Crime: Worse than Mississippi?

Even as Republican speakers in San Francisco deplored street violence in the nation's big cities, such violence broke out anew in New York City.

A full-scale riot by some 300 angry, weeping, shouting teenagers, most of them Negro, erupted outside a summer-session junior high school after an off-duty police lieutenant shot and killed a Negro youth, James Powell, 15. Police and student versions of the shooting varied sharply, but all agreed that a white building superintendent had sprayed water on Powell and two other Negro youths while hosing an area in front of the building. The youths chased the superintendent into the building. When Powell emerged, Lieutenant Thomas Gilligan, 36, came out of a nearby radio shop, fired three shots at Powell. Police claim that Powell had attacked Gilligan, who holds 19 citations for meritorious police work, with a knife and had disregarded the officer's warning to surrender. Negro witnesses claimed that Powell had no knife and that Gilligan shot without warning.

Minutes after Powell fell dead on the sidewalk, other students swarmed onto the street. One girl yelled: "This is worse than Mississippi!" Another shouted at police: "Come on, shoot another nigger." The youths threw bottles, cans and pieces of cement at 75 policemen, who struggled for two hours to get the mob under control. A Negro patrolman suffered a concussion when struck by a can.

Negroes staged protest demonstrations for the next two days, sometimes shouted "killers, killers" at police. Three patrolmen were injured as bottles were hurled at them from rooftops. Officers fired hundreds of warning shots into the air, arrested a score of demonstrators.

Violence continued, too, on New York subways (TIME, June 12). About 25 Negro youths boarded a subway in the Washington Heights area. Led by a lad in a silk top hat, some of them turned on Pharmacist William Greene, 51, dragged him from his seat, beat him, took his $85 wrist watch and a wallet containing $100. Fifteen other passengers, terrified and outnumbered, watched helplessly. In Harlem, about 15 Negro teenagers, including several girls, found 57-year-old Actor Julian Zalewski alone in a subway car, picked him up, dropped him to the floor, rifled his pockets, took $26. He fought back, was beaten up, but yelled with such theatrical force that the hoodlums fled.

Coincidently, New York police issued a semiannual report on the city's crime rate. It showed that 281 murders had been committed in the first six months —an increase of 16.6% over last year. Rapes were up 28% , robberies 25.6% .