Subcommittee Chairman Robert C. Byrd (D-W. Va.) said that he has talked to a score of merchants since the riots. Loss of business is a combination of all three of those elements, Byrd said.

"If something is done about crime to preserve law and order, the tourists will come back," Byrd declared.

Sen. William Proxmire (D-Wis.) commented that of all cities, Washington is the safest from a "cataclysmic" riot.

"The President would bring in troops-order would be restored quickly, it has to be," Proxmire said.

During the day-long hearings the subcommittee heard the heads of 33 city agencies present requests for operating funds during the coming fiscal year. Proxmire commended city officials for their proposal to establish an Office of Consumer Affairs.

"There is a terrific need for this," Proxmire said, after referring to a report by the Federal Trade Commission, which showed that poor people pay substantially more for goods that are inferior to goods that can be purchased outside the slums.

FIGURES ON TOURIST DECLINE

The number of visitors to Washington's tourist attractions in April was dramatically lower than in April of last year in most cases, official figures show. Attendance at some attractions was as much as 40 per cent lower than it was last year. In a handful of isolated cases, however, this year's April attendance was higher than last year's.

Officials of the institutions involved released these attendance figures for April of last year and this:

The Park Service could not explain why the Lee Mansion and Lincoln Memorial were better attended in April when other attractions had many fewer visitors. The aftermath of Washington's riot, the then-impending Poor People's Campaign and reports of violence here are all said to have contributed to the decline of tourism.

A spokesman for the National Park Service noted yesterday that in normal times April should have been a significantly better month than April of 1967 because Easter was in March last year and April this year. Easter week traditionally brings thousands of tourists to the city.

These figures tend to confirm the contention of restauranteurs and hotel keepers that tourism-the city's largest private industry-is in serious trouble.

[From the Evening Star, Washington, June 10, 1968]

GUARD CHIEF URGES TOUGHER RIOT ROLE
(By Shirley Elder)

The commander of the D.C. National Guard today suggested two major changes in the Guard's operations to protect the city in any future riot and to avoid a call for federal troops.

Maj. Gen. Charles L. Southward said he thinks teams of marksmen should be assigned to each unit with orders to shoot to kill any sniper or other person threatening lives.

Southward said the marksmen would be told: "There's the target-get it." This, said the general, would be a last resort.

Southward went on to say that if he had another 1,500 men added to his present force of 1,750 they, working with metropolitan police, probably could control the situation without federal troops.

TELLS OF SPEEDUP

Southward told the Senate Appropriations subcommittee for the District that several changes have been made to make it possible to move the Guard more swiftly from civilian to military footing.

Equipment now is more accessible and training programs are staggered so that some men are immediately available at all times, he said. He said it took six hours to pull together 78 percent of the Guardsmen on April 5, the day after Dr. Martin Luther King was slain.

The question of marksmen came up in a discussion with subcommittee Chairman Robert C. Byrd, D. W. Va., who asked whether orders issued during the April riots forced unreasonable delays on Guardsmen who might have needed to shoot.

The orders were that no man could load his gun and fire without clearing the decision with higher authorities. The only exception was to save a life.

Trained marksmen could be placed under the command of an officer on the scene, Southward said. The officer could simply say to the rifleman: "There's the target-get it."

Southward emphasized that he feels the use of weapons is dangerous and that care must be taken to avoid hitting innocent people.

Of the present 1,750 District Guardsmen, only 1,200 are organized into police battalions, Southward said.

He said he would like to have three more battalions, one of military policemen, one of combat engineers and one of mechanized infantry. These would total about 1,500.

Southward conceded it is always hard to recruit Guardsmen but, he added, he thinks many persons in the District are a little shame-faced that they were not out on the streets protecting their own citizens.

Julian Dugas, director of the District Department of Licenses and Inspections, also testified today and pleaded for more personnel.

He denied he is lowering standards in order to hire more Negroes. "No standards are being bent," he said. "No standards have been bent. No standards will be bent."

Dugas explained that, given a choice between a white man just out of the Army with investigative experience and a young Negro college graduate, he would hire the Negro.

"It's a simple fact. Young white people don't do too well in this town at this time," he said. Young Negroes are accepted more easily in the ghetto areas where the housing inspectors are assigned, he explained.

Byrd asked whether Dugas was accurately quoted when a reporter wrote that he intends to change the color of his department from "rosy red to brown and then to black." Dugas said the statement was "rhetoric." He said he has no intention of discriminating or lowering standards.

Byrd said, somewhat angrily, he is not interested in rhetoric.

"If a man is qualified, give him the job," Byrd said. "This Congress and this committee is not interested in supplying monies for you to increase your staff to achieve a racial mix."

[From the Washington Post, June 12, 1968]

GET MAXIMUM OF YEAR: "REMORSELESS" TRIO SENTENCED IN RIOT

(By Jarod Stout)

Three men arrested April 7 in the looting of a Southeast Washington 7–11 store were given maximum sentences of a year in jail yesterday by Judge Charles A. Halleck in the Court of General Sessions.

