of any act not incompatible with our oaths of office, we could have
stood on good terms with the machine, we would certainly have made
the effort, even at the cost of sacrificing many of our ideals; and
in almost any other department we could probably have avoided a
break, but in the police force such a compromise was not possible.
What was demanded of us usually took some such form as the refusal
to enforce certain laws, or the protection of certain law-breakers,
or the promotion of the least fit men to positions of high power and
grave responsibility; and on such points it was not possible to yield.
We were obliged to treat all questions that arose purely on their
merits, without reference to the desires of the politicians. We went
into this course with our eyes open, for we knew the trouble it would
cause us personally, and, what was far more important, the way in which
our efforts for reform would consequently be hampered. However, there
was no alternative, and we had to abide by the result. We had counted
the cost before we adopted our course, and we followed it resolutely
to the end. We could not accomplish all that we should have liked to
accomplish for we were shackled by preposterous legislation, and by
the opposition and intrigues of the basest machine politicians, which
cost us the support, sometimes of one, and sometimes of both, of our
colleagues. Nevertheless, the net result of our two years of work was
that we did more to increase the efficiency and honesty of the police
department than had ever previously been done in its history.
But a decent people will have to show by emphatic action that they are
in the majority if they wish this result to be permanent; for under
such a law as the “bi-partisan” law it is almost impossible to keep
the department honest and efficient for any length of time; and the
machine politicians, by their opposition outside the board, and by the
aid of any tool or ally whom they can get on the board, can always
hamper and cripple the honest members of the board, no matter how
resolute and able the latter may be, if they do not have an aroused and
determined public opinion behind them.
Besides suffering, in aggravated form, from the difficulties which
beset the course of the entire administration, the police board had
to encounter--and honest and efficient police boards must always
encounter--certain special and peculiar difficulties. It is not a
pleasant thing to deal with criminals and purveyors of vice. It is very
rough work, and it cannot always be done in a nice manner. The man
with the night stick, the man in the blue coat with the helmet, can
keep order and repress open violence on the streets; but most kinds
of crime and vice are ordinarily carried on furtively and by stealth,
perhaps at night, perhaps behind closed doors. It is possible to reach
them only by the employment of the man in plain clothes, the detective.
Now the function of the detective is primarily that of the spy, and
it is always easy to arouse feeling against a spy. It is absolutely
necessary to employ him. Ninety per cent. of the most dangerous
criminals and purveyors of vice cannot be reached in any other way.
But the average citizen who does not think deeply fails to realize
the necessity for any such employment. In a vague way he desires vice
and crime put down; but, also in a vague way, he objects to the only
possible means by which they can be put down. It is easy to mislead
him into denouncing what is necessarily done in order to carry out the
very policy for which he is clamoring. The Tammany officials of New
York, headed by the Comptroller, made a systematic effort to excite
public hostility against the police for their warfare on vice. The
law-breaking liquor seller, the keeper of disorderly houses, and the
gambler, had been influential allies of Tammany, and head contributors
to its campaign chest. Naturally Tammany fought for them; and the
effective way in which to carry on such a fight was to portray with
gross exaggeration and misstatement the methods necessarily employed
by every police force which honestly endeavors to do its work. The
methods are unpleasant, just as the methods employed in any surgical
operation are unpleasant; and the Tammany champions were able to
arouse more or less feeling against the police board for precisely the
same reason that a century ago it was easy to arouse what were called
“doctors’ mobs” against surgeons who cut up dead bodies. In neither
case is the operation attractive, and it is one which readily lends
itself to denunciation; but in both cases it is necessary if there
is a real intention to get at the disease. Tammany of course found
its best allies in the sensational newspapers. Of all the forces that
tend for evil in a great city like New York, probably none are so
potent as the sensational papers. Until one has had experience with
them it is difficult to realize the reckless indifference to truth
or decency displayed by papers such as the two that have the largest
circulation in New York City. Scandal forms the breath of the nostrils
of such papers, and they are quite as ready to create as to describe
it. To sustain law and order is humdrum, and does not readily lend
itself to flaunting woodcuts; but if the editor will stoop, and make
his subordinates stoop, to raking the gutters of human depravity, to
upholding the wrong-doer, and furiously assailing what is upright and
honest, he can make money, just as other types of pander make it. The
man who is to do honorable work in any form of civic politics must make
up his mind (and if he is a man of properly robust character he will
make it up without difficulty) to treat the assaults of papers like
these with absolute indifference, and to go his way unheeded. Indeed
he will have to make up his mind to be criticised, sometimes justly,
and more often unjustly, even by decent people; and he must not be so
thin-skinned as to mind such criticism overmuch.
