Sex is a crime, too; a statutory felony. The incidence of such offenses in the Nation’s capital is so great as to be startling. The nature of them nauseated even a couple of hardboiled reporters like us.
The figures are public property, compiled by the F.B.I., the local cops and the Davis committee. Howard Whitman, who has been doing a series of articles based largely on newspaper morgue material, printed the computations in Collier’s, later put them into a book on prurient misdemeanors.
Whitman slanted his findings to Collier’s special-pleading formula and found that “crime is a slum-connected characteristic.”
That is a laugh. Washington is freer of depressed living areas than any city in the country.
“And Negroes are ghettoized in these slums,” adds Whitman gratuitously.
Whitman quotes with approval the Committee for Racial Democracy which urged that “training in minority group problems be instituted immediately as a part of the regular in-service training of all policemen,” the non-sequitur supposition being that the colored folk out-rape, out-maim, out-steal and out-mugg whites eight to one because the coppers haven’t been trained in minority group relations.
Nor are sex-criminals, white or colored, permanently taken off the streets after once being caught. Washington is a recidivists’ paradise because of its ridiculous so-called “collateral rule” which takes the place of posting a bond.
A defendant could, and still can, despite a promise of the courts to tighten up, post a $25 collateral instead of a bond with a police captain. Thereupon if he does not appear in a court he is automatically found guilty and the collateral is forfeited as a fine. And that closes the case instead of the judge issuing a bench warrant as in other jurisdictions.
In the case of violent sex cases, the maximum collateral is $500 forfeit in the same way. A new judicial rule says all aggravated sex cases must be taken to court, but they are not.
Abortions are cheap and easy to obtain. Police are able to arrest only a few of the operators, and then only when complications arise. Even then, few are convicted. This racket is highly protected by an interstate ring allied with the Mafia. A ten million a year branch was uncovered in San Francisco, built around a prominent female Chinese physician, not publicly involved because of her high political and social connections. She is a close friend of Virginia Hill, gal friend of the late Bugsy Siegel.