Mr. MURPHY. I think we are as well prepared as we were well prepared for the previous action.

Mr. Dowdy. In other words, you know that the death rate there won't be any more than-there won't be any more than six or eight blocks burned up this time?

Mr. MURPHY. I don't anticipate that. Frequently, such a group talks about having large numbers of people and accomplishing very large objectives which they don't have the potential to accomplish.

Mr. DOWDY. Let me ask this question: Do you have enough protection that people will be safe in opening their stores if they want to on Monday?

Mr. MURPHY. Yes, sir. I believe that from all that we can foresee of what will be occurring on Monday, we now believe that we are adequately prepared.

EXTORTION THREATS TO BUSINESS

Mr. DOWDY. Now, are you aware-and I suppose you are-I know the people would be in fear of the levies that are being placed upon merchants here in the District of Columbia to support this army of people coming in here from all over the country.

Are you aware of that?

Mr. MURPHY. I am not sure that I understand your question. Levies are being placed upon people for those who are visiting the city?

Mr. DoWDY. That is right. For instance, there is a produce dealer here in town; it has been demanded that he furnish two truckloads of food each week to this group. If he doesn't, they are going to put him out of business.

Mr. MURPHY. Well, sir, we have made special efforts with the businessmen urging them to report to us any kind of threat or attempted extortion, and we have made at least some small number of arrests in these cases.

Mr. Dowdy. Has anybody reported these things?

Mr. MURPHY. We have received some reports, sir.

Mr. DOWDY. Have you made any arrests as a result of it?

Mr. MURPHY. Yes, sir, we have.

Mr. Dowdy. What kind of complaints are they?

Mr. MURPHY. I am sorry that I don't have the specific charge before me, in one case that I am aware of. We have received a warrant for threats.

Mr. Dowdy. For extortion?

Mr. MURPHY. For threats, sir. I don't have the

Mr. Dowdy. You don't have the specific charge. Do you feel that the merchants here in town and the ones that these threats are being made against would feel safe in coming here? Do they feel that you would protect them from the violence that they are threatened with? Mr. MURPHY. Well, sir, we have had several meetings with such groups, including a meeting in Mayor Washington's office last week. attended by Chief Layton and myself. I know that I was encouraged. I think Mayor Washington and Chief Layton were also encouraged that the businessmen indicated that they would be more responsive and that they would come forward with information.

We have explained to groups of businessmen, Mr. Chairman, that we think it would be a very dangerous course for them to permit

themselves to be threatened, or to subject themselves to extortion and not call these matters to the attention of the Police out of fear. If this kind of fear escalates in the community, then I think we will have an extremely dangerous situation.

I am confident now that many businessmen, who, two or three weeks ago were hesitant to come to the Police Department with information an complaints, have since come forward and given us the kind of information without which we cannot conduct a very effective investigation.

Mr. Dowdy. We have got to have some confidence, of course, that we will get some protection from the law. We have got a situation. here much like an invading army placing levies on the businessman, telling them they have to feed them or they are going to destroy them. Mr. MURPHY. Mr. Chairman, Mr. Bress tells me he has some information he would like to present.

Mr. BRESS. With respect to the subject of extortion of local business, Mr. Chairman, I think it would be well for the Committee to know that beginning early in April there were some such reports. The matter has been investigated. It has not yet been presented to the Grand Jury. My office is keeping in daily contact with the squad of the Police Department who are engaging in developing the investigation along the lines that we have suggested.

Mr. DOWDY. Mr. Adams?

CITATIONS AND ARRESTS

Mr. ADAMS. First, Mr. Bress, I would like to follow through with the comments that were being made by Mr. Horton. A number of us offered amendments which were finally adopted by the Congress in the ominous anti-crime bill for the use of citations as a method of handling large numbers of people with certain types of misdemeanors. According to the Report on Civil Disturbances in Washington, Title VII of the anti-crime bill was used quite extensively in this last riot situation. Did it, in your opinion, prove to be effective?

Do you think it should be changed in any way?

Mr. BRESS. The citation procedure as spelled out in the D.C. Crime Reduction Act, I think, is desirable and under normal peaceful conditions in the community, it can be effective.

