Forty Years of It

by Brand Whitlock

And this is what we tried from the first to have all our policemen do, to help people and not to hurt them. It was what Jones had tried to do, and he had begun with one of the most interesting experiments in policing a city that has been made in our country. He took away the clubs from the policemen. He could have made at first no greater sensation if he had taken away the police altogether, the protest was so loud, so indignant, above all so righteous. What sense of security could a community feel if the policemen were to have no clubs, how would the unruly and the lawless be kept in check when they no longer beheld this insignia of authority in the hands of the guardians of the peace? And perhaps to reassure the righteous and truly good Jones gave the policemen canes and ran the great risk of making them ridiculous.

I am not sure that he would have cared much if he had, since he had so little respect for the police idea, and of course he had as little regard for organization. I remember once that at a session of the old police board he opposed the creation of new sergeants; he said a sergeant always seemed as superfluous to him as a presiding elder in the Methodist Church. With an elected board of police commissioners over it the police force was pretty certain to be demoralized, of course, as is any executive department of government which is directed by a board, for with a board, unless all the members save one are either dead or incapacitated, discipline and efficiency are impossible. We got rid of the board system in Ohio after two or three sessions of the legislature had been wrestled with, and though the “mayor’s code” was never enacted, many of its ideas were adopted in amendments to the municipal code, so that we approached the most efficient form of city government yet devised in our rather close resemblance to the federal plan.

The time came, however, when the old elected board of public service was succeeded by a director of public service appointed by the mayor, and the old board of public safety by a director of public safety appointed by the same authority, though that was not until I had entered on my third term in the mayor’s office. When that time came I appointed as Director of Public Service Mr. John Robert Cowell, a Manxman who managed the department of public works admirably, and to the post of Director of Public Safety Mr. John Joseph Mooney, whose services and assistance I had already had on the board of public safety when that was appointed by the mayor. And Mr. Mooney was able to work out many of the improvements we hoped to make in the police department.

And as Jones had taken the clubs away from the policemen and given them canes, we took away the canes and sent them forth with empty hands. Jones had the idea of doing away with clubs from London where he observed the bobbies who control the mighty traffic in the streets of London. We were therefore able to realize the whole of his ideal in that respect, and our city, I think alone of all American cities, could not merit the reproach that a Liverpool man once made to me when we were discussing superficial appearances in the two nations. “The most offensive thing in America to me,” he said, “is the way in which the policemen parade their truncheons.” The public made no complaint at the disappearance of the canes, but the policemen did; they felt lost, they reported, without something to twirl in their hands. We thought of letting them have swagger sticks, but finally decided that they should be induced to bear themselves gracefully with their white gloved hands unoccupied. The white gloves were the subject of amusement to the boors in town, who could always be amused at any effort at improvement, but with them on, and the new uniforms we had patterned after the uniform worn by the New York policemen, the members of the department soon began to have a pride in themselves.

And that was exactly what we were trying to inculcate, though it was difficult to do, and almost impossible, one might think, since for generations policemen have been the target for the sarcasms and abuse of every voice of the community. The wonder is, with such an universal conspiracy as exists in America to give policemen a bad name, that they have any character left at all. Surely each community in various ways has done everything it could to strip its policemen of every shred of reputation and self respect and with these gone, character might be expected shortly to follow. Of course the new uniforms were ridiculed too, but we did not let that discourage us.

There was the civil-service law to help, and we were of old devoted to the spirit and even to the letter of that, though once the letter of that law compelled us to an injustice, as the letter of any law must do now and then. We had reorganized the police department on a metropolitan basis, and had done the same with the fire department, and in this department there were accordingly created three new positions of battalion chiefs, for which captains were eligible. The oldest ranking captain in the department was Dick Lawler, by everyone in the department from the chief down conceded to be the best fireman in the department, with a long and untarnished record of devoted duty and quiet, unassuming bravery. And it was his natural ambition to round out that career as one of the chiefs. The examining board held a written test, and as Lawler was more accomplished in extinguishing, or, as his comrades expressed it, in fighting fire, and much more comfortable and at home on the roof of a burning building than he was at a desk with a pen in his hand, he did not do very well. When, for instance, he read a long hypothetical question, setting forth certain conditions at a fire and asking the applicant where, under such circumstances, he would lay the hose, Lawler wrote down as his answer, “Where it would do the most good,” and on that answer the board marked him zero. The board marked him zero on so many answers indeed that the net result was almost zero, and he failed.

It was a kind of tragedy, in its little way, as he stood in my office that morning on which he came to appeal from the board, with tears in his eyes. But the law was obdurate and I was helpless. But I did point out to the examining board the absurdity of such methods of testing a man’s ability, and after that they allowed a man’s record to count for fifty per cent. And it was not long until a vacancy occurred among the chiefs—and Lawler was appointed.

XLVI

The questions put to Lawler were perhaps no more absurd than many a one framed by civil-service examiners. In any event the written examination is apt to do as much harm as good, and for policemen and firemen we came to the conclusion that it was almost wholly worthless, once it had been determined that an applicant could write well enough to turn in an intelligible report. The initial qualification on which we came to rely and to regard as most important was the physical qualification. There is no way to tell by asking a man questions whether he will be a good policeman or not; the only way to find that out is to try him for a year. But his physical condition can be determined, and on this basis we began to build the police force, under the direction of Dr. Peter Donnelly, one of the ablest surgeons in the country, whose tragic early death was seemingly but a part of that fate which took from us in a few short years so many of the best and brightest of the young men in our movement. The death of Peter Donnelly left us desolate because he had a genius for friendship equal to that genius as a surgeon which enabled him to render a great social service.

He was perfectly rigid in the examinations to which he subjected applicants for positions in the department, and wholly inaccessible to any sort of influence in favor of the unfit. In the old days, which by many were regretted as the good old days, the only qualification an applicant needed was a friend on the police board, and as a result the force was encumbered with the lame, the halt, and the blind; there were drinkers if not drunkards among them, and the paunches which some bore before them were so great that when they took their belts off and hung them up in those resorts where they accepted the hospitality of a midnight meal, the belts seemed to be as large as the hoops of the Heidelberg tun. We rid the force of these as quickly as it could be done, and the recruits who replaced them were, because of Dr. Donnelly’s care and service, superb young fellows, lithe and clean, who bore themselves with self respect and an ardent pride in that esprit de corps we were enabled to develop.