COUNCIL EVADES RESPONSIBILITY IN BERNARD CASE
By Neil Bronson
Detroit
It has been nine months since Leo Bernard, Jan Garrett and Walter Graham were shot at Debs Hall, the Socialist Workers party headquarters here,- by anti-Communist fanatic Edward Waniolek. Since June, Waniolek has been undergoing rehabilitation at society's expense at Ionia State Hospital for the Mentally Insane. But the innocent victims -- victims not only of the gunman but of the negligence of the city of Detroit -- have received no assistance from the city or state in paying their medical costs, and friends had to assume the burial costs for the slain Leo Bernard.
The negligence of the city in this case is glaring. The killer, Edward Waniolek was known both by the U.S. Secret Service and Detroit police as a dangerous man. On many occasions he had proclaimed his intention to “kill Communists." His delusion that the U.S. was being "overrun by Communists" led him to attempt to emigrate to South ‘Africa as it was "the only free country in the world." When even the South African racists wouldn't accept him, he announced he was returning to Detroit with several guns to go into action.
Detroit police subsequently investigated him and urged his wife to have him committed. Perhaps fearing Waniolek would make her a part of the "conspiracy" that plagued his mind, she refused to have him committed. Although there exists a law in Michigan which would have made it possible in this circumstance for the police to initiate commitment proceedings, they did nothing until the Young Socialists were shot.
The months since the shooting have demonstrated that the city of Detroit has learned nothing from this experience. Even the so-called liberals on the City Council have assisted in covering up the role of the police. The police have made no investigation to determine whether or not the killer was directed to Debs Hall by any existing right-wing organizations, although it is known that the incipient fascist gang "Breakthrough," which has been involved in conflicts with the local antiwar movement, attracts such elements.
Why this investigation has not taken place is not difficult to determine. Only recently, Detroit Mayor Jerome Cavanagh made a loud but effectless denunciation of police collaboration with right-wing hoodlums and mentioned Breakthrough by name. A critic of the mayor, however, pointed out that Breakthrough fuehrer Donald Lobsinger works for the mayor in one of the city's departments!
Last September, local civil-liberties Attorney Ernest Goodman submitted a brief to the Detroit city government pointing out the city's negligence prior to the shooting and requesting that it meet its moral obligation to the survivors by paying their hospitalization and recovery expenses. The sum involved would be negligible for the city . but would have meant a lot to the victims.
The callousness of the. City Council was made apparent at a hearing on December 20 of last year, where the councilmen demonstrated that they had not taken the trouble even to read the brief. In order to facilitate their evasion of the issues, the council chose as its chairman for the hearing Councilman Van Antwerp, a former member of. the Detroit police department who never discarded his cop image for the liberal front of most councilmen. Under Van Antwerp's guidance, the council completely ruled out the presentation of any witnesses but one and they totally ignored the urging of Garrett and Graham that they meet the request of the victims as a sort of moral bond that the city regarded its duty to protect all its citizens, regardless of political persuasion, from the type of violence perpetrated on May 16.
Friends of the victims presented the. council with petitions signed by more than 4 ,200 Detroiters urging compensation, as well as a statement signed by all active poli-
tical clubs at Wayne State University, which the. three Young Socialists had attended. ~ Subsequently, another petition signed by several leading Detroit clergymen urged that the council take positive action. The Michigan Chronicle, a Detroit paper directed at the Negro community, urged compensation in a January 7 editorial which went on to say: "The fact that Waniolek's intended victims were politically unpopular could account for the slow action on the part of the police. Could the fact that probable victims of many potential killers walking Detroit streets are Negroes account for the fact nothing is done ahead of time to stop: them either?"
On January 20, friends of the victims discovered that the council intended to pass a resolution on the request at its meeting January 24. The Wayne State University Young Socialist Alliance issued a leaflet on campus January 23. that-urged student attendance at the council meeting to support the victims' request. The leaflet briefly sunmarized the request and concluded with the statement: "Let our do-nothing council know it can't afford to ‘do nothing' in this case!"
- The police, "unable" to prevent the shooting in the spring, proved quite capable of mobilizing 200 cops -- including. the entire day shift cf the central station and the Gestapo-like Tactical Mobile Units -- to head off what they must have imagined as a massive student invasion of the City-County Building! But the student delegation attended quite peacefully and simply walked out when the council rammed through a denial of the victims' request without discussion. .
Council Chairman Edward Carey said, "The City Council, in denying this request, is denying it on the basis of legal advice and also to. give due process to the petitioners so that they can have recourse to the courts."
The. essence of. the legal advice received by the council was that state law exempts the city. from such a suit and thus the statement that the victims could take the city to court was fantastic.
Friends of the victims are now urging that a broader citizens' committee be constituted to collect funds to defray the hospital. expenses. Contributions may be sent to Emergency Medical Fund for Garreth and ‘Graham, c/o English Dept., Wayne State Mniversity, Detroit, Michigan 48202.