Mr. ADAMS. I also understand that you used it after these people were in jail for curfew violations. In other words, the Police had to clear the streets in order to get at the actual perpetrators of the crime, so they picked everybody up. I understand this system was a method whereby the people that were picked up for curfew violations could be moved out of the city rapidly so that you could get at the remaining felonies and other misdemeanors.

Mr. BRESS. That is precisely what did happen. It was too much of a burden on the limited facilities of the courts to bring 8,000 people in within three or four days, so that the citation procedure was very helpful in curfew violation cases where a curfew violator was kept overnight, not released back into violations.

Mr. ADAMS. Right. In other words, held out of the area.

Now, Mr. Murphy, I think we should put into perspective what happened in this city, because I think it is very bad if we preach fear

all the time. I think your police response in this case was based on accurate planning.

But in this case, this was a spontaneous, as opposed to an expected or pre-planned type riot, because of the death of Dr. King, was it not? Mr. MURPHY. Yes, Congressman. We had no advance information. Mr. ADAMS. Obviously not. You didn't know this was going to happen then. I understand this happened at 8:26 on Thursday night. It is my understanding that by 12:00 o'clock that night you had the better part of 2,000 officers on the street, which is less than 21⁄2 hours; isn't that correct?

Mr. MURPHY. By shortly after 12:00, we had about 2,000. As Chief Layton explained earlier, we were up to 2500 officers by 2:00 or 3:00

a.m.

Mr. ADAMS. It is also my information now that by the middle of the afternoon on Sunday you had made over 4200 arrests. That information is in the Report on Civil Disturbances. Now, I understand that of these, over 900 were for looting and 700 for disorderly conduct and other offenses; is that correct?

Mr. MURPHY. Yes, sir; as Mr. Bress pointed out, about 1,000 felony arrests, which were the lootings

Mr. ADAMS. It is also my understanding that the Police Department; and Chief Layton, you can correct me on this if I am wrong, used tear gas?

Chief LAYTON. Yes, sir, we did.

Mr. ADAMS. You used massive amounts of force going down the streets, officers linked arm in arm to clear the streets; is that correct? Chief LAYTON. We used a large number of officers, not necessarily linked.

Mr. ADAMS. Down the streets to clear them?

Chief LAYTON. Down the streets to clear them-14th Street, particularly.

Mr. ADAMS. I was pleased to hear the report that you are down to only 164 vacancies, because a number of us since we arrived on this Committee, when there were 400 vacancies have been very concerned with the recuritment problem. This indicates that you are getting the men in.

POLICE FORCE REQUIRED

I would like your opinion on this, Mr. Murphy, and yours, too, Chief Layton, if you would like to comment on it. In the central cities. when handling riots where you are involved with large numbers of people, do you think an authorized force of 3,100 is adequate and if not, what is your feeling as to what we should be considering?

Mr. MURPHY. Well, Congressman, we have not reached a final decision. We hope to fill the remaining 164 vacancies very shortly, and we are considering whether a request should be made. Obviously, more officers can provide more protection. We are trying to take steps to get more officers on the street. That is why we would like this precinct consolidation program to go through.

It would give us perhaps a couple hundred more officers on the street. As crime has increased, I think it is an obvious fact that the number of police officers per hundred or per thousand crimes is diminishing. Mr. ADAMS. What is your feeling now in terms of the necessity for a readily available reserve force; and I want to emphasize in this that

you are dealing with a different type situation, a spontaneous large number of people appearing on the street, with certain of them committing various type felonies, and a lot of others on the streets.

I am not advocating what you have now, or something else. I want to know your feeling as to how best, in a metropolitan city like this, you can escalate your manpower for emergency situations on a shortterm basis.

Mr. MURPHY. Well, Mr. Congressman, one of the most important things is a prompt response. Police officers certainly every Friday and Saturday night deal with situations involving disorder in a bar or a fight on the street where we have to get officers in in a hurry. If we couldn't get 10 or 20 officers into a street quickly, something could escalate very suddenly out of control.

In a disorder of the magnitude of the one that existed on Thursday night, April 4th, it is terribly important to have a rapid mobilization plan of officers on duty, and then a rapid recall of off-duty officers. Again, the Department has had a good program.

