Lieutenant BUCKNEY. I don't know the whole history of it but there was some indication, I think the superintendent at that time became very concerned about the alarming increase in the number of deaths attributed to gang activity.

The CHAIRMAN. You did have a serious problem at that time?

Lieutenant BUCKNEY. We most certainly did. I think there was a phenomenal increase in the number of homicides. I think it wasstatistics can be interpreted various ways-there was an increase as high as 150 percent in those kind of activities.

The CHAIRMAN. That appeared to be related to gang activities?
Lieutenant BUCKNEY. Yes, sir.

The CHAIRMAN. Was it his original decision or was it made after consultation through some process?

Lieutenant BUCKNEY. I would presume that it was made as a result of a process of talking to the hierarchy within the police department. The CHAIRMAN. Who would be higher than the superintendent? Lieutenant BUCKNEY. The only one higher than the superintendent would be the mayor who happens to be the superintendent's boss. The CHAIRMAN. You don't know whether the mayor was consulted about it or not?

Lieutenant BUCKNEY. No; I don't know but I would imagine that he was probably just as alarmed as the superintendent was. The CHAIRMAN. Was probably what?

Lieutenant BUCKNEY. I would imagine he was probably just as alarmed as the superintendent was.

I know for a fact, since I have been the head of the unit, that he is very concerned about it.

The CHAIRMAN. How many policemen are under the jurisdiction of the superintendent who issued this order?

Lieutenant BUCKNEY. The exact figure I cannot quote but I would say in the neighborhood of 12,000 or better.

The CHAIRMAN. In other words, he occupies the position of supervising approximately 12,000 policemen?

Lieutenant BUCKNEY. Yes, sir.

The CHAIRMAN. How long has he been in that position?

Lieutenant BUCKNEY. The superintendent who made the order is no longer with us, O. W. Wilson.

The CHAIRMAN. How long had he been in that position?

Lieutenant BUCKNEY. At the time he ordered this-when he authorized this order, rather, I think he had been superintendent approximately 6 or 7 years.

The CHAIRMAN. He had been superintendent for 6 or 7 years and I assume had been with the police force in different capacities for many years.

Lieutenant BUCKNEY. No, sir. O. W. Wilson was appointed, he came there in the early part of 1961, I believe, or in the latter part of

1960.

The CHAIRMAN. He had been there 6 years in this capacity?
Lieutenant BUCKNEY. Six or seven years.

The CHAIRMAN. Do you know where he came from?

Lieutenant BUCKNEY. He was the former head of the department of criminology or police science at the University of California at Berkeley.

The CHAIRMAN. He was someone experienced?

Lieutenant BUCKNEY. He is an internationally known authority in the police field. He has written some textbooks.

The CHAIRMAN. Not just a upstart that

Lieutenant BUCKNEY. Not at all. O. W. Wilson is widely respected throughout the world.

The CHAIRMAN. That is the man who issued the order?

Lieutenant BUCKNEY. Yes, sir.

The CHAIRMAN. You were put in command?

Lieutenant BUCKNEY. Yes, sir.

The CHAIRMAN. There has been a charge made here and I am going to let you proceed in your own way. You don't have a prepared statement, do you?

Lieutenant BUCKNEY. I have a partially prepared statement which I will refer to occasionally throughout the run of the hearing.

The CHAIRMAN. Very well.

Your unit as well as the entire police force, I assume, is under attack of long duration that you have been trying to corral these gangs and trying to enforce the law.

As you testify you may make such answers to these charges as you think appropriate.

Lieutenant BUCKNEY. I will be very glad to do that.

Senator MUNDT. May we have a little more of your background, Lieutenant.

You told us about O. W. Wilson. Did you come in with Wilson or were you a policeman before that?

Lieutenant BUCKNEY. I was a policeman before that. I joined the Chicago Police Department in June 1954.

Senator MUNDT. 1954?

Lieutenant BUCKNEY. Yes, sir. After attending recruit school I was assigned to the route traffic section where I directed traffic for approximately 5 years at the corner of State and Madison.

