The Waterbury Democrat., 1931-05-28
NEA Service Writer

WASuluSLOu.--1uSIe OL OcColulAiS that model city" in law enforce ment promised by President Hoover, Washington insists on remaining a typical American community with an underworld, crime waves, racket murders, corruption and other phases of municipal life which keep police reporters skinny.
 Washington is now having more murders in proportion to population than Chicago. . Thus far this year we have aver aged 5.4 murders a month, which is an annual rate of one murder | per 7,500 of population Latest available studies of homicides in American cities cover 1929 and
 show Chicago had .a murder per 400 population. The murder rate per 100, ,O00 population was 10.1 for ] the larger Amreican cities and 11.S flor Chicago. The nations capital, plugging along now at a rate of 65 murders for 1881, is setting a mark of 13.s per 100000.
 Public Aroused.
 The. surprising way people get killed off here, so frequently and so publicly, and the extent to which the police turn out to be involved in crime has everybody all stirred up again after a crime wave in which 10 persons were shot within a few
 days, nearly all fatally. One suggestion Is that the situa- tion could be cleaned up by putting all cops in jail at once, but It might be difficult to catch them. Perhaps a more effective method would be for all good citizens to start biting band It o,A o SanOl' Carlos Leiva, the Salvadoran charge d'affaires, who implored police pro- ltection for legations liquor and then
 was badly beaten up by thieves whom he found footing 1t.
 Leiva liesS in a hospital with a fractured skull, boasting that he
 bit a bandits finger ito the bone''
 and that such bites often prove poisonous" He says the Wash ington police are the worst in the
 world and that few good poison
 ous bites would be more efficient
 In guarding the embassies and legations,
 One of the latest murders, that of a police stool pigeon. has turned iup a policeman who has been hi- lacking, just as the Beulah Limerich
 murder found a cop who was operat- ing whiskey stills in his basement.
 Sixty-three cops have been fired
 from the force for misconduct in the last two years.
 Only three persons in the Dis.
 trict of Columbia have permits to
 carry pistols, but 3304 have been
 sold here in the past 16 months and twice as many are estimated to
 have been shipped in by mail or ex-
 press. One newspaper has just
 printed a police map which purports to show 567 known speakeasies, 15S lgambling houses and 40 disorderly
 houses.
 Hoover Is Mayor M Washington has different set- up than that in most cities. Presi-
 dent Hoover acts as mayor. al- though, of course, he has lot of
 other territory to think of. It
 was Hoover who decided Washing
 ton should become a model town and
 set a good example to all other cities.
 So he appointed Major General Her
 bert B. Crosby, chief of cavalry, as
 one of the three district commission
 CTS. apparently expecting. Crosby to
 clean up the town.
 | Nobody can vote here. so the
 citizens have to take what they get from congress, the president and
 the police. Theoretically. the police
 force is clean mad free from graft,
 untouched by influence because
 there are no municipal politics. And
 the city is free of aliens who are
 supposed to be such crime prob- lem in other big cities. The only iaiiens are in embassies and iega-
 tions. Thanks to them, this is the
 one community where policemen
 are charged with guarding liquor
 supplies and where the government
 has to make good if liquor is stolen
 The Lelva case raised the question
 Whether the state department
 would have to indemnify q legation Jt. aatssai liassap or fla v0Iuo In cash