AWESOME 1977 CBS SPECIAL REPORT: "The Fire Next Door"(BRONX,NY)

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• published: 13 Sep 2016
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Television goes to the Bronx again, tonight at 8, in a CBS Reports documentary entitled “The Fire Next Door.” As Bill Moyers, the reporter/editor for this harrowing trip, says: The South Bronx “has all the superlatives: highest crime, poorest people, greatest unemployment, worst blight, and the world's record for arson.” The borough's population of 1.5 million is equal to that of Houston or Washington or San Diego. And in the last 10 years, more than 30,000 buildings have been set on fire and abandoned. Straining a bit for broader national significance, Mr. Moyers and Tom Spain, the producer and director, stress that arson is the country's fastest growing crime and “that the forces at work here are no longer unique to the Bronx —the fire here is the fire next door.” But their essay is less about fires than people, the permanent underclass drifting through poverty and violence, and all the others—the victimized elderly, the working families living in terror, the very few industrious and optimistic. • The story has been told before, most notably and brilliantly on a public‐TV documentary called “The Police Tapes,” which captured a remarkably accurate portrait of the borough through the eyes of policemen in a single precinct. This CBS documentary covers much of the same material, including the bitter and unorthodox views of Anthony Bouza, who had been Bronx Borough Police Commander until his tough talk cost him his job. Mr. Bouza ticks off his key points almost by rote: “We [the police] are a very efficient army of occupation.. We are “creating a permanent underclass of unemployed and desperate people. . . You don't see them because they drop out—they stop looking for jobs, they drop out of everything but the welfare rolls. . . And if these people weren't permanently pacified on alcohol, they'd be a lot more visible. If it weren't for the ready availability of alcohol, we'd all be in trouble.” In a more personal approach than is normally found in network documentaries, Mr. Moyers is on the Bronx scene talking with firemen, conducting street interviews and, at one point, even getting involved in the prevention of a possible crime. There is the elderly black woman who has had two of her dogs thrown from a rooftop by neighborhood youngsters; the young Puerto Rican woman who is fiercely trying to protect her neat apartment and its contents; the young mother who condemns the filthy habits of her neighbors. By far the most extraordinary sequence involves a Mrs. Sullivan, now in retirement after working 46 years as a supervisor at the Plaza Hotel. After 38 years in the same apartment, she is being forced to move because of thefts and muggings by vicious youths. In her Irish brogue, she tells Mr. Moyers about the gold retirement watch and $100 in cash for moving she is carrying in her pocket. While they are talking outside the building, several youths take advantage of the situation and break into her apartment. Mr. Moyers arranges to get her some protection and a speedy departure from the building. Solutions, of course, remain elusive. One difficulty is that the problem itself tends to be defined too superficially. Surveying decimated neighborhoods, the program observes that “These were the homes of New York's working people—the Germans, Irish, Jews and Italians who paused here on their way to the suburbs and to the American promise fulfilled. Then came the poverty migration of blacks and Puerto Ricans.” • But as a native of the Bronx, I must take exception to this view. There were always many neighborhoods living at poverty levels, but destruction and violence were not tolerated. And many of the immigrants did more than pause, as Mrs. Sullivan's 38 years in the same building would indicate. The fact is that they were forced to leave the new phenomenon of urban terror escalated. Values have crumbled, social contracts have disintegrated. And the root cause has yet to be isolated. “The Fire Next Door” ends on an upbeat tale of young and admirable Puerto Ricans trying to salvage an abandoned building. But their worthy cause is so isolated in the surrounding despair that the note of optimism is woefully overwhelmed.