In administering the police force we found, as might be expected,
that there was no need of genius, nor indeed of any very unusual
qualities. What was needed was exercise of the plain, ordinary virtues,
of a rather commonplace type, which all good citizens should be
expected to possess. Common sense, common honesty, courage, energy,
resolution, readiness to learn, and a desire to be as pleasant with
everybody as was compatible with a strict performance of duty--these
were the qualities most called for. We soon found that, in spite of
the wide-spread corruption which had obtained in the New York police
department, the bulk of the men were heartily desirous of being honest.
There were some who were incurably dishonest, just as there were some
who had remained decent in spite of terrific temptation and pressure;
but the great mass came in between. Although not possessing the stamina
to war against corruption when the odds seemed well-nigh hopeless, they
were nevertheless heartily glad to be decent and to welcome the change
to a system under which they were rewarded for doing well, and punished
for doing ill.
Our methods for restoring order and discipline were simple, and indeed
so were our methods for securing efficiency. We made frequent personal
inspections, especially at night, turning up anywhere, at any time. We
thus speedily got an idea of whom among our upper subordinates we could
trust and whom we could not. We then proceeded to punish those guilty
of shortcomings, and to reward those who did well, refusing to pay any
heed whatever in either case to anything except the man’s own character
and record. A very few of these promotions and dismissals sufficed to
show our subordinates that at last they were dealing with superiors
who meant what they said, and that the days of political “pull” were
over while we had the power. The effect was immediate. The decent men
took heart, and those who were not decent feared longer to offend. The
morale of the entire force improved steadily.
A similar course was followed in reference to the relations between the
police and citizens generally. There had formerly been much complaint
of the brutal treatment by police of innocent citizens. This was
stopped peremptorily by the simple expedient of dismissing from the
force the first two or three men who were found guilty of brutality.
On the other hand we made the force understand that in the event of
any emergency requiring them to use their weapons against either a mob
or an individual criminal, the police board backed them up without
reservation. Our sympathy was for the friends, and not the foes, of
order. If a mob threatened violence we were glad to have the mob hurt.
If a criminal showed fight we expected the officer to use any weapon
that was necessary to overcome him on the instant; and even, if it
became necessary, to take life. All that the board required was to
be convinced that the necessity really existed. We did not possess a
particle of that maudlin sympathy for the criminal, disorderly, and
lawless classes which is such a particularly unhealthy sign of social
development; and we were bound that the improvement in the fighting
efficiency of the police should go hand in hand with the improvement in
their moral tone.
To break up the system of blackmail and corruption was less easy. It
was not at all difficult to protect decent people in their rights, and
this was accomplished at once. But the criminal who is blackmailed has
a direct interest in paying the blackmailer, and it is not easy to get
information about it. Nevertheless, we put a complete stop to most of
the blackmail by the simple process of rigorously enforcing the laws,
not only against crime, but against vice.
It was the enforcement of the liquor law which caused most excitement.
