A frequent matter of injustice in our police courts is the treatment accorded the Italian, Greek and Jewish peddlers and push cart men. Although they are licensed by the city and compelled to carry a badge, hardly a day goes by without a score of them being hauled to court on the most flimsy charge. Indeed, every obstacle is put in their way to prevent them from earning an honest dollar. The city ordinance prevents them from standing more than ten minutes in one place. Often they are arrested before they are five minutes in a place. If you stand around Park Row you can see a dozen of these men picked up daily, while the notorious pool rooms and gambling hells of the city are in full blast.
Intoxication and disorderly conduct cases receive the least consideration. And then everything depends on what the policeman says against the defendant, but the presumption is that he is guilty. What we object to is that the magistrate allows the officer to whisper something into his ear, that the defendant knows nothing whatever about and is not related to the case, but that thing is usually the basis of the sentence. I hope that the day will come when the officer that makes the arrest will place the rum-seller at the bar with the “drunk” and make him responsible for the “output” of his own saloon. Indeed, whenever a policeman finds a “drunk” within a hundred feet of a saloon, it should be his duty to arrest the saloon-keeper who sold the liquor. Why not? As the officer on post gets all his “drinks” free at the saloon, which is only bribery in a mild form, it would be manifestly improper for him to give any other testimony in the proceedings other than favorable to the rum-seller, and this makes his relation to the case nothing short of a scandal! Almost every day some persons are robbed and flim-flammed in scores of city saloons. If they offer any protest or even ask for the return of their money they are forthwith “fired” to the street. Sometimes the victim is beaten into insensibility and left bleeding on the sidewalk. Soon a policeman comes along. He arrests the victim and makes a charge of intoxication or disorderly conduct against him. But, strange to say, nothing is done to the saloon-keeper and his assassins. The bloated gin-mill keeper is allowed to continue his business unmolested, and he waits for more victims. Good hearted people, and even ministers of the gospel, waste a lot of “gush” on the poor, persecuted saloon keeper, all of which is entirely uncalled for.
Strong drink is the cause of more than two-thirds of all the business transacted in the police courts. If we could only do away with this curse there would be little work left for the magistrates.
Some of our magistrates show wretched judgment in handling the “down and out” unfortunates that frequent the police courts. Indeed, several sages of the “reform brand” act strange in dealing with beginners as well as habituals. With one or two magistrates almost every victim is sure of six months on the island and there is little or no discrimination. If this is what New York’s famous District Attorney had in mind when he said: “To h—— with reform,” it seems to me he was justified in using the expression. It is nothing short of a parody on justice to send a poor laboring man or mechanic, the victim of the ubiquitous gin-mill, to prison for six months for simple intoxication. For, as a rule, while he is in prison, getting three square meals a day such as they are, his wife and children are starving to death by slow process at home.
Judge Rosalsky recently discharged two men in General Sessions and scored the magistrate for such a foolish sentence. There are, however, honorable exceptions. Some of our magistrates are very humane and show excellent judgment in dealing with such persons. It seems to me that several Tammany magistrates who have come up from the common people and live in touch with them, show remarkable good sense in dealing with the “drunk and disorderly” cases that come before them.
It seems to me that Magistrates Finn and Breen, and for that matter several others, show good sense in dealing with unfortunates. Instead of sending every man “up” for six months, as some reform judges do, they fine them a dollar and after they are sobered, let them go. To stay a night in the stifling cell of a station house is punishment enough for any man. Such magistrates are certainly merciful, and do much to help the man fallen by the way!
One other magistrate who seems to possess the judicial mind, always careful, painstaking and just toward the unfortunate, is Judge Mayo, when he was a City Magistrate. He is now a Special Session Judge, and as I watched the proceedings in the Children’s Court, some time ago, where he presided, I saw that he still holds his good qualities!
Another gentleman for whom I always entertained the highest regard was Magistrate Poole. I liked him for his open and sterling qualities and often wished that more of his kind might adorn the magistrate’s bench. I never knew him to turn down a genuine case of mercy in the hour of need.
Old Police Headquarters, 300 Mulberry Street, N. Y. City.