Mr. ADAMS. I think you got your men on the streets as rapidly as could be done. In other words, if you had 2,000 men on the streets in less than three hours, you are cranking up at a pretty good rate.

Now, what I am asking you is this: You are apparently going to need a back-up force if this kind of thing should occur again. Do you think this should be created as a type of police reserve? Do you want to use a National Guard operation?

In other words, the problem with Federal troops is the time factorand I think, incidentally, in this case they cranked up in a hurry— they were on the streets by the next afternoon, which is moving pretty fast to bring people in. Do you visualize a National Guard operation, or do you visualize a police reserve operation, or what, to provide you with that pool of manpower to put, say, another three or four thousand people on the streets in a four or five-hour period?

Mr. MURPHY. Well, Mr. Adams, we have a unique situation in the District, which is one of the things that has given us considerable concern, and we have discussed this matter to some extent.

In other cities, there is the opportunity to be supplemented by a State Police or a Highway Patrol. As a matter of fact, a very interesting presentation was recently made at a law-enforcement meeting in Chicago that would involve the increasing in size of State Police agencies for this very purpose-a rapid response.

Our situation in the District is unique. The possibility of mutual aid from an adjoining Police Department in Maryland or Virginia is something that has been considered, but a mutual aid arrangement may not be entirely dependable because surrounding communities become concerned themselves if there would be a disorder in a central city.

We must think through this problem and either increase the size of the D.C. Department itself or make a mutual aid arrangement that would give us a more rapid response. Then, I think, too, we must continue this close liaison with the National Guard and the Military that gives us much reassurance, Congressman.

We will working through that and we will hopefully develop something that we can submit to the Committee.

Mr. ADAMS. I won't take any may time because I want to observe the five-minute rule. I do want to say in closing that I think the police

response in this area within the limits of the number of men that you have and your movement in the city was excellent.

I think it does show pre-planning. The indications that I have here are that you had your complete operation on the street the same night that a spontaneous riot occurred. We are all concerned over the situation throughout America and the response of Metropolitan Departments to do what, in effect, is an entirely changed situation on a street. I agree with your decision of starting with massive force in the area. I agree with your conclusion to pull the officers out of 14th and U when there were 50 to 100 people and there were only two officers, until you could mobilize your strength. I think that if you don't have overwhelming strength in an area, then you must rely on ultimate force. Ultimate force in a crowded metropolitan area, when the shooting starts, cannot help but lead to extremely heavy casualties among the innocent.

I am concerned as to whether or not your present plans envision a group of people to move in and assist you on a rapid basis to get that build-up of force sooner than you had this last time. I am not critical of your last operation.

Finally, I would just like to say that I think this Police Department made more arrests than any other city in America. I think they responded very well. I know there have been some people who said that they didn't, but I, for one, want to compliment you, Chief Layton, and you, Commissioner, for the operation that took place.

You were there on the streets. You were there that night. You were out in your car there and I think that is very good. I am glad to have you in Washington.

Mr. DOWDY. Mr. Mathias.

Mr. MATHIAS. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Adams has given me a preface for what I would like to say, Mr. Chairman, because I was on the streets in Washington on two of the nights of the disorders.

May I direct my remarks to Chief Layton, Secretary McGiffert, and Mr. Murphy.

I think all of us owe a considerable debt of gratitude to the Military, the Police Department, the Fire Department, and Mr. Murphy. The remarkable individual efforts that I saw made during the disorders by various members of these units was of the highest order.

It seemed to me to exhibit an extraordinary amount of discipline, training, judgment and restraint.

I saw the Police disarm a group of men who had machetes; and it was done in a very professional manner, and yet it was done with restraint and with full observance of the proper police procedures.

I happened to be on upper 14th Street when a man rushed up and he cried, "My woman is in that building," and the building was just a mass of flame. Without any question, without any hesitation-the fire ladder went right up against the building. The firemen made an effort to find out if the woman was actually in the building.

Out on Benning Road troops were controlling that area and using some stores there as a command post. It was a unit of paratroopers— and I have never seen a more disciplined performance on the part of Military units.