MODERN POLICE (_continued_): PARIS.
The Spy System under the Second Empire--The Manufacture of
_Dossiers_--M. Andrieux receives his own on being appointed
Prefect--The Clerical Police of Paris--The _Sergents de Ville_--The
Six Central Brigades--The Cabmen of Paris, and how they are kept in
Order--Stories of Honest and of Dishonest Cabmen--Detectives and
Spies--Newspaper Attacks upon the Police--Their General Character.
Some account of the police arrangements in two or three other capitals,
and also in India, may now be given by way of contrast and comparison.
The police of Paris has already been dealt with in its early beginnings,
and under the First Empire. After the Bourbon Restoration, and during
the days of the revived monarchy, the least valuable feature of the
French police had the chief prominence. Every effort was made, by means
of the police, to check opposition to the reigning power, and suppress
political independence. But it was at this period that the detection of
crime was undertaken for the first time as a distinct branch of police
business, and it will be seen in a later chapter how Vidocq did great
things, although often by dishonest agents and unworthy means. In the
Second Empire the secret police over-rode everything; Napoleon III. had
been a conspirator in his time, and he had an army of private spies in
addition to the police of the Château, and these spies watched the
regular police at a cost of some fourteen millions of francs. At the
fall of the Second Empire there were half a dozen different secret
police services in Paris. There was the Emperor's, already mentioned;
the Empress had hers; M. Rouher, the Prime Minister, and M. Piétri, the
Prefect, each had a private force, so had other great officials. Most of
these agents were unknown to each other as such, and so extensive was
the system of espionage that one-half of Paris was at that time said to
be employed in watching the other half. This system produced the
_dossiers_, the small portfolios or covers, one of which appertained to
each individual, high or low,
[Illustration: A "GARDIEN DE LA PAIX."]
innocent or criminal, and was carefully preserved in the archives of the
Prefecture. There were thousands and thousands of these, carefully
catalogued and filed for easy reference, made up of confidential and
calumniating reports sent in by agents, sometimes serious charges, often
the merest and most mendacious tittle-tattle. The most harmless
individuals were often denounced as conspirators, and an agent, if he
knew nothing positive, drew liberally on his imagination for his facts.
Great numbers of these _dossiers_ were destroyed in the incendiary fires
of the Commune; some of its leaders were no doubt anxious that no such
records should remain. The criminal classes also rejoiced, but not for
long. One of the first acts of the authorities when order was
re-established was to reconstitute the criminal _dossiers_, a work of
immense toil, necessitating reference to all the archives of prisons and
tribunals. Within a couple of years some five million slips were got
together, and the documents filled eight thousand boxes. It is to be
feared that the secret police is still active in Paris, even under a
free Republic; secret funds are still produced to pay agents; among all
classes of society spies may be found even to-day; in drawing-rooms and
in the servants' hall, at one's elbow in the theatre, among journalists,
in the army, and in the best professions. That this is no exaggeration
may be gathered from the fact that the _dossiers_ are still in process
of manufacture. M. Andrieux, a former prefect, who has published his
Reminiscences, describes how on taking office the first visitor he
received was his chief clerk who, according to the regular custom, put
his _dossier_ into his hands. "It bore the number 14,207," M. Andrieux
tells us, "and I have it now in my library, bound, with all the gross
calumnies and truculent denunciations that form the basis of such
documents."
The regular police organisation, that which preserves order, checks
evil-doing, and "runs in" malefactors, falls naturally and broadly into
two grand divisions, the administrative and the active, the police "in
the office" and the police "out of doors." The first attends to the
clerical business, voluminous and incessant, for Frenchmen are the
slaves of a routine which goes round and round like clockwork. There is
an army of clerks in the numerous bureaus, hundreds of those patient
Government employees, the _ronds de cuir_, as they are contemptuously
called, because they sit for choice on round leather cushions, writing
and filling in forms
[Illustration: A "GARDE DE PARIS."]
for hours and hours, day after day. The active army of police out of
doors, which constitutes the second half of the whole machine, is
divided into two classes: that in uniform and that in plain clothes.
