The Detective Corps of New York consists of twenty-five men, under the command of a Captain, or Chief. Though they really constitute a part of the Municipal Police Force, and are subject to the control of the Commissioners and higher officers of that body, the detectives have a practically distinct organization. The members of this corps are men of experience, intelligence, and energy. These qualities are indispensable to success in their profession. It requires an unusual amount of intelligence to make a good Detective. The man must be honest, determined, brave, and complete master over every feeling of his nature. He must also be capable of great endurance, of great fertility of resource, and possessed of no little ingenuity. He has to adopt all kinds of disguises, incur great personal risks, and is often subjected to temptations which only an honest man can resist. It is said that the Detective’s familiarity with crime is in itself a great temptation, and often leads him from the path of right. However this may be, it is certain that a member of the New York force committing an act savoring of dishonesty is punished by immediate expulsion from his post.
The Detectives have a special department assigned them at the Police Head-quarters in Mulberry street. There they may be found when not on duty, and the Chief, when not in his office, is always represented by some member of the corps.
They are kept quite busy. The strangers who visit the city throw an immense amount of work upon the Detectives. These people often get drunk over night, and frequent houses of bad repute, where they are robbed. They naturally invoke the aid of the police in seeking to recover their property. Frequently, by making a plain statement of their cases, they recover their money or valuables, through the assistance of the Detectives. Sometimes the stolen property cannot be regained at all. These people, as a rule, refuse to prosecute the thieves, and declare their determination to submit to the loss rather than endure the publicity which would attend a prosecution. Thus the Detectives are forced to compound felonies. The injured party refuses to prosecute, and the Detective knows that to make an arrest in the case would simply be to take trouble for nothing. Consequently, if the plunder is returned, the thief is allowed to escape without punishment.
None but those whose duty it is to search out and punish crime, can tell how much the administration of justice is embarrassed, how much the officers of the law are hampered, and how greatly their labors are increased by the refusal of respectable persons to prosecute criminals. These refusals are not confined to those who seek to avoid such an exposure as is mentioned above. Merchants and bankers who have been robbed by thieves, seem to care for nothing but the recovery of their money or property. They will even sacrifice a portion of this to regain the remainder. The Detective may fairly work up his case, and fasten the crime upon the perpetrator, but he is not sure of meeting with the cooperation upon the part of the injured person that he has a right to demand. The thief seeing that an arrest is inevitable, may offer to return a part or the whole of the property on condition of his being allowed to escape. In ninety-nine cases out of a hundred the proposal is accepted. The merchant recovers his property, and immediately exerts himself to secure the escape of the thief. He refuses to prosecute the wretch, or if the prosecution is carried on in spite of him, his evidence amounts to nothing. He has protected his own interests, and he cares nothing for
society or justice. He throws his whole influence against both, and aids the thief, in going free, to commit the same crime in another quarter. The Detectives complain, and with justice, that it is of no use for them to arrest a burglar where the stolen property can be recovered. If persons who have been wronged in this way would refuse all proposals for a compromise, and would endeavor to secure the punishment of the offender, the criminal class would be wonderfully thinned out, and the Detectives would not, as now, be obliged to arrest the same person over and over again, only to see him go free every time.
In June, 1870, a gentleman, passing through Bleecker street, on his way home, at two o’clock in the morning, was knocked down and robbed of his watch and money. He was struck with such violence by the highwayman that his jaw was permanently injured. He was very eloquent in his complaints of the inefficiency of a police system which left one of the principal streets of the city so unguarded, and was loud in his demands for the punishment of his assailant, and the recovery of the property stolen from him. The best Detectives in the force were put in charge of the case, and the highwayman was tracked, discovered and arrested. The friends of the culprit at once returned the stolen property to its owner, and promised to reward him liberally if he would not press the prosecution of their comrade, who was one of the leading members of a notorious and dangerous gang of ruffians from whose depredations the city had been suffering for some time. The offer was accepted, and the gentleman flatly refused to prosecute, and when compelled by the authorities to state under oath, whether the prisoner was the man who had robbed him, became so doubtful and hesitating that his identification was worth nothing. This, too, in the face of his previous assertion that he could readily identify the criminal. In spite of his misconduct, however, there was evidence enough submitted to secure the conviction of the prisoner, who was sentenced to an imprisonment of ten years.
The Detectives are in constant telegraphic communication with other cities, and intelligence of crimes committed is being
constantly received and transmitted. Criminals arrested for serious offences are photographed, and their pictures placed in the collection known as the “Rogues’ Gallery.” These likenesses are shown to strangers only under certain restrictions, but they aid the force not a little in their efforts to discover criminals. The amount of crime annually brought to light by the Detectives is startling, but it does not exhibit all the evil doings of the great city. “The Police Commissioners of New York,” says Mr. Edward Crapsey, “have never had the courage to inform the public of the number of burglaries and robberies annually committed in the metropolis; but enough is known in a general way for us to be certain that there are hundreds of these crimes committed of which the public is not told. The rule is to keep secret all such affairs when an arrest does not follow the offence, and hardly any police official will venture to claim that the arrest occurs in more than a moiety of the cases. There are hundreds of such crimes every year where the criminal is not detected, and hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of property stolen of which the police never find a trace.”
The individuality of crime is remarkable. Each burglar has a distinct method of conducting his operations, and the experienced Detective can recognize these marks or characteristics as he would the features of the offender. Thanks to this experience, which comes only with long and patient study, he is rarely at a loss to name the perpetrator of a crime if that person be a “professional.” Appearances which have no significance for the mere outsider are pregnant with meaning to him. He can determine with absolute certainty whether the mischief has been done by skilled or unskilled hands, and he can gather up and link together evidences which entirely escape the unpractised eye. He rejects nothing as unimportant until he has tested it, and is able to conduct his search in a systematic manner, which in the majority of cases is crowned with success.
A few years ago a man came into one of the police stations of the city, and complained that his house had been robbed. He had pursued the thief without success, but the latter had dropped a chisel, and had torn up and thrown away a piece of