In New York we suffer from the altogether too common tendency to
make any law which a certain section of the community wants, and
then to allow that law to be more or less of a dead-letter if any
other section of the community objects to it. The multiplication
of laws by the Legislature, and their partial enforcement by the
executive authorities, go hand in hand, and offer one of the many
serious problems with which we are confronted in striving to better
civic conditions. New York State felt that liquor should not be
sold on Sunday. The larger part of New York City wished to drink
liquor on Sunday. Any man who studies the social condition of the
poor knows that liquor works more ruin than any other one cause. He
knows also, however, that it is simply impracticable to extirpate the
habit entirely, and that to attempt too much often merely results in
accomplishing too little; and he knows, moreover, that for a man alone
to drink whiskey in a bar-room is one thing, and for men with their
families to drink light wines or beer in respectable restaurants is
quite a different thing. The average citizen, who doesn’t think at all,
and the average politician of the baser sort, who only thinks about his
own personal advantage, find it easiest to disregard these facts, and
to pass a liquor law which will please the temperance people, and then
trust to the police department to enforce it with such laxity as to
please the intemperate.
The results of this pleasing system were evident in New York when
our board came into power. The Sunday liquor law was by no means a
dead letter in New York City. On the contrary no less than eight
thousand arrests for its violation had been made under the Tammany
regime the year before we came in. It was very much alive; but it was
only executed against those who either had no political pull, or who
refused to pay money. The liquor business does not stand on the same
footing with other occupations. It always tends to produce criminality
in the population at large, and law-breaking among the saloonkeepers
themselves. It is absolutely necessary to supervise it rigidly, and
impose restrictions upon the traffic. In large cities the traffic
cannot be stopped; but the evils can at least be minimized.
In New York the saloonkeepers have always stood high among professional
politicians. Nearly two thirds of the political leaders of Tammany
Hall have, at one time or another, been in the liquor business. The
saloon is the natural club and meeting place for the ward heelers and
leaders, and the bar-room politician is one of the most common and best
recognized factors, in local political government. The saloonkeepers
are always hand in glove with the professional politicians, and occupy
toward them a position such as is not held by any other class of men.
The influence they wield in local politics has always been very great,
and until our board took office no man ever dared seriously to threaten
them for their flagrant violations of the law. The powerful and
influential saloonkeeper was glad to see his neighbors closed, for it
gave him business. On the other hand, a corrupt police captain, or the
corrupt politician who controlled him, could always extort money from
a saloonkeeper by threatening to close him and let his neighbor remain
open. Gradually the greed of corrupt police officials and of corrupt
politicians, grew by what it fed on, until they began to blackmail all
but the very most influential liquor sellers; and as liquor sellers
were very numerous, and the profits of the liquor business great, the
amount collected was enormous.
The reputable saloonkeepers themselves found this condition of
blackmail and political favoritism almost intolerable. The law which
we found on the statute books had been put on by a Tammany Legislature
three years before we took office. A couple of months after we took
office, Mr. J. P. Smith, the editor of the liquor-dealers’ organ, _The
Wine and Spirit Gazette_, gave out the following interview, which is of
such an extraordinary character that I insert it almost in full:
“Governor Flower, as well as the Legislature of 1892, was elected
upon distinct pledges that relief would be given by the Democratic
party to the liquor dealers, especially of the cities of the State.
