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In any case, police forces around the nation are operating on the assumption that the summer will be a sizzler. Some are improving their community-relations programs in hopes of lowering the temperature. Far more hope to equip themselves with a wide range of riot-control gear, from armored cars (some armed with flamethrowers) in Philadelphia and Los Angeles, to helicopters in Chicago. More than 3,000 local, state and federal police agencies have bought the Mace chemical spray gun, designed to disable a rioter temporarily.
Machine Guns & Lions. In Miami, one of several cities that recently launched "get-tough" campaigns, the tactics seem to be producing results. Since Police Chief Walter Headley launched his crackdown on the city's violence-plagued Negro districts last Christmas, crimes have declined nearly two-thirds citywide, people have begun walking the streets after dark without fear, and nighttime church attendance has soared.
When Headley announced his campaign, civil rights leaders were alarmed that the emphasis would be more on Negro repression than on crime suppression. But the Rev. Thedford Johnson, pastor of St. John's Baptist Church on the edge of Miami's ghetto, for one, is satisfied that nothing of the sort has happened. "They holler about the shotguns and the dogs," said Johnson, referring to the Negro leaders. "They could justify machine guns and lions if that's what it takes to wipe out crime."
More constructively, the Administration has been conspicuously successful in enlisting business support for programs aimed at rooting out the causes of crime. In addition, the Justice Department is computerizing its intelligence center, expanding its staff and briefing U.S. attorneys on ways to avert riots. Before trouble reaches the boiling point, for example, the attorneys are instructed to channel all intelligence to Justice, where the computer will be recruited to gauge a city's mood. The Department is also financing four weeks of meetings at Virginia's Airlie House to instruct 122 mayors and police chiefs on how to defuse a potential explosion. There, the city officials pool information not only on riot-control techniques but also on community relations programs.
With a weather eye for the coming summer, the National Guard—whose performance in such cities as Newark and Detroit demonstrated a woeful lack of training for such emergencies—and the Army have both been placing new emphasis on techniques of riot control since last summer. In the hope of making America's cities less of a crucible in 1968 than they have been in the past four years, military experts have analyzed the layout of 100 trouble-prone areas, pre-positioned supplies in them, and drawn up contingency plans. They may well be needed.