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Turning to crime, Johnson listed a number of measures aimed at calming the roiled waters. Americans, he said, "recognize that law enforcement is first the duty of local police and local government." He added: "The front-line headquarters against crime is in the home and in the church and in the city hall and the county courthouse and the statehouse—not in far-removed Washington." But the Federal Government "can and should help the cities and the states in their war on crime, and this we shall do."
He told Congress that it confronted "no more urgent business" than passage of his Safe Streets Act with a $100 million authorization, double the amount he requested last year. He called for a gun-control law to halt "the trade in mail-order murder" (an appeal that roused Robert Kennedy to his only applause during the 50-minute speech). To end "the sale of slavery to the young," he called for a narcotics-control act that would impose harsher penalties for the sale of LSD "and other dangerous drugs," and urged adding 219 agents to the present total of 639 in the Narcotics Bureau and in the Health, Education and Welfare Department's Bureau of Drug Abuse Control. In addition, he asked Congress to authorize 128 more FBI agents, for a nationwide strength of 6,718.
Bolts on the Door. The President's concern with lawlessness was further emphasized by the First Lady. At a White House luncheon for 50 women "doers" that was disrupted by an outburst by Eartha Kitt, she declared that it would be all too easy to "take the lazy path by merely sounding the alarm and putting extra bolts on our door." Added Lady Bird: "I think more of us are tired of just being shocked and talking about it. There are things responsible citizens are doing in crime control, in prevention, in legislation."
Before a Chamber of Commerce meeting in Yonkers, N.Y., Bobby Kennedy proposed a three-point attack on the "explosion of violence and crime" that is "spreading like a cancer across the land," including more and better-paid policemen and greater attention to low-income neighborhoods. New York's Mayor John V. Lindsay, whose police force is trying to cope with a 22.7% upsurge in major crimes in the past year, warned of an increasing "polarization" between affluent whites and impoverished Negroes and Puerto Ricans in U.S. cities.
Outlet for Rage. Martin Luther King last week set in motion plans for a massive march on Washington around April 1 that he has described as a "last, desperate try at nonviolence" and "an outlet for the rage in the ghetto." But the time may have passed when King or anyone else can provide what he calls "an alternative to a long, hot summer." The riot commission appointed by Johnson after last summer's Detroit eruption has reportedly concluded that where normal channels for achieving change are choked off, Negroes have often found revolt the most effective way of getting attention from city hall and Washington.