Indeed, this is directly stated in the Report of the Citizens’ Committee appointed at the Cooper Union meeting held in New York last August, after a commanding officer of the police force had been implicated in the murder of Rosenthal by the “gun men”:
“The corruption is so ingrained that the man of ordinary decent character entering the force and not possessed of extraordinary moral fiber may easily succumb.... Such a system makes for too many of the police an organized school of crime.... We know that the connection between members of the police force and crime, or commercialized vice, is continuous, profitable and so much a matter of course that explicit bargains do not have to be made, both the keeping and breaking of faith being determined by these policemen for their own profit.
“Our recommendations on the excise and prostitution problems are intended to benefit the police situation.... While improvement in the police department will incalculably improve the tone of the city’s morals without any change in the statutory standards, nevertheless we have throughout hewn to the line of police reform and not of vice suppression.”
The Chicago Vice Commission came to a similar conclusion:
“In certain restricted districts the laws and ordinances of the state and city are practically inoperative in suppressing houses of prostitution. Because of this condition certain public officials have given a certain discretion to the police department and have allowed police rules and regulations to take the place of the laws and ordinances of these districts. As a result of this discretion certain members of the police force have become corrupt, and not only failed to strictly obey the rules and regulations in the restricted districts themselves, but have failed adequately to enforce the law and ordinances outside the restricted districts.”
The diagnoses are alike, but the treatments proposed in New York and Chicago differ materially. This should be pointed out, not only to avoid the confusion incident to designating different measures by the same or similar terms, but also to correct the injustice of applying objections which are only pertinent to one measure to defeat the other.
The board of social welfare proposed for New York and the morals commission recommended for Chicago resemble each other in organization, but are radically different in scope and in the means suggested for carrying out their functions. The members of both are to be appointed by the mayor. In New York it is proposed that the members shall serve seven years; in Chicago the term recommended is but two years: and the appointments are to be approved by the city council. No salaries are provided in either city, but the commissioner of health in Chicago is to be one of the members of the commission.
The function of both bodies is to deal with vice, but the jurisdiction of the New York board is broader and corresponds to the statutes relating to prostitution, gambling, and liquor selling. In Chicago the function of the commission is restricted to the social evil. It is “to take all legal steps necessary toward the effective suppression of bawdy and disorderly houses, houses of ill-fame and assignation, to protect, indict and prosecute keepers, inmates and patrons of the same.” This commission and a morals court are both aimed, by the Chicago Vice Commission, at the “constant and persistent repression of prostitution as the immediate method, and absolute annihilation as the ultimate ideal.”
While the morals commission is to be limited to six clerks, attorneys and medical inspectors, together with their helpers, and must depend upon the courts and the regular police force to fulfil its duties, the New York board of social welfare would have under its direct command secret service vice squads. These, it is provided, are to be distinct from the constabulary forces of the police, “so that the regular police shall no longer be responsible for the control of the vices and shall be left to their original function of preserving peace and order.” The suggested bill in New York, creating a department of public morals, provides for a large staff of “public morals” police, including captains, lieutenants, sergeants, doormen, surgeons and policemen. The number would probably be between two and three hundred, all to be exempted from civil service restrictions.
It is against this separation of the control of vice from the regular police force, which the citizens’ committee felt “driven to recommend,” that the committee of the Board of Aldermen in the Curran report present the following objections: