Citizens, Media Can Help Fight Arson
features
The Editor’s Opinion Page
Last month we wrote of a joint police and fire department task force to combat arson, America’s malignant crime. However, no task force could be complete without the participation of the local citizenry—an aroused citizenry, we might add. Somehow, people must be made to realize that arson is not just a crime that involves insurance companies. This crime involves the welfare of their community, their homes and their families. An arsonist can destroy their sources of income. An arsonist is a potential murderer of innocent persons. And only when this message is gotten across will the arson toll diminish.
The news media is, or should be, the prime mover in publicizing the message. But too often in the past have they neglected—even ignored—the arson message. Let a movie star be robbed of a $50,000 solitaire and the story is played up on at least page 2. A $500,000 suspected arson fire might—just might—wind up back with the obituaries.
One city, Seattle, got around this neglect by acquiring the services of an advertising agency to publicize the fight against arson in general, and the availability and telephone number of their arson “hot line.” The agency came up with a three-month campaign which included the establishment of “a workable method to distribute media materials and to encourage the various media to use the materials for optimum effectiveness of a public service campaign.”
The main targets for the multimedia phase of the program were television, radio, outdoor billboards and transit buses. This required the production of public service announcements for all the state’s 14 television and 115 radio stations—no mean accomplishment and one in which fire departments played a heavy role. One 10-second television announcement that was most effective opened with a hand igniting a match, which then slowly moved toward a pile of combustibles.
The campaign worked. With the help of the citizenry and the media, the conviction rate for the crime of arson went up and the incident rate went down. And eventually the entire campaign was adopted by the State of Washington.
It would seem, then, that when the citizenry is educated (informed) in the truth about arson, the fight against this vicious crime can be won. But, still, arson investigators need all the help they can get in this hard-to-pin-down crime.
