THE ROGUES GALLERY AND THE THIRD DEGREE
One of the most interesting departments of the Detective Bureau is the
Rogues’ Gallery. This branch contains the records of nearly a hundred
thousand criminals. It is only within recent years that the police have
begun to realize the importance of this department of the service. Not
only do they photograph and take measurements of all criminals, but
since the time of Sergeant Thomas Adams they preserve clippings from all
the newspapers which in any way throw light upon the career of a
criminal. These clippings are kept in large envelopes, fastened together
by rubber bands.
The Clipping Bureau at Headquarters has for some years been in charge of
two well known lieutenants, Sheridan and Allen, who seem to have a
special talent for this kind of labor. They seem to be walking
cyclopedias of criminal information as far as the newspapers are
concerned.
One or the other of these specialists is on hand every hour of the day,
assisting the men of the department in giving clues, as well as
collecting records of beginners in crime. Frequently these records are
loaned to the Judges of Criminal Courts before sentence is passed on old
offenders. This branch of the Bureau is over thirty years old, and is of
immense importance to the department.
Whenever any of the two or three hundred officers of the Detective
Bureau make an arrest, in or out of the city, the prisoner is forthwith
taken to Police Headquarters, where his measurements and picture are
taken for the Rogues’ Gallery. And all this is done before they have
found out whether he is innocent or guilty. Indeed, it frequently occurs
that the pictures of innocent men remain in the Gallery for years. Once
there, they are not removed, unless by order of the Supreme Court. But
if an appeal is made to the Commissioner of the Police, he will remove
an offending picture if you can show that you were innocent of the crime
charged against you, and were never arrested for a crime previously.
Up to the first of January, 1909, the total number of pictures in the
Rogues’ Gallery was as follows:
New York, 82,363; Brooklyn, 13,264; total, 95,627.
This besides over 7,000 finger marks taken from August, 1906, till same
date.
According to the best judicial authorities, the police have no right to
take the picture of a man accused of crime and place it in the Rogues’
Gallery till after his conviction. For “mugging” Banker Jenkins, in
defiance of Justice Burr’s order, Captain Kuhne, of the Brooklyn
Detective Bureau, was sentenced to thirty days in Raymond street Jail,
and fined $500 besides. The case was submitted to the highest court in
the State, and last June the Court of Appeals decided that the sentence
passed on the Police Captain was just. After a time, “mugging” contrary
to law may become an unprofitable business.
The question as to the number of criminals in New York city is one of
the most difficult to answer. The best that can be said is to offer an
unofficial conjecture. We went to Police Headquarters and presented it
to different men, but nearly all refused to volunteer an answer. One
officer said: “If you mean by criminals those persons who have been in
jail all the way from one to ten times, but who now enjoy their liberty,
then there must be at least seventy-five thousand of such people in this
city.” But then this is only a conjecture. We have no means of knowing
to an absolute certainty the number of criminals in New York.
During the fall and winter, when there are great social gatherings in
the city, thousands of crooks invade Manhattan, and live at the best
hotels. When they leave, they usually take with them enough money and
valuables to last for years.
The curiosities of crime which may be seen in the museum of the Rogues’
Gallery are worthy of careful inspection. These consist of dark
lanterns, jimmies galore, sectional jimmies, and ancient and modern
jimmies, knives, dirks, razors, pistols, guns, gold bricks, burglary
tools, skeleton keys and several hundred other things used by criminals,
all too numerous to mention. Many of these things are kept in glass
cases, and cannot be touched, but they show the ingenuity of the
criminal mind in trying to overcome the modern barriers for protecting
banks, counting houses, stores and Fifth avenue homes.
The Third Degree
After a crook has been arrested and brought to Police Headquarters, and
the authorities believe that he possesses evidence that will convict
himself, or that he belongs to a “gang” of criminals that should be
safely landed in prison without delay, he is forthwith put through the
“third degree.” The men of the Detective Bureau make light of this star
chamber inquisitorial proceeding for the discovery of crime, and say
that it does not mean anything, but those who have passed through the
experience have a different tale to tell.
When crooks conspire to defeat the ends of justice, all they have to do
is simply to keep “mum.” If there are three persons in a burglary or
safe-breaking job, as is often the case, and one gets caught, the other
two pool their interests and secure him a lawyer.
