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By Martha Angle and Robert Walters
WASHINGTON (NEA) —The continuing controversy sur
rounding the indictment of former FBI supervisor John J.
Kearney may be obscuring a significant shift in public senti
ment towards less celebrated cases of alleged police miscon
duct.
Atty. Gen. Griffin Bell and the Justice Department have
been bitterly criticized in some circles for prosecuting
Kearney on charges of directing illegal mail openings and
wiretaps during a 1970 to 1972 FBI search for fugitive Weather
Underground terrorists in New York City.
But most of the public sympathy for Kearney seems to stem
from a suspicion that he is being made a scapegoat for the sins
of higher-ups in the FBI and Justice Department during the
bad old days of the Nixon administration.
You don’t hear many people condoning or defending the type
of illegal investigative tactics which led to a federal grand
jury’s indictment of Kearney.
And in fact, there is growing evidence in the Justice
Department's own files that the public is losing patience with
law enforcement officers who engage in blatant violations of
individual rights.
Every year, the department’s Civil Rights Division screens
thousands of complaints alleging criminal violation of in
dividual civil rights. Although the offenses vary, the bulk of
them involve charges of police brutality or other misconduct
by law enforcement' officers ranging from process servers to
prison guards.
Only a handful of these complaints ever result in federal
prosecutions. During this decade, the Justice Department has
filed criminal civil rights charges against just 60 to 90 in
dividuals per year.
‘We’ve got to have evidence beyond all reasonable doubt
before we ll even bring a case,” says William L. Gardner,
head of the Civil Rights Division’s criminal unit. “We don’t
get involved where there’s just a swearing contest between
the complainant and a police officer.”
Yet despite the department's caution, the conviction rate in
criminal civil rights cases used to be abysmally low — slightly
less than 20 per cent in 1971 and 1972 for all types of violations,
and even lower where law enforcement officers were on trial.
That pattern is changing, however. In 1975, the conviction
rate in civil rights cases rose to 43 per cent and last year it
reached 61 per cent.
Nearly all of these cases are resolved by jury trials rather
than plea-bargaining or trials before a judge alone, so the
sharp increase in the conviction rate would appear to reflect a
heightened public sensitivity towards official lawlessness.
“Part of it relates to the whole post-Watergate morality,”
says Gardner. “People are generally more skeptical about all
public officials, including law enforcement officers.’.’
Then, too, he notes, the social atmosphere has changed im
mensely since the turn of the decade, when racial distur
bances and anti-war demonstrations frightened and confused
a great many law-abiding citizens. “Many people in that era
found it easier to empathize with the man in blue than with the
kids on the streets,” Gardner said.
There is, we suspect, a third factor at work: new leadership
at the Justice Department and the White House. The old “law
and order" rhetoric of the Nixon regime tended to camouflage
a shameful official contempt for the rights of citizens perceiv
ed as different or disruptive.
No matter how it is ultimately resolved, the Kearney case
demonstrates that the Justice Department is serious about
prosecuting those who trample on individual rights and liber
ties, even in the name of the law.
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RENO, Nev.—The old prison rockpile isn’t what it used to
be in Nevada. Here state prison Inmates, all volunteers,
White House chow most exclusive in town
By JURATE KAZICKAS
Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON (AP) - As
restaurants go, the decor isn’t much.
But the service is fast, the food is
inexpensive but good and the address is
the best in town: 1600 Pennsylvania
Avenue.
The White House mess may be the
most exclusive luncheon spot in
Washington, a city where membership
in a small club counts a great deal.
The man at the salad bar may be Vice
President Walter F. Mondale. Or he
may be a Cabinet member or a top
presidential assistant. On a rare day,
President Carter stops by for a bite to
eat.
Picture it: red carpeting, fresh
carnations, nautical paintings and a
ship’s clock. Lunch is served on white
Things have changed
china embossed with the presidential
seal. It’s available to a select 180
persons and an occasional lucky guest.
The bite-sized home fries are cooked
just right, crisped to a golden brown.
The salad, topped with bacon bits, bean
sprouts, egg, crouton and peppers, is
nearly a meal in itself. But the tender
Iqbster tails, even though succulent, are
a bit on the cool side.
Mom might have sold her soul to lay
claim to the apple pie, topped with
vanilla ice cream so rich it has a sheen
like meringue.
A little chilled white wine with the
meal would make it perfect, but Carter
has ordered everything stronger than
iced tea off the menu.
In other days, it was different.
Richard Nixon permitted beer and
Margaritas at least once a week, part of
earn $lO a month breaking rocks. Once the chore was a
form of discipline, but that has changed. (AP)
Page 13
a Thursday Mexican special. LBJ went
all the way with daily cocktails.
The White House notes with pride
that it has increased the mess mem
bership from 150 to include more aides.
The list of honorary members has been
trimmed to 30 or so.
These days, the list includes Federal
Reserve Chairman Arthur Burns; Ken
Curtis of the Democratic National
Committee; CIA Director Adm.
Stansfield Turner, William Scranton, a
member of the Intelligence Oversight
Board; Charles Kirbo, an Atlanta law
yer and Carter’s longtime friend and
several less familiar names like Henry
Owen of the Brookings Institution.
Unlike the days when Alan Green
span, President Ford’s economic ad
viser, defied the rules to sneak
television personality Barbara Walters
Griffin Daily News Thursday, August 25,1977
Waste disposal stand
shock to DuPont officials
JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — DuPont Chemical Co. had no
warning that Georgia’s pollution control agency would re
fuse to allow the company to use a waste disposal method
planned for its proposed pigment plant near DeLisle, an
official testified Wedneday.
Larry Kniffen, assistant plant manager for the
proposed $l5O million titanium dioxide facility, said
DuPont was “shocked” at the Georgia agency’s refusal.
His testimoney came as an attorney seeking to stop the
DuPont plant attempted to show DuPont could use a waste
disposal system other than the deep-well injection method
it proposes to use.
Kniffen and Dr. Lamar Miller, an Environmental
Protect Agency official from Washington, were on the
witness stand all day Wednesday, the third day of
hearings before the Mississippi Air and Water Pollution
Control Commission.
DuPont proposes to discharge some of its treated
wastes into the Bay of St. Louis while other wastes will be
injected into a deep well similar to the one Georgia
rejected.
The rejection by Georgia came at a time, Kniffen said,
when DuPont had narrowed an original thirty potential
sites to two, one in Georgia and the DeLisle location.
Negotiations were underway with the Georgia depart
ment for DuPont to drill a test well when “we received a
letter, very surprisingly, from the director of the Georgia
Environmental Protection Agency telling us that in spite
of all these negotiations he was not going to let us drill that
well,” Kniffen said.
in for lunch, reporters now can be in
vited to sample the presidential cuisine.
Eavesdropping and picture-taking are
frowned upon.
All this democratizing of the mess,
which is operated by the U.S. Navy, has
not impressed William Gulley, director
of White House Military Affairs.
Gulley, on the staff since 1966, thinks
the changes are self-defeating.
“The purpose of the mess was to have
a place where senior staff members
could go so they didn’t have to spend too
much time away from their desks and
could conduct business with each
other,’’ he said. He added that the mess
was opened under President Franklin
D. Roosevelt, who didn’t want his men
all over town for two-hour lunches.
