By 6 P.M. Monday the newscasters were reporting to their audiences that “at least three dozen action committees have sprung up in scattered neighborhoods of the five boroughs since the announcement this morning of the organization of the Division Street, Murray Hill, West End Avenue, and Greenwich Village groups.”
The late evening editions of the newspapers were able to say that “the idea is spreading like an old-fashioned prairie fire. By press time the number of action committees was over a hundred.”
By Tuesday morning the count was reported as “hundreds.”
The term “Citizens’ Action Teams” seems to have first appeared in a Tuesday Extra story on the amazing citywide phenomenon. The story was bylined “Jimmy Leggitt.” The phrase took hold when Winchell, Lyons, Wilson, and Sullivan noted in their columns that its initials spelled “cat.” And CATs they remained.
At an emergency meeting in the Mayor’s office Monday night, the Police Commissioner expressed himself as being in favor of “taking tough police measures to stop this thing dead in its tracks. We can’t have every Joe, Moe, and Schmo in town a selfappointed cop. It’s anarchy, Jack!” But the Mayor shook his head. “You’re not going to put out a fire by passing a law against it, Barney. We can’t stop this movement by force; it’s out of the question. What we’ve got to do is try to control it.”
At his press conference Tuesday morning the Mayor said with a smile, “I repeat that this Cat thing has been exaggerated far out of proportion and there is absolutely no basis for public alarm with the Police Department working on it twenty-four hours a day. These groups will function much more in the public interest with the advice and assistance of the authorities. The Police Commissioner and his various heads of department will be on hand all day today to receive delegations of these groups with the end in view of systematizing and co-ordinating their activities, in much the way that the splendid ARP groups operated during the War.”
Disturbingly, the groups did not appear to be received.
On Tuesday night the Mayor went on the air. He did not in the slightest impugn the integrity and good intentions of the people forming home defense groups, but he felt sure all reasonable people would agree that the police power of the greatest city in the world could not be permitted to be usurped by individual citizens, no matter how honest or well-intentioned, in defiance of legal authority. “Let it not be said that the City of New York in the fifth decade of the twentieth century resorted to frontier town vigilante law.” The dangers implicit in this sort of thing were recognized by all, he was certain, as far exceeding any possible threat of one homicidally inclined psychotic. “In the old days, before the establishment of official police systems, night patrols of citizens were undoubtedly necessary to protect communities from the robberies and murders of the criminal element; but in the face of the record of New York’s Finest, what justifications is there for such patrols today?” He would regret, the Mayor stated, having to resort to countermeasures in the allover public interest. He knew such a step would prove unnecessary. “I urge all already functioning groups of this nature, and groups in the process of organizing, to get in touch immediately with their police precincts for instructions.”
By Wednesday morning the failure of the Mayor’s radio appeal was apparent. The most irresponsible rumors circulated in the City: that the National Guard had been called out, that the Mayor had made an emergency-flight personal appeal to President Truman in the White House, that the Police Commissioner had resigned, that in a clash between a Washington Heights CAT patrol and police two persons had been killed, and nine injured. The Mayor canceled all appointments for the day and remained in continuous conference. Top officials of the Police Department were unanimous in favor of presenting ultimatums to the CAT groups: Disband at once or face arrest. The Mayor refused to sanction such action. No disorders had been reported, he pointed out; apparently the groups were maintaining internal discipline and restricting themselves to their avowed activities. Besides, the movement by now embraced too many people for such measures. “They might lead to open clashes and we’d have riots all over the City. That might mean calling for troops. I’ll exhaust every peaceful means before I lay New York open to that.”
By midafternoon Wednesday word came that “the central committee” of “the combined Citizens’ Action Teams of New York City” had engaged the vast and windy Metropol Hall on Eighth Avenue for “a monster mass meeting” Thursday night. Immediately after, the Mayor’s secretary announced a delegation of this committee.
They filed in, a little nervous but with stubborn looks on their faces. The Mayor and his conferees regarded the deputation with curiosity. They seemed a cross-section of the City’s people. There were no sharp or shady faces among them. The spokesman, a tall man in his 30s with the look of a mechanic, identified himself as “Jerome K. Frankburner, veteran.”
“We’ve come here, Mr. Mayor, to invite you to talk at our mass meeting tomorrow night. Metropol Hall seats twenty thousand people, we’ll have a radio and television setup, and everybody in the City will be sitting in. It’s democracy, it’s American. What we’d like you to tell us, Mr. Mayor, is what you’ve done to stop the Cat and what plans you and your subordinates have for the future. And if it’s straight talk that makes sense we guarantee that by Friday morning there won’t be a C.A.T. in business. Will you come?”
The Mayor said, “Would you gentlemen wait here?” and he took his people into a private office next door.
“Jack, don’t do it!”
“Why not, Barney?”
“What can we tell them that we haven’t told them a hundred times already? Let’s ban the meeting. If there’s trouble, crack down on their leaders.”
“I don’t know, Barney,” said one of the Mayor’s advisers, a power in the Party. “They’re no hoodlums. These people represent a lot of good votes. We’d better go easy.”
There were other expressions of opinion, some siding with the Police Commissioner, some with the Party man.
“You haven’t said anything, Inspector Queen,” said the Mayor suddenly. “What’s your opinion?”
“The way I see it,” replied Inspector Queen, “it’s going to be mighty tough for the Cat to stay away from the meeting.”
“Or to put it another way,” said the Mayor — “although that’s a very valuable thought, Inspector — I was elected on a people’s platform and I’m going to stay on it.”
He opened the door and said, “I’ll be there, gentlemen.”
The events of the night of September 22 began in an atmosphere of seriousness and responsibility. Metropol Hall was filled by 7 P.M. and an overflow crowd gathered which soon numbered thousands. But there was exemplary order and the heavy concentration of police had little to do. The inevitable enterprising notions distributor had sent hawkers out to peddle ticklers with a cat’s head on the end and oversized C.A.T. lapel buttons of cardboard, and others were peddling orange-and-black cats’ heads with grisly expressions which were recognizably advance stocks of Halloween gimcrackery, but there were few buyers in the crowd and the police hustled the vendors along. There were noticeably few children and an almost total absence of horseplay. Inside the Hall people were either quiet or spoke in whispers. In the streets around the Hall the crowds were patient and well-behaved; too patient and too well-behaved, according to old hands of the Traffic Division, who would have welcomed, it appeared, a few dozen drunks, a rousing fistfight or two, or a picket line of Communist demonstrators. But no drunks were visible, the people were strangely passive, and if Communists were among them it was as individuals.