As soon as the police have reason to believe that the man under arrest
is concealing valuable information, he is taken to Police Headquarters
on a short commitment. Perhaps they may put some wise “guy,” or “stool
pigeon” in the cell with him to get him to make a damaging statement
when he is off his guard. As near as can be learned from various
sources, the “third degree” is in the nature of a rigid examination,
perhaps like the torture which is still practised on “suspects” in
China, Russia and Turkey, to draw out a confession of guilt, even where
none exists. I asked several crooks to explain to me the nature of the
third degree, all of whom claimed to have gone through the experience at
different times. When I came to compare notes, I found they all told
almost the identical story.
A man who spent more than two years in the Tombs on a murder charge was
put through the “third degree” both in the Fifth Street Station House
and at Police Headquarters. It is not customary to put a man through the
third degree in the station house, but this man claims to have been an
exception. The crook in question spent several nights in the cells in
the Fifth Street House, and spoke from experience. On the morning of the
day when he was taken to 300 Mulberry street, he said two plain clothes
men took him from a cell in the basement, and forthwith boxed his ears
and cuffed him unmercifully over the face for five minutes, or until he
became greatly excited and almost insane! After this, he was taken
upstairs to a room, a veritable sweat-box, where he was “piled” with
questions, one after another, for an hour, for the purpose, if possible,
of making him contradict himself. All the answers he gave during this
star-chamber investigation were taken down, and he was then compelled to
sign, or else have his face and ears boxed a second time. In reality the
signing of this document made him the author of a crime. In other words,
the “third degree” is simply giving to a crook a most unmerciful cuffing
and abusing, till his eyes are all discolored, and his face is covered
with blood, and he is more silly than sane. This is done that he may
confess all the details of his crime, and become an informer on those
who were in the job with him. This method is the torture of the Orient,
the thumbscrews of the Middle Ages, and is cruel and diabolical.
Central Office men have said that the third degree was one of Inspector
Byrnes’ “hobbies,” as he resorted to it on all occasions.
When it began to leak out in 1884 that Jake Sharp had bribed the Board
of Aldermen to transfer to his company the Broadway franchise, it was
found most difficult to secure any evidence to connect the guilty ones
with the crime. Inspector Byrnes, who was in the Detective Department at
the time, devised means whereby he was able with the aid of some of his
men, to entice one of the “boodlers” to a Sixth avenue restaurant, where
the flow of wine unloosed his tongue, and where he admitted that he had
sold his vote to Jake Sharp for five thousand dollars. Inspector Byrnes,
who was on the premises behind a screen, hidden from view, had all the
admissions taken down, and they were used to convict the “boodler” and
send him to State Prison.
After this “boodler’s” arrest, and he was taken to Headquarters, Byrnes
put him through the “third degree”; when he saw the answers and
admissions he had made in the Sixth avenue restaurant in cold type, he
broke down.
Whether the police are justified for the various uses to which they put
the “third degree” in ferreting out crime, I am not in a position to
state. When I asked a “cop” why they hit those fellows who passed
through the “third degree,” he replied: “You know crooks are the worst
kind of liars; unless the police gave them a moderate cuffing, they
would tell them a fake story which it would be a waste of time to listen
to.”
Some men do not blame the police for a moderate use of the “third
degree” in order to discover crime, but where to draw the line is a most
difficult thing. Judging from Professor Munsterburg’s protest against
the “third degree” in his book, “On the Witness Stand,” Germany seems to
have a more diabolical thumbscrew system of the “third degree” than New
York. Says the German professor:
“There are no longer any thumbscrews, but the lower orders of the police
have still uncounted means to make the prisoner’s life uncomfortable and
perhaps intolerable, and to break down his energy. A rat put secretly
into a woman’s cell may exhaust her nervous system and her inner
strength till she is unable to stick to her story. The dazzling light,
and the cold-water hose, and the secret blow still seem to serve, even
if nine-tenths of the newspaper stories of the ‘third degree’ are
exaggrated. Worst of all are the brutal shocks given with fiendish
cruelty to the terrified imagination of the suspect. Decent public
opinion stands firmly again such barbarism; and this opposition springs
not only from sentimental horror and from aesthetic disgust; stronger,
perhaps, than either of these is the instinctive conviction that the
method is ineffective in bringing out the real truth. At all times
innocent men have been accused by the tortured ones, crimes which were
never committed have been confessed, infamous lies have been invented,
to satisfy the demands of the torturers. Under pain and fear, a man may
make any admission which will relieve his suffering, and, still more
misleading, his mind may lose the power to discriminate between illusion
and real memory.”
[Illustration:
Putting a Crook through the Third Degree at Police Headquarters.]
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