Except in the Negro sections, Washington has been spared the scourge of kid gangs. There are no major foreign-born settlements in town. Therefore the white kids seldom organize into mobs. Juvenile delinquency in other cities is often blamed on Italian, Irish, Jewish, Mexican and Puerto Rican under-age gangs.
But organization seems to be coming into fashion. While these lines were being typed, three local men were attacked and brutally beaten by a gang of 12 teensters in the 700 block, 6th Street, NW, apparently for the fun of it. The victims said the boys shouted insults at them from the sidewalk as they drove past. The three stopped and got out of the car. The gang then swarmed on them, beat them with bottles, belt-buckles, brass knuckles and improvised blackjacks.
Wherever young white criminals work together they are more often prone to choose school or college mates, or members of the same boys’ clubs as buddies. For instance, police broke up the exclusive “Weekend Burglars” gang, whose activities had stirred up residents of an exclusive NW residential section when they discovered that the criminals were home on leave on weekend passes from a military academy in Maryland. The three boys, the oldest 17, all came from wealthy families. Their method of “cracking” a home was this:
They would ring a doorbell; if no one answered, they cut through the screen and smashed the glass in the door. Inside the house, they ransacked it for three articles, taking nothing else. Playfully they would toss furniture helter-skelter and break china. The money they spent. The whiskey they drank. The stolen guns they showed off with.
Kids of all ages and both sexes and races are smoking reefers in prodigious quantities. These are easily obtainable from peddlers who work outside the schools, and inside some schools, from students, themselves. The current price for the weeds to school-children is 50 cents each, sometimes three for a dollar.
The young dope-fiends are not confined to any neighborhood of the city or to any economic class. One high school in the area, attended by children whose parents are in the upper brackets, is reported to have 95 per cent addiction. A major kid crime element is marijuana. Youngsters go on from it to more potent narcotics, then commit petty crimes to obtain the funds to buy the drugs. Reefers and other dope sharply bring out latent lawlessness.
High school athletic events have become a scandal. Bootleggers purvey liquor openly in the stands. Hundreds of stinking-drunk youngsters are swept out of the stadiums after every game.
Professional gamblers attend these games and make book without any pretense, taking bets from the kids of from 25 cents up and giving tickets in return.
Neighborhood stores adjacent to schools also purvey bootleg liquor and take bets from the juveniles, not only for their own school games, but on the horses and numbers.
Juvenile delinquency is almost as bad in the suburbs. There kids have cars, and “hot rod” races are common.