CRIME: Harlem Muggings

Citizens of Manhattan’s Harlem need no dictionaries to tell them what mugging means.* Neither do residents of certain sections of Brooklyn. Said Brooklyn’s

Acting District Attorney, after a week of sharply increased mugging assaults: “The fear of law-abiding people … has become so great that many will not leave their homes after sundown.” To put down this latest outbreak of juvenile delinquency (most muggings are committed by Negro adolescents whose behavior is perhaps more regretted in Harlem than anywhere else) New York’s Police Commissioner Lewis J. Valentine added 1,000 policemen to the forces already patrolling the infected areas, hoping to clean up the epidemic.

*The verb “to mugg” apparently stems from the dank soil of 19th Century prisons, where “mugger” was synonymous with footpad—”one of the wretched horde who haunt the street at midnight to rob drunken men.” Its meaning, as given by the American Thesaurus of Slang: robbery with violence. In New York City muggers usually attack from behind if possible, throwing one arm around the victim’s neck, while the assistant muggers frisk the victim.