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In ghetto areas around the country, arson is often a means of feeding drug habits. Unable to afford the tools to remove valuable brass plumbing, sinks, bathtubs and refrigerators in abandoned buildings, junkies pour inflammable liquid around the rooms, set a blaze and wait for firemen to chop up the floors, exposing the loot. Then the "mango hunters," as New York cops call them for their practice of reaping a harvest of stolen goods, move in, drag ou the fire-resistant fixtures and sell them —a bathtub is worth $25 on the open market, a wash basin $15. Some areas of New York are being burned systematical!) block by block as frightened resident; move out, slumlords make no move to protect their all but empty—and insured —buildings, and the torches move in.
Whatever the motive for arson, the result is fright and despair among inner-city residents. Says Dorothy Maeda, chairman of Humboldt Park's arson committee: "It's a terrifying feeling never knowing when you go to sleep at night whether a fire bomb will come through the window." Along Boston's once elegant Symphony Road, where fire has gutted 29 of the 74 apartment buildings in the past four years, tenants live in constant fear of flames. "Everybody around here is jumpy," says local resident Sadie Ellis. "Whenever I hear sirens I turn the radio down to see if they're coming here."
Arson is one of the easiest crimes to commit and the hardest to prevent—and prosecute. District Attorneys must prove the fire was set intentionally.
Understaffed fire departments are usually too busy fighting fires to prevent them. But in response to the epidemic of arson, cities around the country are hiring more fire marshals. Largely under pressure from community leaders in Brooklyn, Mayor Abraham Beame recently authorized the New York City Fire Department to increase its force of investigators from 77 to 152—but that is still barely half the number of marshals experts believe New York needs to cope with its arson problem.
San Francisco's seven-man fire investigation squad had not been increased since it was founded in 1940. In July, however, the squad took on an eighth man, and two weeks ago the city formed a "combined services arson task force," adding the District Attorney, his assistant and an investigator from the D.A.'s office, plus a police inspector, to the fire department's arson team.
The insurance industry has begun to train its own arson investigators. With the aid of the federal Law Enforcement Assistance Administration, insurance companies and city officials plan to create arson information banks to help apprehend torches. Unfortunately, catching arsonists requires enterprising detective work—and luck. The U.S. Attorney for western Pennsylvania, Blair Griffith, for example, has won 20 arson convictions based on the federal crime of mail fraud. Griffith relied on an arsonist turned informant: Merrill H. Klein, 53, a self-styled "business consultant" who worked as a "broker" for landlords eager to torch their property. After pleading guilty in 1974 to helping burn down a hotel in Bedford, Pa., Klein agreed to testify for the Government in three other arson cases he was also connected with, hoping his five-year sentence would not be increased (it wasn't).