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that cities with strong Iaws controllir firearms have much lower homicide rates than cities with unrestricted sale of guns, In New York City, where ownership of firearis has Jong been supervised, the murder rate is 3.8 per £00,000 of popu- dation, substantially Jower than the national average of 4.5 and about one third. of Alabama’s 10.2. New York City also has the lowest robbery rate of the nation’s nine largest cities. These figures offer a prety sound argument for the control of firearms. And just by the way, these figures also argue that there is a bit of hysteria behind the current tend- encyv to call New York City’s streets a jungle of violent crime. LEIGHTON: I agree that contemporary crime statistics produce hysteria rather than thoughtful consideration of the factors that contribute to the incidence of crime. For example, we are told that crime has increased “five times faster than the population.” From a definitive .point of view, is this a statement that enlightens us? I sometimes suspect that such crime statistics are issued to terrorize people rather than to inform and edu- eate the public. TURNER: You're absolutely right, I'm sor- ry tovsay. As an FBI agent, I made ar- rests T was ashamed of just to play the numbers game. Conscientious cops hate it. but this business of amassing statistics is forced down their throats. Obviously, Justice suffers as a result. It’s an abuse that should be ended. I suppose the only Way to stop it is for those who appropri- ate funds for police agencies to yawn when a police chief—or a J. Edgar Hoov- er, for that matter—trics to impress them with numbers. COOK: The FBI crime compilations are peculiar products of a new system of tabulating crimes. In- 1930. when the “~~="FBI begaii~ collecting ‘crime. statistics, only 400 police departments reported to the FBI: now about 8500 deparunents report. Obviously, the sheer volume of crimes reported will grow explosively when the number of reporting. agencies INCTEASEs twentyfold. Added to this is the fet that calls-forservice to every po- Hee department. in the country have multiplied by factors as high as ten or twelve just in the last five to ten years, T woukli't be at all surprised if this so- called runaway increase in crime is noth- msg more than a runaway increase in Gulls to the police—from a public panic- -Stricken "by a crime-wave scare instigated by the police themselves. TURNER: Let me tell you about a “crime wave” that hit San Francisco. last year almost overnight—without the slightest Micrease in the crime rate. In the North Beach district of the city, some self-right- cous morality Rroups got together and Presured the police inte raiding several ae ens proceeded to round up all the girls; and for good measure, thes filled up the re- maining seats in the paddy wagons with all the drunks and roisterers in North Beach—wholesale lots of them. Not sur- prisingly, the arrest rate in San Fran- cisco leaped astronomically; to judge by the arrest figures, the city was running amuck, But there had been no upsurge of crime—merely a+ small but well-directed ground swell of bluenoses who forced chicken-livered police officers into mak- ing arrests for so-called crimes that had never bothered them before. LOHMAN: ‘There’s still another factor that misleadingly inflates crime statistics. It just so happens that the number of people in that. age group which has always committed a disproportionate number of crimes—from 15 to 24—is in- creasing far faster than the general popu- lation, So, naturally, there is an increase in crime rates: but this certainly doesn't imply increasing lawlessness in society as a whole, INBAU: Be all that as it may, the FBI sta-- tistics show irrefutably that crime is increasing five times faster than the population. The Attorney General savs the crime rate went up 14 percent just last year, and our general population certainly didn’t jump that much. Even if the adjustment of statistical methods were to show a less alarming proportion- ate increase, the police would still have an enormously increasing absolute num- ber of crimes to contend with, and they need all the tools we can give them. A murder is a murder and calls for police action whether it represents only one homicide per 1000 or per 100,000 popu- lation. PLAYBOY: Let's cliscuss some of those tools. Mr. Turner, as an ex-FBI specialist in electronics devices. for clandestine sure veillance, how do” you feel about legal- ized wire tapping ‘by law-enforcement agencies? TURNER: In the first place, by its very nature, the tap is MHegal, no matter who docs it. Vechnically, it falls under the heading of “search and scizure’: it's ille- gal because it's impossible in advance to name the specific conversation to be “searched” or the specific information to be “seized.” as ‘the Constitution requires in all other searches and seizures. In or- der to legalize it, you'd have to pass a constitutional amendment—and — that's something I'd hate to see happen. 1 say this as one who has monitored many FBI wire taps during which I necessarily eavesdropped on the conversations of in- nocent persons discussing matters not pertinent to the investigation, therefore none of my business. It’s not a nice job. PEMBERTON: A study of wire tapping in New York City showed that of 3588 Nhones reared th avn wens abesesee bere