was Winston Churchill (grandson of the Churchill). So much for foreign relations.

A friend of mine had this experience: His son and a buddy were drinking in a bar one night. When they left, the buddy went out the door first. A man got between him and my friend's son and grabbed his long black hair. He wouldn't let go. My friend's son took hold of the man and tried to make him stop. He still wouldn't let go. So the boy decked him, at which point he not only let go but lost consciousness--he also lost his service revolver. The two boys took his identification and gun--assuming he was a mugger--and when they got home and looked at the identification cards, they discovered that there was one from a state investigation bureau and another from the IRS. The state bureau told my friend, who phoned it to find out whether the agent was totally batshit or just following standard procedure, that the man no longer worked for it and was currently employed by the IRS. After phoning the IRS to hear its version of the story (and naturally refusing to identify himself but claiming he was a witness who knew the boys), he learned that the IRS had no version of it. It would tell him nothing except that he should turn the boys in to it.

Now, what would you do? The IRS wouldn't admit its man had done anything wrong. The night after the incident, the kids sent a couple of their friends to the bar to take a look. Every other stool was occupied by an agent, looking around. The boys reported that the guy was obviously drunk when the assault was committed.

Catch-22.

The I.D.s were burned. The gun was disposed of. The IRS agent was very lucky. He lost an eye in the scuffle. If it had been the father instead of the boy, the agent would have been shot. And that incident, by the way, would have gone into the statistics for cops murdered by citizens.

So it boils down to this: You may--should, in fact--resist a mugging and, under the citizen's-arrest common law, may detain the mugger, who is committing one or more of several crimes known variously as felonious assault, forcible rape, strong-arm robbery or attempted murder, depending on the circumstances. If the mugger happens to be a police officer, however, you may not resist him or you will be committing a crime known as resisting arrest or, perhaps, assaulting an officer. However, you may not require that the officer or the mugger take the time to identify himself so that you can make the distinction. Therefore, you must wait until the mugging is in progress before deciding whether or not to resist. It would be advisable, about halfway through the mugging, to ask, "Who are you?" and see if your attacker identifies himself as a policeman. He will generally do this by displaying a shield or a service revolver. Once you are sure the mugger is not a publicly appointed law officer, you may proceed with your resistance. But, given the number of police, chances are that the next time you find yourself being mugged, it could be by a police officer. Just statistically this makes sense, if we consider trussing up an innocent person and hauling him off against his will to be some form of mugging. Police pulled off 1,729,000 of those in 1974. They probably hit the Golden Blackjack (or 2,000,000) mark in 1975. And this brings us to an interesting moral and social bind.

In most circumstances, a citizen is expected to render aid when he sees someone committing a felony. If at the cigarette counter where I saw the gunman mentioned earlier I had jumped him from behind and held him until the uniformed cop directing traffic outside could be summoned, I might have been doing my duty as a responsible citizen--stopping a felony in progress (possession of a concealed weapon, unlawful use of a firearm). If he had turned out to be a cop (of any kind--FAA, BATF, IRS, Customs, Border Patrol, U. S. marshal, Secret Service, city, county, state, DEA, department of national resources, Metropolitan Enforcement Group or a private investigator licensed to carry the gun or any number of others legally doing so, such as CIA, Interpol, who knows?), if I had hammer-locked a legit gun-carrying member of the security force, I would have found myself in the deep shit. Therefore, in practical terms, it may be best not to try to stop felons, since the chances are good that they just appear to be felons and are really people doing the jobs you and I appointed them to do.

That sounds rash. But if you walked into a rest room and saw two guys with guns about to pistol-whip somebody, what would you think? Whatever you might think, if you interfere with police who are pistol-whipping someone, you may not be violating the law, but you will probably be supporting the two-billion-dollar-a-year funeral industry. No wonder crime is on the rise. Would a popular movement to render aid deter criminals? If a mugger knew that he couldn't successfully rob or molest someone with others watching, would he stop trying? Is there some truth in Death Wish? It is common to hear stories about 70 people on a subway platform watching, doing nothing, while a couple of dudes turn somebody's head into something that looks like a Celeste sausage pizza. It is entirely possible the observers may be making a safe assumption: Those are undercover policemen just doing their job and if we interfere we'll be in trouble.

Now, let me set something straight. As long as there are people willing to rob, rape or murder you, there will be some need to have cops or for each citizen to arm himself and do his own policework, which is no mean task. Barbara Gelb's recent book On the Track of Murder is the story of Sergeant McQueen's Manhattan Homicide Task Force, a commando squad that investigates unsolvable pervo murders. It does an incredible job against impossible odds. McQueen is the Saint Jude of homicide, the patron saint of hopeless cases. Officer Raymond Davis of the Evanston, Illinois, Police Department is a "good cop." One midnight, some drunken fool rammed my car, which was parked on the street. Officer Davis came along and saw what had happened (the guy was going so fast he pushed my car into another, which rammed a third, which rammed a fourth). Davis checked out the mess and picked up a piece of chrome that didn't match any of the four cars on the scene. It had a number on it. Davis traced it to the manufacturer and got the car model. Then he got a paint sample from the chrome scrap and went around the city looking for a beige 1973 Valiant. He found one that looked as if it had been in a wreck recently. The piece of chrome matched. He arrested the culprit. My damages were recovered. I hereby salute Officer Ray Davis.

I have relatives in San Antonio, Texas--wonderful guys--who are good cops.

But policemen like that are not typical and there is something unsettling about living day and night among so many cops. Count the cop shows on television. In one recent week, scanning just the evening listings in TV Guide, I counted 48 hours of what they refer to as "crime drama," which means cop shows. You could go home at six in the evening and watch cops on three TV sets until midnight seven days a week and still not catch all the crime dramas. By anybody's standards, that is an obsession. But more to the point, Kojak is not a cop. Neither are Matt Helm, McCloud, Peter Gunn, Pepper, Baretta, Cannon, a bunch of Rookies or a Squad of Mods. They are actors who play cartoonlike characters, who don't use bystanders for target practice, who have college degrees and are very concerned with "issues." And if I spent 40 hours a week working, 55 hours a week sleeping, 25 hours a week eating and then 48 hours a week watching cops, I would probably want to go out and shoot somebody, too.

An interesting note for the future: The number of public police increased four to five percent between 1973 and 1974. If that rate were to continue for all cops, at the turn of the century there would be a minimum of 2,250,000 cops, or the equivalent of 137 Army divisions.