Every visitor to Paris is familiar with the rather theatrical-looking
policeman, in his short frock coat or cape, smart _képi_ cocked on one
side of his head, and with a sword by his side. This _agent_, _sergent
de ville_, _gardien de la paix_--he is known by all three titles--has
many excellent qualities, and is, no doubt, a very useful public
servant. He is almost invariably an old soldier, a sergeant who has left
the army with a first-class character, honesty and sobriety being
indispensable qualifications. Our own Metropolitan Police is not thus
recruited: the Scotland Yard authorities rather dislike men with
military antecedents, believing that army training, with its stiff and
unyielding discipline, does not develop that spirit of good-humoured
conciliation so noticeable in our police when dealing with the public.
Something of the same kind is seen in Paris; for it is said that it
takes two or three years to turn the well-disciplined old soldier into
the courteous and considerate _sergent de ville_. His instructions are,
however, precise; he is strictly cautioned to use every form of
persuasion before proceeding to extremities, he is told to warn but not
to threaten, very necessary regulations when dealing with such a highly
strung, excitable population as that of Paris. The same _sergents de
ville_ are stationed in the same quarter of the town, so that they
become more or less intimately acquainted with their neighbours and
charges. They are thus often enabled to deal with them in a friendly
way; a little scolding is found more effective than intimidation, and
strong measures may be avoided by tact and forbearance.
The uniformed police are not all employed in the streets and
_arrondissements_. There is a large reserve composed of the six central
brigades, as they are called, a very smart body of old soldiers, well
drilled, well dressed, and fully equipped: armed, moreover, with rifles,
with which they mount guard when employed as sentries at the doors or
entrance of the Prefecture. In Paris _argot_ the men of these six
central brigades are nicknamed "_vaisseaux_" (vessels), because they
carry on their collars the badge of the city of Paris--an ancient
ship--while the sergeants in the town districts wear only numbers: their
own individual number, and that of the quarter in which they serve.
These _vaisseaux_ claim to be the _élite_ of the force; they come in
daily contact with the Gardes de Paris, horse and foot, a fine corps of
city gendarmerie, and, as competing with them, take a particular pride
in themselves. Their comrades in the quarters resent this pretension,
and declare that when in contact with the people the _vaisseaux_ make
bad blood by their arrogance and want of tact. The principal business of
four at least of these central brigades is to be on call when required
to reinforce the out-of-doors police at special times. They are ready to
turn out and preserve order at fires, and will, no doubt, be the first
in the fray if Paris is ever again convulsed with revolutionary
troubles.
Of the two remaining central brigades, one controls public carriages,
the other the Halles, that great central market by which Paris is
provided with a large part of its food. The cabmen of Paris are not
easily controlled, but they are probably a much rougher lot than the
London drivers, and they, no doubt, need a much tighter hand. Every
cab-stand is under the charge of its own policeman, who knows the men,
notes their arrival and departure, and marks their general behaviour.
Other police officers of the central brigades superintend the street
traffic, but not so successfully as do our police; indeed, parties of
the French police
[Illustration: PARISIAN PRISON WARDERS.]
[Illustration: "EVERY CAB-STAND IS UNDER THE CHARGE OF ITS OWN
POLICEMAN" (p. 262).]
have from time to time been sent to London for instruction in this
difficult branch of police business, but have hardly benefited by their
teaching. Parisian cabmen are forbidden to rove in search of fares, or
hang about in front of cafes and at street corners, the penalty being
imprisonment without the option of a fine. Indeed, a special quarter in
one of the Paris prisons is known as the "cabmen's," and is often full
of them. Yet the drivers are honest enough, and many curious stories are
told of the self-denial shown by these hard-worked, poorly paid servants
of the public. A rich Russian who had won ten thousand francs one night
at his club left the whole sum behind him in a cab in which he had
driven home. He was so certain that he had lost it irreparably that he
returned to St. Petersburg without even inquiring whether or not it had
been given up. Some time later he was again in Paris, and a friend
strongly urged him at least to satisfy himself whether or not the
missing money had been taken to the lost property office. He went and
asked, although the limit of time allowed to claim the lost property
was almost expired. "Ten thousand francs lost? Yes, there it is," and
after the proper identification the money was restored to him. "What a
fool that cabman must have been!" was the Russian's only remark. Again,
a certain jeweller in the Palais Royal left a diamond _parure_ worth
80,000 francs (£3,200) in a cab, and the police, when he reported the
loss, gave him scant hope of recovery. He did not know the number of the
cabman--he had picked him up in the street, not taken him from the rank;
and, worse than all, he had quarrelled with the driver, the reason why
he had abruptly left the cab. The case seemed quite hopeless, yet the
cabman brought back the diamonds of his own accord. The quaintest part
of the story is to come. When told at the Prefecture to ask the jeweller
for the substantial reward to which he was clearly entitled, he replied
with intense indignation: "No, not I; he was too rude. I hope I may
never see him or speak to him again."