Halleck imposed the sentences after noting that the defendants had shown no indication of remorse, despite the fact that their actions were "without justification or excuse."

All three were charged with petty larceny after police said they found them parked 15 feet from the burned out 7-Eleven store at 5026 Benning rd. se. at about 12:30 p.m. on the Sunday of the April riot.

The sentences were the first handed down by Judge Halleck and were among the toughest yet meted out to looters. Jail terms in other cases have generally been suspended.

According to police, Walton M. Lacey, 23, of 3511 B st. se. and Benjamin L. Short, 25, of 274 35th pl. se. were in a car while Tyrone Williams, 21, of 3432 Croffut pl. se. was loading beer and wine into the trunk of the vehicle. More beer and wine was in the car, it was said.

Halleck said that since the offense took place on Sunday, the three "must have known" of the steps taken to quell the disturbances which had racked the city since the previous Thursday.

Halleck said:

"I remember reading that this was a city of remorse. Well, here stand three young men who have given no indication of remorse and who can't have any possible excuse because they did it on Sunday

"Their acts under these circumstances were willful and without justification or excuse.

"We talk about ours being a sick society. Perhaps the sickness is that people have gotten the idea they are owed something, that another man's property is his for the taking.

"The time has come when the law will be enforced and this Court, at least, will make clear that deliberate violators will be dealt with sternly."

Attorneys J. Francis Pohlhaus, representing Williams, and Paul M. Wolff, representing Lacey, said appeals would be filed for their clients. Attorney Warwick R. Furr II said an appeal for Short was under consideration.

[From the Washington Evening Star, May 30, 1968]

JUDGES LAY D.C. COURT CRISIS TO RIOT CASES, RISE IN CRIME
(By John Fialka)

The unprecedented burden of riot cases, the increasing complexity of criminal justice and the continuing rise in crime are severely straining Washington's courts.

This was the message the three chef judges of the District's main trial courts presented to Senate subcommittees yesterday.

Unless the government provides more judges, space and court manpower, they said, backlogs will become a dominant feature of the city's system of justice.

Chief Judge Harold H. Greene told a Senate District subcommittee that the Court of General Sessions needs five more judges to cope with a backlog that includes a backup of 2,032 criminal jury cases.

By switching judges from civil to criminal matters, he said, he had cut a backlog of 2,065 cases to 1,597 cases three days before the rioting began last month. But the switch further clogged matters in the court's civil side. He added that there are now 5,492 civil jury cases pending and that it now takes about 27 months to bring a noncriminal matter before a jury.

Because lawyers are demanding jury trials in serious misdemeanor cases at an unprecedented rate, there were 80 percent more trials in General Sessions last year than in 1965, when the great majority were settled by pleas, Greene said.

Chief Judge Morris Miller told the same subcommittee, presided over by Sen. Alan Bible, D-Nev., that if he has no more requests for jury trials-a "most unlikely event”—the District's Juvenile Court would need 21⁄2 years to try the 487 jury cases now pending.

Miller said 116 cases referred to Juvenile Court during the riot brought the April total of juvenile referrals to 683, the second highest month in the court's history.

His most "alarming" statistic, Miller said, was the fact that Juvenile Court already during May has had 686 youths referred to it by police.

Miller said he needed at least two judges and complained that the District government has not backed his requests for more judges.

BUDGET HAS BILL

Sen. Bible replied that the Senate District Committee still is waiting for the District's proposed uniform court bill, which is being examined by the Bureau of the Budget.

The bill, backed by the Judicial Conference, asks that the Juvenile Court become a division of the Court of General Sessions and that the resulting cluster of courts be given a total of six more judges.

Earlier, Judge Edward M. Curran, told a Senate Judiciary subcommittee that his efforts to cut the backlog of criminal jury cases would be nearly nullified by the riot.

Curran said U.S. Atty. David Bress has estimated that a special grand jury now hearing riot cases would indict in about 400 of more than 800 cases in which one or more persons are charged by police with felonies.

The additional caseload would bring the current backlog of 700 cases back up to 1,100-the same number the District Court had last October when more judges were placed on criminal trials in what Judge Curran described as a "crash program" to cut the backlog.

Curran said he will assign three judges to a special "emergency calendar" to hear the riot cases which, he said, could be disposed of at a rate of two cases per judge per day.

Both Judge Curran and Sen. Joseph D. Tydings, D-Md., who presided at the subcommittee meeting, agreed that the District's current Bail Reform Act "needs tightening up." Under the act, a judge cannot consider the potential danger a defendant poses to the community as a factor in setting bail.

Curran said that he felt the ultimate solution for court backlogs in the District would be to set up a new Superior Court of Criminal Jurisdiction to try felony cases. The court, he proposed, would require 11 judges.

[From The Evening Star, Washington, June 4, 1968]

JUDGE IN RIOT CASES CRITICIZES DISTRICT
(By Donald Hirzel)

A judge criticized District officials yesterday for what he termed their failure in the early stages of the April riot to order police to make arrests and enforce the law.