In accordance with this promise a Sunday-opening clause was inserted
in the excise bill of 1892. Governor Flower then said that he could
not approve the Sunday-opening clause; whereupon the Liquor Dealers’
Association, which had charge of the bill, struck the Sunday-opening
clause out. After Governor Hill had been elected for the second term
I had several interviews with him on that very subject. He told me,
‘You know I am the friend of the liquor dealers and will go to almost
any length to help them and give them relief; but do not ask me to
recommend to the Legislature the passage of the law opening the
saloons on Sunday. I cannot do it, for it will ruin the Democratic
party in the State.’ He gave the same interview to various members of
the State Liquor Dealers’ Association, who waited upon him for the
purpose of getting relief from the blackmail of the police, stating
that the lack of having the Sunday question properly regulated was at
the bottom of the trouble. Blackmail had been brought to such a state
of perfection, and had become so oppressive to the liquor dealers
themselves, that they communicated first with Governor Hill and then
with Mr. Croker. The _Wine and Spirit Gazette_ had taken up the subject
because of gross discrimination made by the police in the enforcement
of the Sunday-closing law. The paper again and again called upon the
police commissioners to either uniformly enforce the law or uniformly
disregard it. A committee of the Central Association of Liquor
Dealers of this city then took up the matter and called upon Police
Commissioner Martin.[15] _An agreement was then made between the
leaders of Tammany Hall and the liquor dealers, according to which the
monthly blackmail paid to the police should be discontinued in return
for political support._[16] In other words, the retail dealers should
bind themselves to solidly support the Tammany ticket in consideration
of the discontinuance of the monthly blackmail by the police. This
agreement was carried out. Now what was the consequence? If the liquor
dealer, after the monthly blackmail ceased, showed any signs of
independence, the Tammany Hall district leader would give the tip to
the police captain, and that man would be pulled and arrested on the
following Sunday.”
Continuing, Mr. Smith inveighed against the law, but said:
“The (present) police commissioners are honestly endeavoring to have
the law impartially carried out. They are no respectors of persons. And
our information from all classes of liquor-dealers is that the rich and
the poor, the influential and the uninfluential, are required equally
to obey the law.”
There is really some difficulty in commenting upon the statements of
this interview, statements which were never denied.
The law was not in the least a dead-letter; it was enforced, but it
was corruptly and partially enforced. It was a prominent factor in
the Tammany scheme of government. It afforded a most effective means
for blackmailing a large portion of the liquor sellers and for the
wholesale corruption of the police department. The high Tammany
officials and police captains and patrolmen blackmailed and bullied
the small liquor sellers without a pull, and turned them into abject
slaves of Tammany Hall. On the other hand, the wealthy and politically
influential liquor sellers controlled the police, and made or marred
captains, sergeants, and patrolmen at their pleasure. In some of the
precincts most of the saloons were closed; in others almost all were
open. The rich and powerful liquor seller violated the law at will,
unless he had fallen under the ban of the police or the ward boss, when
he was not allowed to violate it at all.
Under these circumstances the new police board had one of two courses
to follow. We could either instruct the police to allow all the
saloonkeepers to become law-breakers, or else we could instruct them
to allow none to be law-breakers. We followed the latter course,
because we had some regard for our oaths of office. For two or three
months we had a regular fight, and on Sundays had to employ half the
force to enforce the liquor law; for the Tammany legislators had
drawn the law so as to make it easy of enforcement for purposes of
blackmail, but not easy of enforcement generally, certain provisions
being deliberately inserted with the intention to make it difficult of
universal execution. However, when once the liquor sellers and their
allies understood that we had not the slightest intention of being
bullied, threatened or cajoled out of following the course which we had
laid down, resistance practically ceased. During the year after we
took office the number of arrests for violation of the Sunday liquor
law sank to about one half of what they had been during the last year
of the Tammany rule; and yet the saloons were practically closed,
whereas under Tammany most of them had been open. We adopted no new
methods, save in so far as honesty could be called a new method. We
did not enforce the law with unusual severity; we merely enforced it
against the man with a pull, just as much as against the man without a
pull. We refused to discriminate in favor of influential law-breakers.
The professional politicians of low type, the liquor sellers, the
editors of some German newspapers, and the sensational press generally,
attacked us with a ferocity which really verged on insanity.
