Business: MAKING CRIME PAY

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EVERY industry has its own sensitive indicators, be they birth rates, bank rates or crop forecasts. The FBI's recent report that the U.S. crime rate is running a brisk 19% ahead of 1967 came as no surprise to one industry whose prosperity is judged by such statistics. Crime and civil commotion are paying off handsomely for the hundreds of scattered, mostly small companies that sell goods and services to the rapidly growing law-enforcement market.

On Wall Street, the cops-and-robbers business is getting the sort of play that once was accorded to aerospace and the Pill. The stock of Pinkerton's, Inc. (see BOOKS), the 118-year-old outfit that went public in 1967 at $23 a share, is now trading at $51. Federal Sign and Signal, a Chicago maker of police sirens, has gone from $19 to $42 in the past year. American Safety Equipment Corp., whose sales of $26.75 police helmets more than tripled in 1968, has jumped from $10 to $16. Other companies in the police market have seen their stocks rise by 50% to 75%.

Losing the Fight. And why not? Spending on law enforcement in 1968 totaled nearly $1.1 billion, up from $930 million in 1967. The money went for a variety of services and hardware that includes 800 police whistles, $170 sirens and $100,000 helicopters. Such spending will grow at least 10% annually for the next five years. The Safe Streets Act, which Lyndon Johnson signed in June, will increase federal anti-crime aid from $63 million in 1968 to as much as $500 million in 1972. Richard Nixon also wants to strengthen the nation's undermanned police forces and generally "make it less profitable and a lot more risky to break our laws."

All that promises to be highly profitable to the industry. A growing suspicion that the police are losing the fight against lawlessness, which will cost $20 billion this year in thefts, riot damage and other losses, has steadily increased the business of suppliers of private guards and security equipment. But most of the thrust is toward providing new, nonlethal hardware for the police, whose basic gun-and-billy-club arsenal has changed little in 100 years.

Some new entrants in the field have novel ideas for handling riots. Fort Worth's Western Co. of North America, an oilfield-service firm, has developed a slippery powder called Instant Banana Peel, which is guaranteed to turn any street rumble into a sit-in. Baltimore-based AAI Corp.. a defense contractor, has come up with a tear-gas grenade with two crowd-control virtues: it has no shrapnel hazard, and it expels its chemicals in seconds—before it can be picked up and pitched back at the police. A company official says that its grenade sales doubled in 1968, and will double again as soon as "the riot season starts."