Judge Alfred Burka made the comment in the Court of General Sessions at the conclusion of the first group sentencing of persons arrested in connection with the riot. Burka has scheduled group sentencings for various dates this month.

Some defendants have been sentenced on riot-connected charges by other judges, but this was a group sentencing.

"I have questioned several police officers," Burka said, "and there is no doubt in my mind they operated with implicit or implied orders not to make arrests."

He added that there appeared to be no effort to instill in the public mind the idea that looters would be arrested and prosecuted, and he referred to the fact that seven persons sentenced by him yesterday said they had no fear of arrest when they went into the streets.

He also condemned those who took part in the rioting, declaring: "People we were depending upon to uphold law in the District were involved in the disorder and very few of them were caught."

PROBLEM FOR JUDGES

Burka said judges are greatly concerned about sentencing rioters because so many of the defendants have no previous police records and are family men with steady jobs.

"If we don't send them to jail, it is a sign to everyone with a clean record that he is entitled to one free ruling, but if I do

His words trailed off, and then he looked at the last man in the group he sentenced yesterday and said: "Here is a man with a wife and four children and another on the way who is working steadily to support his family . . ." Again his voice trailed off in the middle of the sentence.

He then sentenced the man, Nathaniel Dodds, 51, of the 1100 block of 10th Street NW, to a suspended 360-day jail term and placed him on probation for a year for attempted burglary II (looting).

Dodds is in a sense both typical and untypical of the rioter.

WATCHED THE PEOPLE

He told the court he is a dishwasher and makes $58 a week. He came here from Mississippi 15 years ago after serving a six-month jail term there in 1935 for manslaughter.

He had no arrest record since being in Washington, until April 5, when he got off work and went home and sat on the porch drinking beer and watched the people milling about on the streets.

When he saw people carrying television sets and other items up the street, he asked where they got the goods and was told they came from a nearby store.

"I saw others taking things, and I thought of the things my kids needed," he told the court. So he joined the looters but was arrested before he got anything. "Would you have gone if you had been warned that looters would be arrested or shot?" Burka asked.

"No sir," Dodds replied. "People told me the police weren't arresting anybody and I thought it was all right since everybody else was doing it."

He said he saw "lots of police around, but nobody was being arrested."

DIDN'T EXPECT ARREST

The others sentenced yesterday also said they did not expect arrest. They also said they went into the streets because everybody else was looting.

The others sentenced had good-paying jobs, unlike Dodds, with one making $4 an hour as a cement finisher. None of them graduated from high school.

Jessie J. Hinson Jr., 23, of the 500 block of 7th Street SE, a truckdriver charged with attempted burglary II and petty larceny, received a suspended 360-day jail term and was placed on probation for two years.

He had one previous arrest for breaking and entering in Lancaster, S.C. in 1962 but no arrests since to came to Washington. He told the judge "I got with the wrong crowd" during the rioting and was arrested. He is married and has two children.

A. D. Huff, 36, of the 2100 block of 4th Street NE, had no arrest record. He told Burka he completed the second grade before going to work on his father's farm. He has been in Washington eight years and works as a cement finisher.

He received 180 days for petty larceny and rioting, with the sentence suspended. He was placed on probation for one year.

John H. Walker, 22, of the 3400 block of 14th Street NW, charged with attempted burglary II and petty larceny after his arrest in a clothing store, received a suspended 180-day sentence and was fined $100 and placed on probation for one year.

Walker, a machine operator with a fifth-grade education and a native of Washington, was bailed out after his arrest by his employer who then wrote a letter to the court in which he described Walker as "honest, trustworthy and a loyal employe."

The letter stated, according to Burka, that Walker on numerous occasions had been left alone in the plant with large sums of money and never took one cent. His boss wanted him back on the job.

Walker said that when he entered the clothing store there were policemen two doors away, but "I didn't think about police. It never occurred to me that I would be arrested."

"How do you feel about what you did now?" Burka asked. Walker replied: "Bad."

Charles E. Dean, 19, and Dempsey H. Bowie, 23, came to Washington from Alabama years ago and live in the 500 block of 3rd Street NW. Both are employed as cement workers earning $3.17 an hour and neither had an arrest record.

Dean completed the ninth grade and Bowie the seventh grade. They said they "saw a bunch of other people walk out of the store" and then they were arrested. Both were charged with attempted burglary II and received suspended 360-day terms and were fined $100 each.

ONLY ONE GETS JAIL

Only one man received a straight jail term. He was James McDonald Carroll, 31, of the first block of Bryant Street NW. He was charged with carrying a pistol without a permit.

He received 360 days in jail after Burka reviewed his conviction record, including charges of petty larceny, assault and carrying a dangerous weapon. A lifelong resident of Washington, Carroll is a laborer with a sixth-grade education.

He claimed he had just bought a .22-caliber pistol from a youth on the street when he was arrested. Police said they recovered the gun and 26 rounds of ammunition. Carroll said he planned to take the gun home.