San Antonio Express from San Antonio, Texas • Page 84

San Antonio July 9, 1972 Page 7-H Criminal Children: A Growing Menace By Jon Kafz (C) WASHINGTON POST SERVICE V( Philadelphia patrolman stood at the end of the garbage-strewn alley, his service revolver pointed straight ahead, sweat stains spreading under his armpits. he muttered at the 10- year-old child who stood, glaring angrily, five feet in front of him. The child's arms were high in the air; a homemade zip gun was lying on the ground. The patrolman, a member of the Police gang control unit, had been driving an unmarked car when he saw' the boy run up behind an opposing gang member, point the gun at the back of his head, and fire twice. (The wounded gang member survived).

THE SHOOTING was one of the estimated 18,000 major crimes children under the age of 15 will commit throughout the country this year. The crimes are, by no means, all like the one above. In Washington last December, four boys, aged 9 to 13, were charged in the rape of a 7-year-old girl. Three months later, two ll-year-old boys and a 10-year-old companion were charged with rape and sodomy in connection with the abduction and sexual attacks on a 10-year-old girl and her 5-year-old brother. In San Francisco, in April, a 7-year- old boy admitted he and his 10-year-old brother abducted a 20-month-old baby and left him to die, lashed to a wooden cross in a dingy basement after the baby w'as bludgeoned with a stick.

A month later, in Washington, a 6- year-old boy and two friends admitted that they had, on two or three successive weekends smashed into a day care center, slaughtered pet animals, strewn paint about and wrecked furniture and equipment. WHILE CHILD ABUSE (the beating, abandonment and neglect of children) is a widely documented problem, the phenomenon of children doing the shooting, robbing, and other acts of violence has drawn little attention. The National Institutes of Health has done no studies or other research specifically into the problem of child violence, a spokesman said. And NIH officials, along with area psychiatrists, psychologists and social workers, could name only one or two authorities who they said had enough expertise to comment on it. Yet, according to the uniform crime reports, children under 15 committed 17,283 major crimes in America in 1970.

Of those crimes, 1,395 were committed by 17 and 12-year-olds; 3,787 by 12-year-olds; 12,101 by 13- and 14-year- olds, and 10,427 by 15-year-olds. THE FBI STATISTICS, according to officials in the U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare, show that arrests of children under 15 for violent crimes increased 166.8 per cent from 1960 to 1970, although the rate of Special Report on Young Lawbreakers increase has declined in recent years. Police officials and statisticians caution that the seemingly dramatic increase is misleading. Incidents of child violence, they say, used to be hushed up.

and, except for the most violent and serious cases, ended up in the hands of social workers and families rather than in the courts or newspapers, I)R. ALBERT SOLNIT, head of Yale Child Study Center and one of the foremost child care specialists in the nation, said he tends to support that view and is of claims that this sort of violence is dramatically Dr. Solnit said causes or possible causes of child violence are as complicated and varied as the individual home or environment. some cases, the child may have been abused, and this may manifest itself in adolescence or young adulthood, a sort of unto others as has been done unto In other cases, said Dr. Solnit, children may see violence in their environment react to it in some way.

Violence can become a way of Washington police say child violence is not a significant crime problem in the District of Columbia, although it increased two-fold between 1969 and 1970. In 1969, there were 64 arrests for robberies and holdups, aggravated assault and battery, arson, sexual assault, assault, and sodomy among youths 11 and younger, police figures show. In 1970, the number of arrests jumped to 128. In 1971, there were 121 arrests for major crimes in that age group. Since January of this year, police statistics show 41 arrests.

LT. J.R. JENKINS, deputy commander of the youth division, said one reason the district has been spared the widespread child violence that cities like Chicago and Philadelphia have experienced is that the police move quickly against gangs, one of the leading contributors to child violence statistics. Lt. Jenkins said most crimes involving children under 12 here are vandalism, burglary and larceny and that the department does not consider child violence a serious problem.

mostly a question of crimes or assaults against each other occasionally an attack against a school teacher, but actual violence committed by children a widespread Sgt. Edward Smith, a veteran of 22 years in the youth division here, said he thinks child violence can be traced to a number of things. For example, child could pick up a nickname and react to it if fat call him or while another child can have a defect and be called or Smith said. theories emphasize the inner-city or the ghetto or the economic he added. SMITH OFFERS another point of view that some child experts view as significant.

With the emergence of thousands of youngsters into society after the post World War II incidents of violence increased dramatically, partially because of the greater numbers of children, the overcrowding of schools, and society's lack of preparedness. with numbers of children declining, you'll probably find a decline in this sort of violence, he postulates. Dr. Solnit said it is impossible to pinpoint exact causes of violence among children, or for that matter, among adults. Scientific studies have suggested everything from infant body contact to breast-feeding to urban noise and overcrowding as factors leading to human the term psychologists prefer to Violent children fall into two categories, Dr.

