No. 2, about 35 years, five feet ten inches in height, slender build, dark hair, possibly smooth shaven, light brown suit, no overcoat, wore a cap.
No description of No. 3.
Stole $25,000 in five and ten dollar bills, contained in a brown leather telescope bag, 24 inches long, 16 inches square, from two bank messengers in a taxicab about 11 this a. m., at Park Place and Church Street, and escaped in a five or seven-seated black touring car, top up. Look out for this car, bag and occupants on streets, at ferry entrances, bridge terminals, railroad stations. Inquire at all garages, automobile stands, stables, etc.
If found, notify Detective Bureau.
Before noon, the Commissioner has postponed appointments, assigned routine business, and is engaged in an investigation that will keep him busy until that morning, twelve days later, when the first arrests are made, and the case is, in police parlance, “broken.”
Where do the police begin in such a crime? What do they start with when there is apparently so little to work upon?
In spite of the wide popular interest in police and criminal matters, the average citizen has no very clear idea. Even the newspaper reporter, following police activities every day, is not well informed in technical details. Some information is necessarily withheld from him, and he is a busy young man, with his own technical viewpoint, working hard to get his own kind of information.
This lack of knowledge leads to a feeling of mystery, helplessness and terror after a sensational crime, and to criticism of the police. They are at work, skillfully, honestly, diligently. But results take time. It would do little good to make arrests without evidence. The citizen’s sympathies are aroused by brutal lawlessness, and he urges that somebody be caught and punished. If results are not at once apparent, he jumps to the conclusion that the police are “demoralized.” He would be startled if he could see how quickly and persistently the underworld takes steps to strengthen him in that conclusion, and use him to discredit the police.
Sixty detectives are immediately called into the case. Five of them go down to the scene of the robbery, with orders to work there until further notice. They make a thorough search of the neighborhood, following the route taken by Montani’s taxicab, and questioning merchants, newsdealers, porters, truckmen and other persons likely to have information as eye-witnesses. They go through the streets that may have been taken by the escaping robbers, and work over the whole ground. This search through one of the busiest sections of New York in a busy hour, amid the excitement created by the crime, may appear like hopeless business. But, as will be seen presently, it yields important results. Other detectives search garages for the black automobile without a license number in which the robbers are reported to have got away. Four uniformed policemen on beats along the route taken by the taxicab are questioned. Other detailed inquiries of the same nature are started.
But the most important work of the first day centers at Police Headquarters, where a conference is held by Commissioner Dougherty and his assistants, and in the examination of Montani, the taxicab driver.