A crime that has spread like wildfire
In the chill, predawn darkness one day last week, 80 Massachusetts state policemen fanned out through Boston and its suburbs, ringing doorbells, rousing residents and hauling off to jail 22 surprised and discomfited citizens. Among those indicted: six attorneys, eleven real estate operators, four public insurance adjusters, one police officer and a retired fire chief. By week's end a total of 26 men had been arraigned in Suffolk County superior court on charges as varied as fraud, bribery and murder. But all of them were alleged to have committed one crime: arson. They were accused of contracting with landlords, financially troubled shopkeepers, warehouse owners and others to burn down their buildings for the insurance, with the arsonists taking a percentage of the claim.
Boston police had been investigating 95 suspicious fires that occurred between 1973 and 1976, including one that led last year to a Pulitzer-prizewinning photograph of a woman and little girl plummeting from a collapsed fire escape (the woman died, but the child survived). Last week the police came up with enough evidence to bring arson indictments on 35 of the fires that destroyed property worth $6 million and killed three people. Massachusetts Attorney General Francis X. Bellotti denounced the torch ring as "a conspiracy to burn down Suffolk County for profit." Added Stephen Delinsky, head of the state criminal bureau: "This is just the tip of the iceberg."
Whether for profit or for revenge, arson has become one of the most deadly, costly, and, for law enforcement officials, maddening crimes in the country. Deliberatley started fires now exceed 100,000 a year, up 400% since 1967. Last year there were 6,776 reported arsons in New York City alone. In Chicago, arson has tripled in less than three years, and in crime-plagued Detroit it is up 12% over last year alone. But the most shocking statistics come from San Francisco, which has experienced a 700% increase in arson in five years. Says Lieut. James Mahoney, chief investigator for the San Francisco Fire Department: "Arson is the cheapest crime in the world to commit. All you need is a box of matches."
Cheap to commit, perhaps, but staggeringly expensive for society to endure. Officials blame arson for more than 1,000 deaths and 10,000 injuries a year. Insurance companies estimate that in 1976 arson cost $2 billion in claims. As a result, fire insurance premiums have risen sharply in the past five years. Adding other, related costs such as business failures, loss of jobs and tenant relocation, Walter D. Swift, vice president of the American Insurance Association estimates last year's total arson price tag in the U.S. to be between $10 billion and $15 billion.