ustxtxb_obs_1962_11_30_50_00002-00000_000.pdf

DISASTER DISTRICTS c f TEXAS From the Texas State Journal of Medicine THE CUBAN CRISIS IN KENEDY In Amarillo A Dispute On Arrests AMARILLO The police practice in Amarillo of holding suspects in jail for as long as 24 hours without a charge or warrant is being defended by the police chief, Wiley Alexander. A man or woman can be jailed for questioning during an investigation to determine whether to file a charge, Alexander explains. He says law enforcement in Amarillo would be thrown for a tremendous loss if suspects weren’t held for questioning in most cases. “Each case must be governed individually,” Alexander said. “In 8.000 arrests a year I’m sure that occasionally we stub our toe. . . . Being a suspicious person is not a crime.” One Amarillo ordinance to which Alexander frequently refers states that policemen are allowed to make arrests without a warrant for “persons found in suspicious places, or under circumstances which reasonably show that such persons have been guilty of some felony or threaten or are about to commit some offense against the laws of the state or ordinance of the city.”. “Without this ordinance,” Alexander said, “the police would be hampered in their efforts to apprehend persons lurking in , alleys and found in suspicious circumstances at night.” Alexander has been criticized in a young weekly newspaper, The Amarillo Citizen, which in recent months has called attention to alleged police brutality in Amarillo. The Citizen contends Amarillo police sometimes hold suspects as long as 72 hours without giving them a hearing by a magistrate or offering them a chance to get bail. The newspaper adds that Amarillo attorneys are “almost unanimous in declaring the policy is illegal and violates constitutional and state laws.” The Amarillo Globe-Times noted police in Amarillo do not arrest anyone without a warrant or hold anyone without charge “unless the investigating officer has reason to believe that the suspect has committed a crime. . . . The procedure will continue, Alexander says, even though police a re aware of the danger involved a suit for false imprisonment.” The newspaper added that Amarillo city ordinances and state law require that a suspect be taken before a magistrate “immediately” or as soon as a magistrate is available with which to file a charge. Alexander declares in response to this point that. “protection of individual rights” is aided by not taking a suspect immediately before a magistrate and by making the police investigation first. “In other words, justice is better served by throwing a suspect in jail for up to three days instead of taking him promptly before a magistrate for a fair hearing,” the Citizen restated this position. The Citizen wrote that Potter County Attorney Frank Baughman believes eleven hours is too long to hold an alleged suspect without a hearing. The newspaper also quoted Justice Brandeis: “To declare that in the administration of criminal law, the end justifies the means—to declare that the government may commit crimes in order to secure the conviction of a private criminalwould bring a terrible retribution.” The Citizen recited an opinion from the State Attorney General’s office that “suspicion is neither a. felony nor a breach of the peace in Texas. . . no peace officer has authority to arrest or imprison any person for any length of time on suspicion that such person has committed sonic criminal offense.” .7, \(During the height of the Cuban crisis, people we know or heard about sent their chil dren to the hills; visited their + long-neglected pa rents in the C. country; suffered fits of buying + mania, with emphasis on canned groceries; took up big game hunting, for which they needed, of course, rifles with scopes; and bought a two weeks’ supply ‘? of whiskey. A fellow told us in t a private club in Galveston that % he had outfitted his boat for a ;4, two week cruise up and down : the intracoastal canal. A young %. mother had laid plans to fly with her children from Galves1. ton to a lake cabin on the Great :Lakes, near the locks; a plan %. + with a flaw, and possibly two. We know a North Texas couple who we are told fled with fam ily into the country, but as they whiled away their maybe-last days with friends on a farm, fell into an awkward situation. Their host did not have any salt for the steak. They were, by 4. then, feeling so sheepish, they +could not bring themselves to t tell him they had ten boxes of salt in the trunk of their car, so they drove eight miles to get O some. A friend of ours had laid t plans for his wife and his wife’s +sister to insinuate themselves, as casually as possible, but armed, into a rural East Texas haven. The editor of the Ob server at that time had, a plane reservation for California, that he could be near his wife and .11. child, should the worst more :;A certainly impend; and the press; ent editor must confide that had ,, he heard a flash that Cuba was o , being invaded, he would have gathered his, and sped, even at risk of angering a highway patrolman, toward the most deso5,:: late discoverable regions of : West Texas. And so it went; for + who did not know in his intui.1: tion how serious the situation was? + \(Having recovered his aplomb, A not to .mention his sobriety, our Kenedy correspondent reports on the effects of the Cuban cri+ . sts or personnel in counties other than the one in which he is employed.” Not Entirely Clear Peavy is assertive about who has what responsibility, but just what he is asserting is not entirely clear. At the outset he says emergency medical care in a nuclear disaster “depends entirely on private physicians and local medical societies throughout the state as part of the Statewide Emergency Medical Organization.” Each disaster district director “will carry out the directions of the state medical director” and will be given “necessary emergency medical