We have launched an all-out offensive against the forces of crime, against the forces of drugs, and we are beginning to win.
—Richard M. Nixon
TO the nearly 1,000,000 Americans who have been physically attacked this year, President Nixon's statement in Atlanta last week must have sounded strange, even as election-year hyperbole. Any victim of criminal violence was more likely to be moved by the question Senator George McGovern posed to a campaign crowd in New York. "I want to ask you," said the Democratic candidate, "do you feel safer after four years of Richard Nixon? Mr. Nixon and his Administration are [trying to] mask a record of astounding failure in the field of crime behind a veil of law-and-order rhetoric, which grows more strident as the muggings and murders and rapes in our cities continue to rise."
According to the FBI's latest statistics, violent crime is indeed more prevalent than at any time since 1930, when the agency began keeping records. Throughout the '60s, the annual incidence of violent crime rose from 160 to 393 per 100,000 inhabitants; murder increased 70%, rape 113% and robbery 212%. Although the need for law-and-order accounted for some of President Nixon's more vehement campaign oratory in 1968, the 3½ years of his Administration have witnessed an increase of more than 30% in major crimes, in most of which the victim gets no state compensation. And as San Francisco Police Lieut. William Koenig observes, "the big change over ten years ago continues to be in viciousness."
Numbers Games. There are, to be sure, many questions about the reliability of all crime statistics. Police Chief Jerry Wilson of Washington, D.C., who reports a reduction in major crimes from 202 per day to 96 since 1969, admits that the figures can be manipulated up and down at will, though he denies any such tampering in his own department: "Where did 202 crimes a day go? I mean, I didn't eat them!" One answer comes from the accounting firm of Ernst & Ernst, which recently audited the D.C. police records and found that more than 1,000 thefts of over $50 had been purposely downgraded to below $50. That made them petty larceny and dropped them from the roster of major crimes. Princeton Political Scientist David Seidman, who helped conduct another study of Washington, adds, "The police tend not even to record crime they believe they have little or no chance of solving." Even more misleading, according to experts, is the fact that many, perhaps even most crimes are never reported to the police at all.