From there I was transferred to the Burnside district. It was during this period of time O. W. Wilson was brought to Chicago to head the police department.

During that time he thought in his preliminary studies there was a great lack of supervision in the department. He made a series of appointments of what were known as temporary sergeants. At that time I was appointed one of those fellows.

One of the embarrassing things is that I failed the sergeant's exam given at that time and I was reduced to patrolman. As a result, shortly thereafter I was sent to his office to work in the office.

I stayed there for approximately 4 or 5 months. I was transferred to the training division where I taught criminal law for approximately 5 years.

The CHAIRMAN. Are you also a lawyer?

Lieutenant BUCKNEY. No, sir; I am what you call a "street lawyer." I learned my law from the lawyers who were on the staff and from attending various legal seminars at Northwestern University and various other places.

I learned the criminal aspects of it from association rather than direct schooling.

It was during this period I was promoted to sergeant and also to lieutenant.

Then when I was promoted to lieutenant I was assigned to a task force unit in the police department.

I spent the summer of 1966 through the riots and all the open housing marches. Shortly thereafter, I was appointed the commanding officer of a robbery unit in the detective division. From there I was called down in April 1967 and interviewed regarding taking over the leadership of this particular unit and based apparently on that interview I was selected to then recruit the membership of the unit and to carry out this general order.

The CHAIRMAN. You kind of came up through the ranks?
Lieutenant BUCKNEY. Yes, sir.

Senator MUNDT. I have one other question.

When you allude to the gang intelligence unit and when the mayor was talking about gangs, was he alluding primarily to youth gangs or was he alluding to the kind of gang that Al Capone ran from Cicero at the time I was in Chicago?

Lieutenant BUCKNEY. Did you ask if the mayor was concerned about which kind?

Senator MUNDT. What kind of gangs did you deal with? All kind of gangs?

Lieutenant BUCKNEY. No. This unit was created specifically to deal with what we call the criminal street gang. That is the kind of gang which we have had reference to here such as the Blackstone Rangers, the Disciples.

Senator MUNDT. "Youth gangs" used loosely, probably 30 years of age or less.

Lieutenant BUCKNEY. We have found throughout our studies that the term "youth" is actually a misnomer. For example, gang members range anywhere from 7 to 40. This is one of the oddities of the entire situation.

This is one of the things that disturbs us a little about the TWO grant in that they talk about dropouts from ages 16 to 25.

Our opinion was the class of 25-year-olds as a school dropout or a juvenile delinquent was pushing things a little far.

Senator MUNDT. Anyhow, it was primarily street gangs and gangs like this rather than the syndicated kind of crime?

Lieutenant BUCKNEY. This is very true.

Now the topic of the syndicate has arisen here and I certainly intend to comment on that. I strongly feel, and I think it is the feeling of many, many people, that the gangs that we have talked about so far have not yet reached, or at least in my opinion they have not reached that stage. But we are very, very concerned because we feel that if they are allowed to go unchecked and if some people don't start taking their heads out of the sand and start believing the message that we are trying to get across, then one of these days you will very well see another syndicate.

Senator MUNDT. Especially if the leaders start to make it lucrative, profitable?

Lieutenant BUCKNEY. This is one of the points I intend to mention. When you speak of organized crime in the syndicate there are certain things that are attributed to it. For example, it is well known that

organized crime rules through monopoly, through muscle and murder, thus they are noted for extortion, intimidation, threats, you name it, they have been associated with it, infiltration of legitimate business and various other things.

This is the thing that disturbs us because we see today in a group such as the Rangers evidence of these kinds of beginnings and these are some of the things that we want to attempt to point out during the course of this hearing.

Senator MUNDT. Do you think, Lieutenant, it might work something like organized baseball, that these are sort of minor league players that will get in the big league if they demonstrate their ability in the minors? Lieutenant BUCKNEY. I would say probably at this stage they would be considered minor league, perhaps if you want to categorize it, maybe double A.

