A PLEA FOR A NEW LEGISLATURE TO MAKE AND ENFORCE LAWS AGAINST VICE
A. LEO WEIL
[Mr. Weil, one of the best known attorneys of western Pennsylvania, is known outside of his profession as the militant President of the Pittsburgh Voters’ League, the organization which exposed the graft scandals of three years ago, sent councilmen and bankers to jail and brought new and invigorating spirit into Pittsburgh municipal life. Last Year the Voters’ League successfully brought charges against the head of the Department of Public Safety, and provoked a situation which led to the creation of the Pittsburgh Morals Commission, a semi-official body without governmental authority, and the cleaning-up of the big numbered district.
It is on the basis of this experience that Mr. Weil reaches the conclusions here set forth. He was a witness before the Wagner commission which has recommended legislation now pending in New York (with every prospect of passage) that will create a separate public welfare department, largely divorce it from the city administration and entrust its commissioners, appointed by the mayor, with powers with respect to vice somewhat similar to those held by the Board of Health with respect to sanitary conditions.—Ed.]
The police, a body of men selected primarily to preserve order, protect life, prevent crime, apprehend the criminal, and perform other administrative duties—men perhaps wholly unfitted as a body for anything else—have been expected to solve, by legislation, problems which have confounded the wisest from the time whereof the memory of man runneth not to the contrary.
That the police have failed could not be otherwise.
That they have aggravated the evil was to be expected.
That ultimately legislation must be placed in competent, qualified hands, must be apparent.
That it will require the greatest minds, the best thought, the highest statesmanship, and almost a divine perception, to apprehend and deal with those complex, involved, intricate questions having to do with the passions of men and the strongest laws of nature, urging defiance of human laws, seems to be axiomatic.
Nevertheless, on the subject of vice as generally understood in our cities, the police are expected not only to administer the laws, but to make them; not only to enforce enactments, but to frame them. And herein lies, in my judgment, the root of the evil in present day conditions which has brought our police into disrepute.