A fantastic story made the front pages last year, then was hushed and forgotten. Police Captain Anthony Richitt charged under oath, before a Congressional investigating committee, that he had been ordered by Police Inspector Jeffreys to turn in a false report on a gambling complaint. He also swore that the District crime investigating sub-committee was worrying the police chief, who, he said, was on intimate terms with gambler Emmitt Warring; and further, that Warring delivered messages from the chief to precinct captains.
Such charges elsewhere would have popped up a seething scandal, at least a grand jury to-do, with the probability of new brass in the police department. It took a long time, but even in Chicago the police commissioner, the county chairman and the millionaire chief investigator for the State’s Attorney quit after publication of Chicago Confidential.
You think anything like that happened in Washington? In this home of laissez faire the grand jury wasn’t interested even to the extent of whitewashing the mud.
The incident was treated as a private feud. It was officially settled on the records when Richitt apologized to his boss, in a public apology, six words long:
“I regret the incident ever occurred.”
No explanation, no retraction, no withdrawal of the charges.
Barrett’s reply was nearly as short:
“Richitt has complied with the orders of the department as far as I am concerned.”
Thus was departmental satisfaction restored. But there was no satisfaction for the public. No determination was ever made as to whether the chief had ordered his subordinate to falsify arrest records. It was decided by all concerned that this was of no interest to the tax-payers, the grand jury included.