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"More Jails." The city's frustration, oddly enough, seemed to burst over the decades of social theory that blames juvenile crime primarily on environment.' At a solemn Requiem Mass for one of the victims, Roman Catholic Monsignor Joseph A. McCaffrey, a onetime police chaplain, bitterly denounced as "coddlers" lenient judges, over-sympathetic Youth Board workers, and professional do-gooders who seem "obsessed with the senseless theory that there is no such thing as a bad boy . . . This understanding, this kindness, this gentleness [has resulted in] marauding bands with, if not murder in their hearts, at least mayhem in their minds . . . Build more jails if necessary. Let us meet force with force."
Law-school trained Police Commissioner Stephen Kennedy, a tough cop (TIME Cover, July 7, 1958) who has sought a 27,500-man police force instead of the authorized 24,500 (and he is more than 1,000 short of that), diverted cops from other assignments and drafted them out of the Police Academy to set up heavy night patrols of gang areas. New York's Governor Nelson Rockefeller promised state backing in a teen-gang cleanup, and Mayor Robert Wagner, as is his habit when he can think of nothing else to do, called a flurry of meetings. This time Wagner's meetings bore fruit. Batting down demands for a curfew for teen-agers as impractical, Wagner promised to dig up $2,500,000 for immediate recruitment of more than 1,000 new police, promised to provide better lighting in city parks and playgrounds, called "on the Governor to provide work camps for hard-core troublemakers. It seemed that at last the city meant to clean out its juvenile jungle. On the very day of the mayor's declaration, a 14-year-old youngster was picked up for molesting a young nurse at knifepoint in a subway. Five hours after the attack, a judge sent him to reform school for seven years, with the roaring admonition, "It's time to stop fooling around and tackle these kids now!"