A riot primer

There, five hundred young men began breaking windows along a six-block stretch. The fourth police cruiser arriving radioed: "Do you want us to observe?" That such a question should even have been asked was damning proof that Americans had let years of extreme court rulings and hysterical "police brutality" propaganda paralyze our last line of defense against criminal anarchy.

Yet in Toledo the answer snapped back steely and clear. Police Chief Tony Bosh happened to be monitoring the radio and he barked: Arrest every lawbreaker you can-and meet illegal force with legal force!"

Just as quickly, Toledo's mayor requested and Ohio Governor James Rhodes called in five hundred National Guardsmen to stand behind police in reserve, with well-publicized orders to kill if necessary to maintain order. They were never needed. Toledo's police arrested 22 people (nine for possessing firebombs) in the first three hours. That was almost triple the number Detroit and Newark police arrested in the same period.

Chief Bosh laid out for a Senate committee the criminal records, "some as long as your arm," of the rioters jailed in his city's three-day eruption. Of the 126 adults a startling 105 had prior arrests, averaging six apiece. Every single one of the 22 young adults jailed in the first three hours had criminal records; they averaged only twenty years old and three prior arrests apiece. The twenty young men jailed on firebomb charges averaged four apiece.

The result of the quick arrest policy: Toledo's trouble hardly earned the name "riot." No one died-not one person, looter, policeman, or innocent bystander. The will that Toledo's civil authorities displayed, like a heavy rain on a kindling forest fire, made the difference between "incident" and "insurrection." They withdrew the one essential ingredient for a major riot: implied official permission for criminals and rowdies to coalesce and rebel.

As Santayana said, those who do not study history are condemned to repeat it.

COPYRIGHT 1991 National Review, Inc.
COPYRIGHT 2008 Gale, Cengage Learning