After this “boodler’s” arrest, and he was taken to Headquarters, Byrnes put him through the “third degree”; when he saw the answers and admissions he had made in the Sixth avenue restaurant in cold type, he broke down.
Whether the police are justified for the various uses to which they put the “third degree” in ferreting out crime, I am not in a position to state. When I asked a “cop” why they hit those fellows who passed through the “third degree,” he replied: “You know crooks are the worst kind of liars; unless the police gave them a moderate cuffing, they would tell them a fake story which it would be a waste of time to listen to.”
Some men do not blame the police for a moderate use of the “third degree” in order to discover crime, but where to draw the line is a most difficult thing. Judging from Professor Munsterburg’s protest against the “third degree” in his book, “On the Witness Stand,” Germany seems to have a more diabolical thumbscrew system of the “third degree” than New York. Says the German professor:
“There are no longer any thumbscrews, but the lower orders of the police have still uncounted means to make the prisoner’s life uncomfortable and perhaps intolerable, and to break down his energy. A rat put secretly into a woman’s cell may exhaust her nervous system and her inner strength till she is unable to stick to her story. The dazzling light, and the cold-water hose, and the secret blow still seem to serve, even if nine-tenths of the newspaper stories of the ‘third degree’ are exaggrated. Worst of all are the brutal shocks given with fiendish cruelty to the terrified imagination of the suspect. Decent public opinion stands firmly again such barbarism; and this opposition springs not only from sentimental horror and from aesthetic disgust; stronger, perhaps, than either of these is the instinctive conviction that the method is ineffective in bringing out the real truth. At all times innocent men have been accused by the tortured ones, crimes which were never committed have been confessed, infamous lies have been invented, to satisfy the demands of the torturers. Under pain and fear, a man may make any admission which will relieve his suffering, and, still more misleading, his mind may lose the power to discriminate between illusion and real memory.”
Putting a Crook through the Third Degree at Police Headquarters.
CHAPTER XXII
THE CITY GANGS
For over sixty years the people of New York have been afflicted with mercenary bands of lawless thieves and hoodlums who are known to the authorities as “Gangs.” The only justification for their existence is robbery, murder and revenge. They fight their murderous battles on the streets of the city, and during the melee assault and rob the people, after which they flee with the plunder. Whenever they get into trouble, the alderman, district captain or some other ward “heeler” comes to their rescue, and they in turn do good service for him on election day as repeaters, stuffing ballot boxes, and assaulting voters. Each gang is supposed to belong to some political party, who are able to wield considerable “pull” in time of trouble.
More than once they were responsible for a reign of terror in many parts of the city. They were known to the police as “gangs,” perhaps on account of their clannishness, for whenever they participated in any local fight or riot, they usually stuck together and fought like tigers for what they called their own rights. It is more than likely that some of the gangs were bound together by an oath which placed each member under pains and penalties not to reveal their secrets. Whatever these oaths were, we are unable to say, but we hardly think they were as rigid as the oaths of the Molly Maguires or the Mafia?