itself was a bargaining point in the recruitment of kids into the Rangers because the fellows could go around-we have arrested them where they had clippings in their pocket which says, "Look, join us, look at the publicity we are getting, look at the money we are getting. Go with us, we are the real wheels in this thing."

It was certainly pointed out in some of the testimony previously there are some grave inequities in the criminal justice system in this country. I hate to say it but in many instances you know we have always heard the old adage that "crime does not pay" but doggone, it does, and that is the bad part of it.

As long as we have the citizens' apathy and fear-one of the tragic things about this gang problem, you see, I am the guy who has to sit on the end of phone calls many times and talk to those mothers and fathers who are calling in and saying, "Lieutenant, can you do something? My kid is being beaten, he is threatened, he can't continue in school. He doesn't want to be a member of a gang. What can you do about it?"

Then I say to them what are you going to do about it? They say to me, "Well, I live in this community and I don't want to get involved. I say to them, "Until the day you stand up like a man and go to court and testify and back us there is little that we can do. Sure, we know the problem but until you get involved in it there is little we can do."

We have done background on some of these gang members. Jeff Fort has been before a particular judge in the city of Chicago on at least six different occasions. The most he ever got from that judge is 30 days in jail.

We did a study on another individual involved in 16 or 17 shootings. The only time that guy spent in jail was the time he couldn't make bond. He finally got people to stand up and say, "He is the guy that shot us." We took him to court. The legislature in the meantime. changed the law and specifies aggravated battery could not be committed with the use of a deadly weapon. He was convicted.

Where we thought we were going to get him 2 to 5 years in the penitentiary, the sentence had to be reduced to simple battery. He was given a maximum 6 months' sentence. He had already served 4. With time off for good behavior he was out in 30 days.

This is the kind of problems we have to face.

The CHAIRMAN. Those are the problems you have in trying to enforce the law?

Lieutenant BUCKNEY. This is true.

The CHAIRMAN. All of this militates to the advantage of whom? Society or the criminal?

Lieutenant BUCKNEY. It is all to the advantage of the criminal.

Then one further point on this issue and then I will get into some of the other things.

In dealing with this problem, in trying to fight it and give the community some sort of justice, I recall an incident one night where I personally ordered about 10 gang members to be arrested for mob action. This was a case in which one member had "called the gang out," as they used the term, to handle this particular gang member.

We intercepted them. The guy ran with the shotgun. He got away. But Illinois law specifies that when two or more people gather to

gether to do an unlawful act that this is mob action and it is to be used as a preventive measure. They were all arrested. It was felt that there was no case and the judge politely leaned over and said:

Fellows, I know you are all good fellows and you wouldn't do such a thing as that.

We heard of another case where a judge leaned over and told one of the Rangers:

Look, tell me you are a Ranger and I will show you what a good guy I can be. Those are the kind of problems we have to face.

Senator MUNDT. Where did these judges come from? Are they appointed or elected?

Lieutenant BUCKNEY. They are now elected.

Senator MUNDT. So the good people of Chicago, any time they resolve to elect a judiciary who will give them maximum sentence instead of the minimum sentence will contribute greatly to the reduction of crime in Chicago?

Lieutenant BUCKNEY. It certainly would. But, Senator, you get into a real involved process, actually. Because you find in order to do what really needs to be done for the community, the people themselves must foot the bill.

I think the American public at this point is not quite ready to foot the bill that it will take to do the things that have to be done.

Obviously, if they are going to go on the principle of arresting individuals and seeing that they take their punishment, it is going to call for bigger jails, it will call for bigger police departments, it will call for many, many things: Better detention facilities, more probation and social workers, various other people.

It all calls for the public to foot the bill.

Senator MUNDT. Are you implying to the committee that the reason the judges turn loose so many criminals are because your jails are overcrowded?

Lieutenant BUCKNEY. I am not indicating that. I have heard that statement. Whether that is true or not, I can't really say. But I think some way or another the courts are going to have to become streamlined to the point that they are much better informed on some of the individuals such as we have to deal with so that they are not given that pat on the back and released back to society to create their havoc. Senator MUNDT. You began this portion of your testimony by saying that justice is not always metered out as evenly as we would all like to see it handled.

I want to ask you now whether you agree with at least one witness who said that they tend to prosecute and perhaps persecute Negro law violators or those suspected of law violation as against whites. In your organization, your antigang unit, are you the only Negro member of it?

Lieutenant BUCKNEY. Sir?

Senator MUNDT. Are you the only Negro member of this gang unit? Lieutenant BUCKNEY. No, sir, I am not. My unit is a mixed unit. It is probably two-thirds Negro. But we don't always deal with Negro gangs. I have the entire city and there are gangs all over. We deal with each gang the same way.

When they violate the law we try to do our best to see that justice is done.

Senator MUNDT. You have tough white kids too, do you not?
Lieutenant BUCKNEY. Most assuredly.

Senator MUNDT. Is there any reason in the world why your organization should be anti-Negro?

Lieutenant BUCKNEY. No reason whatsoever. I don't see how it could be. If it was anti-Negro it would be against me and I am the boss.

Senator MUNDT. Two-thirds of your own group in the gang intelligence unit is Negro?

Lieutenant BUCKNEY. Yes, sir.

Senator MUNDT. The boss is a Negro?

Lieutenant BUCKNEY. Yes, sir.

Senator MUNDT. I don't see how you could be out there putting a knife in the backs of members of your own race unless they do get into trouble.

Justice should be color blind in this instance and I would hope that it is.

Lieutenant BUCKNEY. The only thing that we are trying to see is that the entire community and the youth of that community have a right to go where they would like to go in relative freedom.

You know, many people don't think about the whole situation but it is a terrible indictment of a community when a boy who may meet a young lady that strikes his fancy and he cannot date her because she lives in a neighborhood that he cannot go into.

It is a terrible indictment when a fellow cannot go to the hotdog joint on the corner because that hotdog joint is in a rival gang's territory.

What we are saying is, if we can divorce this adult influence and get some of the hard-core leadership out of the way we feel that the agencies which are created to deal with the problem can then do the things that were designed for these kids.

And that the kids then will be allowed to be kids. They don't have to be in gangs, that is our philosophy. Why can't they just be kids? The CHAIRMAN. You spoke awhile ago about parents calling you and reporting to you about their children being beaten or threatened and so forth, and you try to discuss with them what to do.

They said they decided that they would not become involved. May I ask you, is that because of a sense of fear?

Lieutenant BUCKNEY. Unquestionably. There is a very definite fear among many, many people. I can't blame them in a sense when I read reports, for example, where a 5-year-old boy was killed because they thought his older brother had testified against a Ranger and they ran up there and shot a shotgun in the house, shot one boy and killed a 5year-old.

Again, life is sweet. None of us particularly want to die. The people have a tendency to take the easy way out and say, "Sure, I am letting you know, I hope you can do something about it, but don't count on

me."

The CHAIRMAN. There is nothing that would prompt them to do that except in my judgment a sense of absolute fear for their lives!

Lieutenant BUCKNEY. That is the tragic part of it. The problem is so involved and so serious and so heartbreaking that often it is very difficult to talk about it.

You know, when people have to send their children out of State to go to school, when people

The CHAIRMAN. Because a local gang won't let them go to school there in peace in their own neighborhood?

Lieutenant BUCKNEY. That is right.

The CHAIRMAN. People are having to do that in this area?
Lieutenant BUCKNEY. That is certainly true.

The CHAIRMAN. Having to send their children into another State to go to school because of gang control and gang domination, and when I speak of gang, I am speaking of the Blackstone Rangers is that right?

Lieutenant BUCKNEY. That is right.

The CHAIRMAN. Which has its headquarters in the First Presbyterian Church under the legal instruction of Reverend Fry, according to his own testimony?

Lieutenant BUCKNEY. That is quite true, sir.

The CHAIRMAN. Proceed.

Lieutenant BUCKNEY. Now I would like to get into some material which I think bears very definitely on the issue and it sort of lays a background of the history of the church and some of their thinking and involvement and bears on some of the issues testified to in the hearing.

The first paper I have in front of me is called "A Statement Regarding the Relationship of the First Presbyterian Church and the Blackstone Rangers."

In the introduction it states, "In bureaucracy circles this statement would be known as a 'white paper.""

Senator MUNDT. Is that by the church or by you?
Lieutenant BUCKNEY. Sir?

Senator MUNDT. Whose statement are you reading?

Lieutenant BUCKNEY. This is a statement I presume prepared by Reverend Fry. It sounds like his writing to me but the title of it is "A Statement Regarding the Relationship of the First Presbyterian Church and the Blackstone Rangers."

Senator MUNDT. It is a statement on behalf of the church?
Lieutenant BUCKNEY. Yes.