Solnit said, the treatable and the untreatable. He said society should move quickly to study children involved in violent acts and begin treatment for those who can be helped. FOR THOSE WHO seem incurable, he suggests they be placed in an environment where they can be helped as much as possible without posing a danger to society. Among things that have been widely suggested by psychologists as a trigger for violence in children is television. The Surgeon Scientific Advisory Committee on Television and Social Behavior concluded in a study that televised violence could bring out violence or aggravate it in children who tend toward aggressiveness.

would be difficult to overstate the pervasiveness of television in the United said the report. children watch at least two hours Dr. Solnit said he agrees that television can be a factor in child violence, but he view it as a sole cause. wrap Demos Are a Strange Breed By Carl T. Rowan MIAMI here we are in tinsel city, eyes bulging and heart throbbing the way they do only at an illegal cockfight or a heavyweight championship brawl.

We like the smell and the sight of blood, and when the Democrats assemble in convention there is always the expectation of entertaining carnage. The people gathering here are not the old Democrats. Many are interlopers, attending their first convention. It is their very presence that carries the promise of mayhem beyond anything these traditionally warring politicians ever put on before. It used to be said that the Republicans nurtureda They were slaves to their ideological opposition to the New Deal and the subsequent policies and programs that have made this superficially a w'elfare society.

(I say superficially because, in truth, almost every government program we have that purports to help the poor ses really winds up fattening the bank accounts of the fatcats and the special interests.) So the Republicans kept nominating losers, preferring ideology to a prospect of victory, until 1952 when a convention coup slipped Gen. Dwight Eisenhower in ahead of Sen. Robert Taft. A lot of has not overrun the Democrats. It is an ideology that says the old power bases of the party are bad.

The word is out that organized labor has become fat and contented and conservative, anti-black and pro-war. So the heck with George Meany. So a group of blacks boasts that, the first time in 40 they, rather than the AFL- CIO, delivered the delegates needed to win nomination. The new ideology says that party bosses and elected officials have no right to call the tune certainly not any more than a housewife in Denver or a truck driver in Buffalo. So to heck w'ith Chicago Mayor Richard Daley if he thinks he can still sit in secret and decide who can be a convention delegate.

To heck with the congressmen and the other mayors and the ward bosses and all those other characters w'ho have assumed a divine right to take over that stockyards emporium in Chicago or the Rowan is former chief of the U.S. Information Agency. His weekday column appears in the San Antonio News. Cow Palace in San BYancisco or Convention Hall in Philadelphia and decide the future of the Democratic party. So the reformers have come to Miami Beach.

And not going to be bad for the eyeballers. be a lot more females, and be younger! And this convention is going to have that melting look with blacks, Mexican-Americans, Puerto Ricans represented as they never have been before. What we are seeing here is an attempt to revitalize the Democratic party by conferring special attention and dignity on the groups that heretofore have had little power among Democrats and are considered still to be anathema to the Republicans. The question that dominates this gathering is this: good ideology, but is it good These delegates come here to face a brutally divisive dispute over the California delegation with a sort of ultimatum from frontrunner George McGovern that, if they sustain a Credentials Committee decision to take 151 delegates from him and thus deny him the nomination, he will run as an independent. They face the question of sustaining a Credentials Committee decision to throw out Daley and 58 Illinois delegates in favor of a group largely supportive of McGovern.

That would fit beautifully the ideology, but it also might fit beautifully into President plan to make an Illinois victory a major factor in his re-election. Democrats from all over the country rehash the California brawl, the Illinois scrap, the fight over Mississippi and other credentials confrontations, and they say over and over: wonder if we can ever put it all back together and have a chance of beating The detached observer measures the anger of one group, the passionate commitment of another, and is forced toward the conclusion that the Democrats possibly put it all back together. Some of these new delegates never heard that is the art of the To them, is the dirtiest of words. The McGovern fanatics will settle for no one but McGovern except that some might be pacified if Sen. Edward Kennedy were dragooned into the nomination.

But, with encouragement, most will try to sabotage any Democrat who wins the nomination other than McGovern. For all their misgivings about programs, neither Humphrey, Muskie, Jackson nor Chisholm will try to undermine McGovern if he gets the nomination. The forces of Gov. George Wallace might. But, even in this day of you do not spit in eye or kick Daley in the derriere without expecting retribution.

The Democrats would appear to be in hopeless trouble without McGovern, and in hapless competition with him. But Democrats are a strange breed. Cosmic forces seem to save them from each other. This observer watches the blood-letting with the expectation that, once the daggers are pulled out, the political sutures fixed, the bandages applied, this shambles of a party will still stagger forth and give the Republicans a royal race for the White House. only hurls when I laugh The Choice By Art Buehwald has his own scenario for this Democratic National Convention.

The way things have been going with the party, one scenario has as much validity as the next. This is the one that 1 have written and if it comes true, remember, you read it here. It is the fourth day of the convention and the Democrats have been unable to decide on a presidential candidate. The fight to seat delegations has taken up three days and those people who were ruled ineligible have refused to give up their seats to those who were officially designated as delegates to the convention. Almost every state delegation has two people sitting in every chair.