All cabmen are not so honest, however; and now and again the fraudulent
cabman gets caught. It was so in the case of a tortoiseshell fan, which
was deposited under a wrong description and eventually, after the legal
interval, handed over to the cabman who had found it. Soon afterwards a
lady turned up to claim it, and as she described it exactly he was
ordered to restore it to the lady, whose name was communicated to him.
"But she has no right to it," protested the cabman. "She is a thief. I
know the real owner. I have known her from the first. It is Mdlle. ----,"
and he named a popular actress, thus confessing his own misconduct. The
actress was then summoned, and did in fact identify the fan as the one
she had lost. But it was proved satisfactorily that the other lady also
had lost a fan that was curiously similar.
The vicissitudes of treasure-trove might be greatly multiplied. The most
curious chances happen, the strangest articles are brought to the police
authorities. Everything found in the streets and highways, in omnibuses,
theatres, cabs, railway stations, is forwarded to the Prefecture. In one
case an immigrant who had made his fortune in Canada and carried it in
his pocket, in the shape of fifty notes of ten thousand francs each
(£20,000), dropped his purse as he climbed on to the outside of an
omnibus. The conductor picked it up and restored it; he was rewarded
with £500, and richly he deserved it for resisting so great a
temptation. Beds, brooches, boots, sheets even, are brought into the
Prefecture. A mummy was once among the _trouvailles_; there are
umbrellas without end. Hogier Grisons, a French writer, from whom many
of these incidents are taken, says that a friend of his declares that
whenever he finds himself without an umbrella he goes straight to the
Prefecture, describes some particular one, according to his fancy, with
such and such a handle, a certain colour, and so on, when he always has
the exact article handed over to him.
[Illustration: PARIS POLICE VANS.]
So much for the police in uniform. That in plain clothes, _en
bourgeois_, as the French call it, is not so numerous, but it fulfils a
higher, or at least a more confidential, mission. Its members are styled
inspectors, not agents, and their functions fall under four principal
heads. There is, first of all, the service of the _Sûreté_--in other
words, of public safety--the detective department, employed entirely in
the pursuit and capture of criminals, of which more anon; next comes the
police, now amalgamated with the _Sûreté_, that watches over the morals
of the capital in a fashion that would not be tolerated in this country,
and possesses arbitrary powers under the existing laws of France; then
there is the _brigade de garnis_, the police charged with the
supervision of all lodging-houses, from the commonest "_sleep_-sellers'
shop," as it is called, to the grandest hotels. Last of all there is the
brigade for inquiries, whose business it is to act as the eyes and ears
of the Prefecture--in plain English, as its spies.
There are many complaints in Paris that the police are short-handed,
especially in the streets. The average is sixteen to a quarter
inhabited by 30,000 to 40,000 people, so that the beats are long and the
patrol work severe, especially at night, though the numbers of the
_sergents de ville_ are then doubled. Some say that the streets of Paris
are more unsafe in the more remote districts than those of any capital
of Europe. The police are much abused, too, by the Radical and
Irreconcilable Press. It is not uncommon to read in the daily papers
such headlines as the following: "Crimes of the Police," "Police
Thieves," "Murder by a _Sergent de Ville_"--generally gross
exaggerations, of course. The truth, no doubt, is that the police of
Paris, taken as a whole, are a hard-working, devoted, and generally
estimable body of public servants.
[Illustration: A VISIT FROM THE DETECTIVES.]