Crime Wave

Only two years ago, social worker Deannah Neswood-Gishey's neighborhood on a hill overlooking the Navajo Nation's tribal capital was peaceful. Picturesque. That was before many of the hogans--the trailers and shacks surrounding her home of 30 years--became turf-war bunkers for gang members and hide-outs for derelicts who swill a toxic mixture of hair spray and water called "ocean."

The claims of savage violence against women don't seem to matter. Nor does the hard time behind walls painted institutional peach. Nor a tabloid headline--KILLER DAD AND HIS SON--published above a treasured family photo. When John Royster Sr., convicted murderer, talks about John Royster Jr., accused murderer, nothing dampens his pride. John Jr. "is exactly like I am," the father said with no hint of irony. "I could swear on a stack of Bibles that inside, we are almost exactly the same person."

A man police call "a one-man crime wave" has admitted to committing 600 to 700 burglaries in the city over the last two years, authorities say. Neil Patrick Green, 32, of Hartford, was being held Wednesday in lieu of $32,000 bail and awaited arraignment in Superior Court on 50 counts of burglary and 44 counts of larceny. "He was a one-man crime wave," Detective Thomas J. Murphy said.

In 1646, the General Court of Massachusetts Bay Colony passed the Stubborn Child Law, decreeing that teenage boys who disobeyed their parents could be put to death. What a difference 3 1/2 centuries make. In our enlightened age, mothers and fathers study manuals for techniques to make children more compliant. And many of us are well acquainted with the critical mass of neuroscience establishing that adolescence constitutes a time of diminished responsibility, when the brain's frontal lobes - the seat of judgment and impulse control - are still developing.

Russia's mounting crime wave reached a new high Monday morning when a large explosion near Kutuzovsky Prospect, a main government road to the Kremlin, turned out to have been the burst of an anti-tank grenade hurled by a portable launcher. The grenade shattered windows in a medical clinic but caused no injuries.

Russian soldiers will patrol the streets of Moscow in an effort to curb a crime wave, the Interfax news agency said Friday. Mayor Yuri Luzhkov told the agency that soldiers will be on patrol with city police in high-crime areas. He described the measure as temporary. The decision to deploy troops was made this week by local and national security officials. President Boris N. Yeltsin has vowed to crack down on crime, which has been steadily rising since the 1991 breakup of the Soviet Union.

Two young people arrested in a carjacking and rape are suspects in a 10-month crime wave that has terrorized residents and tourists on St. Thomas, police said. Police arrested David Thompson, 18, and a minor they did not identify in connection with an Oct. 18 attack on a local couple. The couple were stopped in their car by a man blocking the road, then robbed at gunpoint. The woman was raped.

Reacting to a rise in street crime, Redondo Beach police will use a special anti-crime team normally reserved for the busy holiday season to cut down on residential burglaries, holdups and other incidents. The Crime Impact Team, a small group of undercover officers removed from normal patrol duty, is normally formed during December to respond to crimes around the Galleria mall in northeast Redondo Beach.

In his article "Disciplinary Crackdown Called For at High School" (Jan. 31), Bob Williams did an outstanding job of telling about the crime wave going on at Lawndale's Leuzinger High School. My brother attends that school and he tells me about those disruptive students who "do not respond to authority" and make it harder for others to get an education. Obviously, the school officials have not done enough to correct the disruptive students because it is indeed true that "incidents of students being threatened and robbed of their lunch money are 'common occurences' on the campuses."