No one dares leave the floor for fear that someone will grab his seat. When someone tries to speak he is hooted down by the opposition faction. Larry the chairman of the party, has the podium ringed with the National Guard so no one can grab the microphone. The nomination speeches have not been heard, but the candidates have been Humphrey, Wallace, Chisholm, Jackson and Muskie. There have been no demonstrations for the candidates in the hall because everyone is afraid if he gets up and marches they let him back in his section again.

On the first ballot McGovern picked up 1,234 votes, well shy of the 1,509 he Buehwald is a nationally syndicated humorist. His weekday column appears in the San Antonio News. vs. T-Statements Bv S.I. Hayakawa SAN do you do when your 5-y a -o 1 keeps pestering you to play with him when you are trying to relax, after a hard day at shop or office, with the evening paper? He pulls on your arm, climbs into your lap, crumples the paper.

After what been through that day, the last thing you want to do is play. Much of the literature of child psychology, including such books as Margaret i 1 justly famous Rights of stresses the needs and rights of that we are sometimes left with the impression that parents have no rights at all. However, as Thomas Gordon says in Effectiveness (Peter Wyden, parents do have needs and rights. They have their own lives to live, their own purposes to fulfill. Hence parents need effective ways to deal with behavior that in-, terferes with parental needs.

Of course you can meet the problem head on, as most parents do, with such commands as wrinkling the or going to get real angry if you get out from under my or ever interrupt a person when or you go outside and The first message commands him to do what he clearly does not want to do. The second threatens him. The third enunciates a general principle that you would not be willing to live by yourself. The fourth offers him a solution, not his. Dr.

Gordon is quite critical about this matter of Parent 3 Dr. Hayakawa is president of San Francisco State College. may ask, wrong with sending solutions? After all, the child causing me the Yes, he is. However, no less than adults, resist being tc.j what to do. Also, they may not like your solution.

Furthermore, sending your solution communicates another message, trust you to select a satisfactory solution by When you tell the child your solution, you are calling the shots. You are taking control. You are leaving him out of it. Essentially, there is a problem here of common courtesy which we know we owe to our friends and neighbors, but which we also owe to our own children. If a friend were visiting your home and happened to put his feet on the rungs of a treasured, antique chair, you surely would not say, your feet off that chair this or should never put your feet on antique No, we treat our friends with more respect.

We might say, embarrassed to mention this, but I just got that chair. an American 18th century antique and terribly afraid of getting it A message like this does not send a solution. It is not a It is an You-messages take the form, stop that. or you ever or should know better than or you you-message, by stating or implying a direct criticism of the person addressed, is in its very nature discourteous. However, when the parent simply tells the child how the child's behavior is affecting him, the message becomes an I-message: cannot rest when someone is crawling on my or tired and I really feel like Actually, are being a is a very poor way of communicating the feelings of fatigue.

want to communicates what the parent is 1 i g. The you-message pest, does not send the essential message, which is about the needs are the central problems at the moment. are a is a statement that cannot be understood by the child as anything but a negative evaluation of him. want to is a statement of fact about the parent. It is an I-statement.

It is not likely to provoke a resistance and rebellion. Telling someone how you feel especially when the feelings are negative is much less threatening than accusing him of causing those negative feelings. needed. The rest were split between the other candidates with the uncommitted refusing to vote for anyone. The second and third ballot found no one budging.

By the tenth ballot of all-night session, the convention was hopelessly deadlocked. The state delegations caucused right on the floor, trying to get people to change their minds. But it was impossible. On NBC, John Chancellor and David Brinkley became short-tempered and refused to talk to each ther. Howard K.

Smith and Harry Reasc ner on ABC were also not speaking to each other, and on CBS, Walter Cronkite talking to himself. It was obvious to everyone in and out of the convention hall that a compromise candidate had to be who had not already been nominated. But who? The Democratic Partv leaders call a recess behind the podium. They argue and thrash it out for several hours. The only man whose name is proposed as the compromise candidate is a very famous, but controversial, figure on the American scene.

He has announced many times that he is not a candidate for the Presidency or the Vice Presidency, and has said under no conditions would he accept a draft. Yet, the leaders argue he is the one person who can save the party. This young man, whose name had been associated with a very embarrassing incident, is a household word now. Because of the deadlock at the convention, he is the only one who can possibly beat Nixon in November. The compromise candidate is not at the convention.

He has purposely stayed away so people would believe he wfas not interested in the nomination. puts in a call to him. Everyone, in turn, gets on the phone and tells him he has to be the candidate. The compromise candidate speaks to George McGovern, Humphrey, Muskie and Wallace. They urge him to run.

The candidate finally agrees to a draft and says he will take the next plane to Miami. And that's how Bobby Fischer, the U.S. chess champion, became the Democratic presidential nominee for 1972..