The CHAIRMAN. You do not propose to read all of it?

Lieutenant BUCKNEY. I did. There are many things in here that shed light on the overall problem.

The CHAIRMAN. I will direct that it be printed in the record in full. If you overlook any part of it, whatever you omit reading may go in the record in its continuity.

You may proceed.

Lieutenant BUCKNEY (reading):

A STATEMENT REGARDING THE RELATIONSHIP OF THE FIRST PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH AND THE BLACKSTONE RANGERS

INTRODUCTION

In bureaucracy circles this statement would be known as a "white paper," that is a comprehensive background paper. Well, this particular comprehensive background paper will be known as a "black paper". It is intended for the

members of the congregation and friends who participate in its life. It is not designed to answer the makeshift allegations of the press, the police, or hostile organizations in the Woodlawn area. It is not a statement in defense of anything

Senator MUNDT. Does the paper bear a date?

Lieutenant BUCKNEY. It bears no date. I assume it was written sometime in 1966. (Continues reading)

especially is it not a defense of the church's relationship to the Blackstone Rangers or of the Rangers themselves. Its aim is to clarify the relationship and, toward the end, to raise for the congregation certain issues that must be faced.

HISTORY OF THE BLACKSTONE RANGERS

The Blackstone Rangers have been in existence for perhaps five years, boys who reside in the general area of 66th Place and Blackstone Avenue. This club was an unattached club until it began to skirmish sporadically with other area clubs. Still unattached, the Rangers added strength by bringing other clubs into its organization. These clubs were situated in the immediate vicinity. The life and style of the Rangers conformed generally to text book descriptions of teenaged gangs. The Rangers were the same old thing, and so were the Disciples, the historic foe of the Rangers. The birth, rise, and decline of these neighborhood gangs could have been predicted, because they were so much like neighborhood gangs all over America. But at some point in the history of the Rangers the predictable pattern was broken. The core Blackstone club began organizing clubs in Woodlawn, that is, began the business of creating clubs where none had been before and creating them as Ranger clubs. This was relatively easy to do because the core Blackstone Ranger club had a name, a clan, a mystique that was attractive.

In the fall of 1965 there were an estimated 200 Blackstone Rangers all told. There were, again an estimation, less than 150 so-called East Side Disciples (East of Englewood) in West Woodlawn. The growth of these Disciple components in West Woodlawn meant, throughout the winter, a steady contest, steadily escalating. The nature of the contest was not to determine which club would enjoy supremacy in the general area. The contest was over borders. It was mostly personal in nature. Ranger X would be ambushed (beaten, shot, roughed up, killed) by Disciples Y and Z. A Ranger retaliation on Disciples Y and Z forthcame. The retaliation on particular Disciples was generally heavier than what occasioned the retaliation. Therefore, when the Disciples struck back at the particular retaliatory Rangers, they would tend to strike as hard or harder than they had been struck at. It was shoot 'em up and beat 'em up all winter long. Any knowledge of why the fight had been started was lost because so many immediate fights were fueling the on-going contest. It was virtually open war every night.

The contest, the persistent fighting, not only provoked heavier fighting in an upward spinal, it also was chiefly responsible for a determined organizational effort on the part of the Rangers. The Disciples grew somewhat but did not have a leadership core. They seemed interested in the shooting aspects of warfare, while more and more the Rangers became interested in the organizational activities that grew out of the warfare. They began organizing South Shore boys, Essex boys; they began organizing on 79th and 87th Streets, all the way to the West Side. Then they sought strong allies, and found them, in West Side gang complexes, particularly "The Vice Lords," and to the North in particular clubs around 39th Street, the most significant being named "The Four Corners." The success of this organizational work was-let us tend toward a modest wordincredible. The Core Blackstone Ranger leadership began talking about "The Ranger NATION." By mid-summer at one particular meeting, over 1500 Rangers were in attendance. (Should I include here the "Pee Wee Rangers," boys under ten who are clamoring for membership, the boys and girls younger than that who. as they play, sing "Mighty, Mighty Blackstone"? That would double the total numbers.)

HISTORY OF FIRST CHURCH INVOLVEMENT

Last fall the Woodlawn Boys Club sought and got permission to use the gym and other third floor facilities three nights a week in its work with one Ranger club, "The Conservative Rangers." This program of basketball, record listening, ping pong, etc., soon expanded to include a dance in John Knox Hall once a