All this would be beyond the scope of my subject were it not that the government of New York, past and present, is intimately bound up with its police. The Mayor, as the chief of executive power, is the head of the force by which it ought to be protected, and peace and good order maintained. Not long since, that police was attacked by many reputable citizens and declared to be a disgrace to modern civilisation. The situation had grown up under the shadow of Tammany Hall, that strange product of modern democracy, an organisation, originally political, which grew with steadily increasing, irresponsible power till it overshadowed and overawed the city of New York, ruling it with barefaced chicanery and imposing an outrageous despotism. In 1894 the power of Tammany was temporarily overborne by an outburst of popular indignation. But it was scotched, not killed. The almost irresponsible power wielded by the Chief Magistrate under the latest charter is working again for ill. There is no guarantee for its wise and temperate exercise; and a new Commission, known as the Mazet Commission, presided over by Mr. Moss, has conducted an inquiry which revealed that some of the old evils were again in the ascendant.
Until 1896 the outside public was apt to regard the police of New York as “the best and finest in the world.” The eulogistic words are those of its own champions, who claimed for it that “its services have been great, the bravery of some of its members conspicuous in life-saving and yet more in quelling riot and disturbance.” It has always been a tradition in America that the police may be trusted with considerable powers; a free people, feeling that law in a new country must sternly check license, has not unwillingly permitted its constituted guardians to use the strong arm on occasion, and in a way that would not be tolerated in slow-going, sober old England. To “loose off his revolver” at the fugitive he cannot catch, or who has slipped through his fingers, is no uncommon practice with the American policeman, what though he may hit the innocent pigeon and miss the offending crow. I can call to mind the summary finish of a prolonged strike of “street-car” employees which I witnessed in one of my various visits to New York. A force of policemen in plain clothes and armed to the teeth were sent “down town” on a street-car with orders to fight their way through, which they did “handsomely.” In other words, they shot down all opposition. The number of casualties was never publicly reported.
Let us consider first the constitution of the force. The whole body of police is small compared with that of other large cities, and in proportion to the mixed, turbulent public it controls—only one to 500 souls; it is governed by a Board of four Commissioners appointed by
the Mayor for a term of six years. Particular duties are allocated to the several members of the Board. Thus, the senior Commissioner and president ex officio is entrusted with the higher discipline of the force; he deals with all charges of misconduct, and decides whether offending constables shall or shall not be sent before the public tribunals. Another Commissioner controls repairs and supplies, examining and passing all bills for work done, after satisfying himself that it has been completed. A third supervises the Pension Fund, and disposes of applications for retirement, and also of applications from widows and children of police officers for relief. The fourth Commissioner is the Treasurer of police funds.
Immediately next to the Board stands a Superintendent of Police, who is chief of the executive, the responsible head of the personnel, of the rank and file of the force. He is the intermediary between the four Inspectors, who come next in the hierarchy, and the supreme Board, the channel communicating the Board’s will and the agent to enforce its execution. The Superintendent holds all the threads of general control, and is responsible for and charged with the enforcement of the law throughout the city. Three Inspectors supervise each a separate district, being responsible for the preservation of the peace within its limits and security to life and limb; the fourth is the head of the detective branch. After the Inspectors rank the Captains of “precincts,” of which there were thirty-four previous to the enlargement of the city, each “precinct” being analogous to a French arrondissement or a police “division” in London. The Captain is an officer of great influence and importance in his precinct, which he rules more or less despotically, but nominally in the best interests of the public. He has a large force of men at his disposal, and is expected to use it for the comfort and protection of good citizens, as well as the pursuit and capture of criminals. The rank and file of the force serving under the Captains are classed as follows: first the Sergeants, from whom the Captains are commonly selected; next the Roundsmen; then the Patrolmen, synonymous with our ordinary blue-coated constables; last of all the Doormen, who are out of uniform and employed at stations, lock-ups, and in offices, performing many and various functions of administration.
In theory, to all outward seeming this organisation, so perfect, so symmetrical, so accurately planned, might be supposed to justify the encomiums passed upon it as the best and finest police force in the world. Yet some of those for whose service it existed denounced it as an intolerable tyranny, supported by corruption and wielding arbitrary authority. Revolt was threatened, and it broke out ere long, only to be crushed in its first efforts, but, unabashed by failure, to renew its strenuous efforts. The moving spirit, the apostle of reform, was Dr. Parkhurst, the incumbent of the Madison Square church, who, after ten years of active ministration, began in 1890 to preach against Tammany from his pulpit with a persistent courage that survived every attempt to put him down. He took office next year as president of the Society for the Prevention of Crime, and at once adopted as his watchword the cry of “Down with the police.” He denounced the whole administration of law and justice as criminally corrupt; all officers, lawyers, judges depending on Tammany worked hand in hand with crime. “It is simply one solid gang of rascals, half of the gang in office, the other half out, and the two halves steadily catering to each other across the official line.”
For this bold language Dr. Parkhurst was summoned before the Grand Jury of New York and solemnly reproved. He was not to be silenced; but, anxious to formulate no fresh attack until he could speak to facts from his own knowledge, he made a sad and weary pilgrimage through the worst purlieus of the city, and obtained abundant proof that the law was continually and flagrantly violated under the eyes of the police, and in collusion and complicity with them. He returned to the charge, inveighing with redoubled vigour against the police, telling how he had “gone down into the disgusting depths of this Tammany-debauched town.” He was again summoned before the Grand Jury, but now he had his answer, and so far from rebuking him afresh, the Grand Jury agreed with him as to the corruption of the New York police.