Workers who deal directly with the public by exchanging money and delivering goods and services face the greatest risk of being killed, according to statistics. Yet many cities -- by using appeals to civil rights or by threatening to levy huge fines or snatch occupational licenses -- often try to intimidate or shame companies into sending their workers into all neighborhoods.

• Twenty workers are murdered and 18,000 are assaulted each week -- with cab drivers dying most frequently.

• In 1994, 84 cab drivers died at the hands of assailants.

Recently, San Francisco's board of supervisors passed the first law in the nation that prohibits businesses from refusing to deliver in high crime areas that otherwise would be within the businesses'delivery service areas. Although the law is said to be unenforceable, critics say it sets a troubling precedent. The law was proposed after the grandson of a black member of the board could not get a nearby Domino's Pizza to deliver to his home in a reputed crime territory.

Source: Bill Maxwell (St. Petersburg Times) "Crime Storm Watch and Home Delivery," Washington Times, July 27, 1996.