American ideals, and other essays, social and political

by Theodore Roosevelt

The undesirability of breaking with the republican organization was shown by what happened in the administration of the police department. This being the great centre of power was the especial object of the republican machine leaders. Toward the close of Tammany rule, of the four Police Commissioners, two had been machine republicans, whose actions were in no wise to be distinguished from those of their Tammany colleagues; and immediately after the new board was appointed to office the machine got through the Legislature the so-called bi-partisan or Lexow law, under which the department is at present administered; and a more foolish or vicious law was never enacted by any legislative body. It modelled the government of the police force somewhat on the lines of the Polish parliament, and it was avowedly designed to make it difficult to get effective action. It provided for a four-headed board, so that it was difficult to get a majority anyhow; but, lest we should get such a majority, it gave each member power to veto the actions of his colleagues in certain very important matters; and, lest we should do too much when we were unanimous, it provided that the chief, our nominal subordinate, should have entirely independent action in the most important matters, and should be practically irremovable, except for proved corruption; so that he was responsible to nobody. The Mayor was similarly hindered from removing any Police Commissioner, so that when one of our colleagues began obstructing the work of the board, and thwarting its effort to reform the force, the Mayor in vain strove to turn him out. In short, there was a complete divorce of power and responsibility, and it was exceedingly difficult either to do anything, or to place anywhere, the responsibility for not doing it.

If, by any reasonable concessions, if, indeed, by the performance of any act not incompatible with our oaths of office, we could have stood on good terms with the machine, we would certainly have made the effort, even at the cost of sacrificing many of our ideals; and in almost any other department we could probably have avoided a break, but in the police force such a compromise was not possible. What was demanded of us usually took some such form as the refusal to enforce certain laws, or the protection of certain law-breakers, or the promotion of the least fit men to positions of high power and grave responsibility; and on such points it was not possible to yield. We were obliged to treat all questions that arose purely on their merits, without reference to the desires of the politicians. We went into this course with our eyes open, for we knew the trouble it would cause us personally, and, what was far more important, the way in which our efforts for reform would consequently be hampered. However, there was no alternative, and we had to abide by the result. We had counted the cost before we adopted our course, and we followed it resolutely to the end. We could not accomplish all that we should have liked to accomplish for we were shackled by preposterous legislation, and by the opposition and intrigues of the basest machine politicians, which cost us the support, sometimes of one, and sometimes of both, of our colleagues. Nevertheless, the net result of our two years of work was that we did more to increase the efficiency and honesty of the police department than had ever previously been done in its history.

But a decent people will have to show by emphatic action that they are in the majority if they wish this result to be permanent; for under such a law as the “bi-partisan” law it is almost impossible to keep the department honest and efficient for any length of time; and the machine politicians, by their opposition outside the board, and by the aid of any tool or ally whom they can get on the board, can always hamper and cripple the honest members of the board, no matter how resolute and able the latter may be, if they do not have an aroused and determined public opinion behind them.

Besides suffering, in aggravated form, from the difficulties which beset the course of the entire administration, the police board had to encounter—and honest and efficient police boards must always encounter—certain special and peculiar difficulties. It is not a pleasant thing to deal with criminals and purveyors of vice. It is very rough work, and it cannot always be done in a nice manner. The man with the night stick, the man in the blue coat with the helmet, can keep order and repress open violence on the streets; but most kinds of crime and vice are ordinarily carried on furtively and by stealth, perhaps at night, perhaps behind closed doors. It is possible to reach them only by the employment of the man in plain clothes, the detective. Now the function of the detective is primarily that of the spy, and it is always easy to arouse feeling against a spy. It is absolutely necessary to employ him. Ninety per cent. of the most dangerous criminals and purveyors of vice cannot be reached in any other way. But the average citizen who does not think deeply fails to realize the necessity for any such employment. In a vague way he desires vice and crime put down; but, also in a vague way, he objects to the only possible means by which they can be put down. It is easy to mislead him into denouncing what is necessarily done in order to carry out the very policy for which he is clamoring. The Tammany officials of New York, headed by the Comptroller, made a systematic effort to excite public hostility against the police for their warfare on vice. The law-breaking liquor seller, the keeper of disorderly houses, and the gambler, had been influential allies of Tammany, and head contributors to its campaign chest. Naturally Tammany fought for them; and the effective way in which to carry on such a fight was to portray with gross exaggeration and misstatement the methods necessarily employed by every police force which honestly endeavors to do its work. The methods are unpleasant, just as the methods employed in any surgical operation are unpleasant; and the Tammany champions were able to arouse more or less feeling against the police board for precisely the same reason that a century ago it was easy to arouse what were called “doctors’ mobs” against surgeons who cut up dead bodies. In neither case is the operation attractive, and it is one which readily lends itself to denunciation; but in both cases it is necessary if there is a real intention to get at the disease. Tammany of course found its best allies in the sensational newspapers. Of all the forces that tend for evil in a great city like New York, probably none are so potent as the sensational papers. Until one has had experience with them it is difficult to realize the reckless indifference to truth or decency displayed by papers such as the two that have the largest circulation in New York City. Scandal forms the breath of the nostrils of such papers, and they are quite as ready to create as to describe it. To sustain law and order is humdrum, and does not readily lend itself to flaunting woodcuts; but if the editor will stoop, and make his subordinates stoop, to raking the gutters of human depravity, to upholding the wrong-doer, and furiously assailing what is upright and honest, he can make money, just as other types of pander make it. The man who is to do honorable work in any form of civic politics must make up his mind (and if he is a man of properly robust character he will make it up without difficulty) to treat the assaults of papers like these with absolute indifference, and to go his way unheeded. Indeed he will have to make up his mind to be criticised, sometimes justly, and more often unjustly, even by decent people; and he must not be so thin-skinned as to mind such criticism overmuch.