The CHAIRMAN. The street gangs do provide good training for the Mafia, do they?

Lieutenant BUCKNEY. I would think at the rate they are going they will be very well trained. It is not uncommon, you have heard it here, to issue contracts to intimidate witnesses, to try to buy them out.

The whole gamut of the type of activity that is normally attributed to organized crime.

The CHAIRMAN. They insist that out of a hundred Senators they have to have the two of us to make a quorum this morning. We will have to go and report. We will be right back and everyone may be

at ease.

(Whereupon, a brief recess was taken with the following members present: Senators McClellan and Mundt.)

The CHAIRMAN. The committee will resume.

(Members present at time of reconvening after a brief recess: Senators McClellan and Mundt.)

The CHAIRMAN. You may proceed.

Lieutenant BUCKNEY. Mr. Chairman, I ask the indulgence of the committee in view of some of the very serious charges which have been made during the course of this testimony to sort of abide with me through a rather long presentation by what I hope to show based on our experience of how involved the problem really is in dealing with gangs and how such a program can foster, perpetuate, and strengthen the gang problem to the point that it makes it that much more difficult for the police to deal with it.

The CHAIRMAN. Let me ask you overall. Do you really have gang problems there with youth gangs, as they have been termed here, the Blackstone Rangers, Disciples, and others? Do you really have serious problems with them?

Lieutenant BUCKNEY. There is no doubt in my mind that the problem is very serious. Any time that a city can attribute 30 deaths or some figure closely approximating that to gang-related activity, then it would have to be called a serious problem.

The CHAIRMAN. That is just since January?
Lieutenant BUCKNEY. Yes, sir.
The CHAIRMAN. Of this year?
Lieutenant BUCKNEY. Yes, sir.

The CHAIRMAN. The first 6 months of this year?
Lieutenant BUCKNEY. Yes, sir.

The CHAIRMAN. Are these gangs supported or encouraged by folks outside of the gangs?

Lieutenant BUCKNEY. They most certainly are.

The CHAIRMAN. By persons, who should be in a position of community leadership and who should support law and order and give cooperation to law-enforcement officials?

Do you have any problems that way?

Lieutenant BUCKNEY. Yes; we do have and those are some of the things that I want to try to point out to the committee.

One of the things that I think has become apparent during the course of the hearing is that there are two entirely different stories about the gangs.

What we want to show is the side that we think is the true story. We want to depict it in a way that I think the committee, itself, will see that there are certain very obvious problems which make this a difficult situation to deal with.

The CHAIRMAN. I was shocked this morning to read a story in the Chicago Tribune. I assume this story is correct. I want to ask you something about it.

The story says:

Students Told by Fry To Break Up Convention.

That is the headline of it in today's issue of the Chicago Tribune.

It says:

The Reverend John Fry, South Side Minister who has been connected with the Blackstone Rangers, appealed to college students yesterday to join in a movement to break up the Democratic National Convention opening here August 26. Do you have any information as to that other than what the paper has reported?

Lieutenant BUCKNEY. I have some information in which I would like to comment on just a little bit later in my presentation.

The CHAIRMAN. We had Reverend Fry before us a few days ago. There were some of his writings that we quoted from. I don't remember the particular article now, but I remember we questioned him about it. I asked him if he wasn't suggesting to those that he was speaking to there in that article that they undertake to wreck the Democratic National Convention.

He used the word "wreck" in the article. I raised some question about it, whether he was not encouraging these gangs or others who would participate in rioting to break up the Democratic National Convention.

I don't know what his answer was but it was somewhat evasive. If this paper is reporting it correctly, he has come out openly and without any reservations, apparently, in recommending that students join with others to break up, join in a movement to break up the Democratic National Convention.

The paper quotes here says (reading):

"One hundred people❞—

I guess they are quoting him—

"signed a petition to break down the door of the International Amphitheater," the Reverend Fry said. He said, "The demonstration will be in support of Senator Eugene McCarthy who is seeking the Democratic nomination for President."