We went our way without regarding this opposition, and gave a very
wholesome lesson to the effect that a law should not be put on the
statute books if it was not meant to be enforced, and that even an
excise law could be honestly enforced in New York if the public
officials so desired. The rich brewers and liquor sellers, who had
made money hand over fist by violating the excise law with the
corrupt connivance of the police, raved with anger, and every corrupt
politician and newspaper in the city gave them clamorous assistance;
but the poor man, and notably the poor man’s wife and children,
benefited very greatly by what we did. The hospital surgeons found that
their Monday labors were lessened by nearly one half, owing to the
startling diminution in cases of injury due to drunken brawls; the work
of the magistrates who sat in the city courts on Monday for the trial
of the offenders of the preceding twenty-four hours was correspondingly
decreased; while many a tenement-house family spent Sunday in the
country because for the first time the head of the family could not use
up his money in getting drunk. The one all-important element in good
citizenship in our country is obedience to law, and nothing is more
needed than the resolute enforcement of law. This we gave.
There was no species of mendacity to which our opponents did not resort
in the effort to break us down in our purpose. For weeks they eagerly
repeated the tale that the saloons were as wide open as ever; but
they finally abandoned this when the counsel for the Liquor Dealers’
Association admitted in open court, at the time when we secured the
conviction of thirty of his clients and thereby brought the fight to
an end, that over nine tenths of the liquor dealers had been rendered
bankrupt because we had stopped that illegal trade which gave them
the best portion of their revenue. They then took the line that by
devoting our attention to enforcing the liquor law we permitted crime
to increase. This, of course, offered a very congenial field for
newspapers like the _World_, which exploited it to the utmost; all the
more readily since the mere reiteration of the falsehood tended to
encourage criminals, and so to make it not a falsehood. For a time the
cry was not without influence, even with decent people, especially
if they belonged to the class of the timid rich; but it simply wasn’t
true, and so this bubble went down stream with the others. For six or
eight months the cry grew, first louder, then lower; and then it died
away. A commentary upon its accuracy was furnished toward the end of
our administration; for in February 1897, the Judge who addressed the
grand jury of the month was able to congratulate them upon the fact
that there was at that time less crime in New York relatively to the
population than ever before; and this held true for our two years’
service.
In re-organizing the force the Board had to make, and did make, more
promotions, more appointments, and more dismissals than had ever before
been made in the same length of time. We were so hampered by the law
that we were not able to dismiss many of the men whom we should have
dismissed, but we did turn out 200 men--more than four times as many as
had ever been turned out in the same length of time before; all of them
being dismissed after formal trial, and after having been given full
opportunity to be heard in their own defence. We appointed about 1700
men all told--again more than four times as many as ever before; for we
were allowed a large increase of the police force by law. We made 130
promotions; more than had been made in the six preceding years.
All this work was done in strictest accord with what we have grown
to speak of as the principles of civil service reform. In making
dismissals we paid heed merely to the man’s efficiency and past
record, refusing to consider outside pressure; under the old regime
no policeman with sufficient influence behind him was ever dismissed,
no matter what his offence. In making promotions we took into account
not only the man’s general record, his faithfulness, industry and
vigilance, but also his personal prowess as shown in any special feat
of daring, whether in the arresting of criminals or in the saving of
life--for the police service is military in character, and we wished to
encourage the military virtues. In making appointments we found that it
was practicable to employ a system of rigid competitive examinations,
which, as finally perfected, combined a very severe physical
examination with a mental examination such as could be passed by any
man who had attended one of our public schools. Of course there was
also a rigid investigation of character. Theorists have often sneered
at civil service reform as “impracticable;” and I am very far from
asserting that written competitive examinations are always applicable,
or that they may not sometimes be merely stop-gaps, used only because
they are better than the methods of appointing through political
endorsement; but most certainly the system worked admirably in the
Police Department. We got the best lot of recruits for patrolmen that
had ever been obtained in the history of the force, and we did just as
well in our examinations for matrons and police surgeons. The uplifting
of the force was very noticeable, both physically and mentally. The
best men we got were those who had served for three years or so in
the Army or Navy. Next to these came the railroad men. One noticeable
feature of the work was that we greatly raised the proportion of
native-born, until, of the last hundred appointed, ninety-four per
cent. were Americans by birth. Not once in a hundred times did we know
the politics of the appointee, and we paid as little heed to this as to
their religion.