In administering the police force we found, as might be expected, that there was no need of genius, nor indeed of any very unusual qualities. What was needed was exercise of the plain, ordinary virtues, of a rather commonplace type, which all good citizens should be expected to possess. Common sense, common honesty, courage, energy, resolution, readiness to learn, and a desire to be as pleasant with everybody as was compatible with a strict performance of duty—these were the qualities most called for. We soon found that, in spite of the wide-spread corruption which had obtained in the New York police department, the bulk of the men were heartily desirous of being honest. There were some who were incurably dishonest, just as there were some who had remained decent in spite of terrific temptation and pressure; but the great mass came in between. Although not possessing the stamina to war against corruption when the odds seemed well-nigh hopeless, they were nevertheless heartily glad to be decent and to welcome the change to a system under which they were rewarded for doing well, and punished for doing ill.

Our methods for restoring order and discipline were simple, and indeed so were our methods for securing efficiency. We made frequent personal inspections, especially at night, turning up anywhere, at any time. We thus speedily got an idea of whom among our upper subordinates we could trust and whom we could not. We then proceeded to punish those guilty of shortcomings, and to reward those who did well, refusing to pay any heed whatever in either case to anything except the man’s own character and record. A very few of these promotions and dismissals sufficed to show our subordinates that at last they were dealing with superiors who meant what they said, and that the days of political “pull” were over while we had the power. The effect was immediate. The decent men took heart, and those who were not decent feared longer to offend. The morale of the entire force improved steadily.

A similar course was followed in reference to the relations between the police and citizens generally. There had formerly been much complaint of the brutal treatment by police of innocent citizens. This was stopped peremptorily by the simple expedient of dismissing from the force the first two or three men who were found guilty of brutality. On the other hand we made the force understand that in the event of any emergency requiring them to use their weapons against either a mob or an individual criminal, the police board backed them up without reservation. Our sympathy was for the friends, and not the foes, of order. If a mob threatened violence we were glad to have the mob hurt. If a criminal showed fight we expected the officer to use any weapon that was necessary to overcome him on the instant; and even, if it became necessary, to take life. All that the board required was to be convinced that the necessity really existed. We did not possess a particle of that maudlin sympathy for the criminal, disorderly, and lawless classes which is such a particularly unhealthy sign of social development; and we were bound that the improvement in the fighting efficiency of the police should go hand in hand with the improvement in their moral tone.

To break up the system of blackmail and corruption was less easy. It was not at all difficult to protect decent people in their rights, and this was accomplished at once. But the criminal who is blackmailed has a direct interest in paying the blackmailer, and it is not easy to get information about it. Nevertheless, we put a complete stop to most of the blackmail by the simple process of rigorously enforcing the laws, not only against crime, but against vice.

It was the enforcement of the liquor law which caused most excitement. In New York we suffer from the altogether too common tendency to make any law which a certain section of the community wants, and then to allow that law to be more or less of a dead-letter if any other section of the community objects to it. The multiplication of laws by the Legislature, and their partial enforcement by the executive authorities, go hand in hand, and offer one of the many serious problems with which we are confronted in striving to better civic conditions. New York State felt that liquor should not be sold on Sunday. The larger part of New York City wished to drink liquor on Sunday. Any man who studies the social condition of the poor knows that liquor works more ruin than any other one cause. He knows also, however, that it is simply impracticable to extirpate the habit entirely, and that to attempt too much often merely results in accomplishing too little; and he knows, moreover, that for a man alone to drink whiskey in a bar-room is one thing, and for men with their families to drink light wines or beer in respectable restaurants is quite a different thing. The average citizen, who doesn’t think at all, and the average politician of the baser sort, who only thinks about his own personal advantage, find it easiest to disregard these facts, and to pass a liquor law which will please the temperance people, and then trust to the police department to enforce it with such laxity as to please the intemperate.

The results of this pleasing system were evident in New York when our board came into power. The Sunday liquor law was by no means a dead letter in New York City. On the contrary no less than eight thousand arrests for its violation had been made under the Tammany regime the year before we came in. It was very much alive; but it was only executed against those who either had no political pull, or who refused to pay money. The liquor business does not stand on the same footing with other occupations. It always tends to produce criminality in the population at large, and law-breaking among the saloonkeepers themselves. It is absolutely necessary to supervise it rigidly, and impose restrictions upon the traffic. In large cities the traffic cannot be stopped; but the evils can at least be minimized.