powers” to let him handle the local situation. Actually, though, since he has no resources outside his own county until an emergency is declared, the district director “must rely on wholehearted cooperation from all persons in all counties within his district.” The private physician in effect becomes a government functionary, though Peavy puts this more gingerly: THE TEXAS OBSERVER Page 2 November 30, 1962 KENEDY I had arrived in Kenedy around midnight of the Cuban crisis, having left the associate editor and contributing editor of the Observer in a debate about it, each coming to his own solution as rapidly as possible in case President Kennedy should ask him for it. The editor was not available for comment, having gone out much earlier for refreshments. The crisis had taken an alarming turn in Kenedy \(Texas, not leading emporiums specializing in the sale of fermented grains was empty. I inquired of the proprietor the cause of this funereal atmosphere, without even a man to sit up with the body. He replied that they were probably all at ‘home watching television. I passed by the spirits on the way out, having already stocked up on them before leaving Austin, both internally and otherwise, sufficiently to meet any crisis. Deciding to show my contempt for the Soviets and back President Kennedy to the letter, I went to the grocery store to get some Noodles Romanoff for dinner. There I found many of the missing townspeople. Apparently the crisis had titillated their gastric juices. From there I wandered into the drug store. There I bumped into a politician, who for once wasn’t worried about reelection. His comment on the crisis was this: “They ought to put Kennedy and Khrushchev and Castro in a bear pit and let them fight and whoever won it they ought to kill him. I can’t understand why anybody would want to kill all them people.” One elderly gentleman was commenting on his decision about a bomb shelter. “My sister was asking me about building one next to her house. I told her not to botherthat if a bomb was dropped near here, her neighbors would probably get panicked and kill her with an axe anyway. They’d all get terrified and want to get in it. I don’t believe one would protect you much against fallout if you could get in it and keep the others out, but they’d probably break off the doors to get in.” In a restaurant in the town a farmer came through the door “Under normal conditions, medical care is the responsibility of the individual, exercised through the use of private practitioners, and is not the responsibility of the state. However, in an emergency, it is obvious that the total health services must be integrated with all government services.” \(Emphasis Peavy’s.] In conclusion, Peavy says that “Primary responsibility of necessity must be placed at the local level with assistance in material and manpower being supplied from the upper echelons as will be required.” The arrangements thus appear to vest full powers in the statewide director and entire responsibility on private physicians and local medical societies. To the extent doctors survived, of course, it stands to reason that they would do what they could at the local level and get what help they could from the state and federal governments to the extent such help could be asked for and delivered. Minor Problems The 90 emergency hospital units were stored in various parts of Texas by the federal Office of Defense Mobilization. The Journal gaily smiling and said to the owner, “I borrowed $500 from the Karnes City Bank this morning. I told Dick when I borrowed it that I probably never would have to pay it back because it’d be burned to a cinder, and all I’d be was just a greasy spot. Boy, that’s one time I got ahead of a bank.” I noticed one man who had been demanding an invasion of Cuba all along. I asked him if he was ready to fight. “Sure I’m ready to fight,” he replied. “I’d rather die than go on like this. We’re finally doing something about it.” A couple were sitting at a nearby table. One said, “It isn’t the hits they make on San Antonio or Corpus that worries me. It’s the misses. We’re about half way between them.” WANDERING BACK to the bar, T I noticed that the bartender’s crisis was somewhat relieved by a few people wandering in from the local stores after work for a fortifier. Dan Strawn A hardware store clerk was commenting, “I never sold so many pots and pans and bottles in my life. Anything that’d hold water, they bought. We had some of those little alcohol burners that we’d bought before last huntin’ season hopin’ to get rid of them and didn’t sell ‘a one; they’re good little stoves you knowone burner; well, today we sold them all, and all of our transistor radios, flashlights, batteries, and everything. They wanted the big transistor radios the most.” Down the bar, a farmer was talking. “You know Russia ain’t got what we got. They got all they got from them German scientists they captured after World War II. They can’t fight a war with us and win. They ain’t got what we got because they ain’t got the opportunities we got here. Why, in this country it don’t make no difference what a man is if he’s got the guts and wants to try, whether he’s a white man or a nigger, you can do anything you’re big enough to do. I ain’t never had no trouble gettin’ money from the bank here to try something, all you’ve got to do is of Medicine reports: “Each unit is complete with facilities for three operating rooms, a pharmacy, x-ray service, clinical laboratory, sterilizing rooms, central supply room, and electric power supply. There are 8,000 individual pieces of equipment that go with each hospital, including a 1,500 gallon water tank and pump. . . . Also, there are complete medical supplies. . . . “Items such as insulin and blood derivatives, which require refrigeration, are stored by local civil defense authorities. Antibiotics and other materials with expira Nuclear Geography