During my stay in this precinct I used to take one hundred and fifty dollars a month in a closed envelope and give it to Inspector McAvoy at headquarters. One curious circumstance I remember about him. The Inspector is a very religious man, and he had conscientious scruples. He asked me one time if some of the money I gave him came from disorderly houses; if it did he didn’t want it, because he didn’t want any money of that kind; I told him no, it hadn’t; he drew the line there (p. 5,370).
Of course as he had been captain in the precinct himself he knew that it did come from disorderly houses, but he wished to be told it did not. I reported to headquarters that there were no disorderly houses in the precinct.
In December, 1893, I was made Captain of the Tenderloin, and have been there ever since. But the glory had departed owing to the raids made after Dr. Parkhurst’s action. I did not get more than 200 dols. a month there. Georgiana Hastings’s house of ill-fame I was warned not to touch, as if I did I should burn my fingers. I was informed that certain public officials were in the habit of visiting Georgiana Hastings’s house—some officials that graced the Bench, and some officials that held commissions in the City of New York. One night, when a Bench warrant was sent there for execution, there were two officials, one a judge of a Court in this city—not of a Civil Court—in the house, and so that warrant was not executed (p. 5,374). She paid no protection money. She was protected inviolate by the law on account of the influential character of her customers.
Last year I made a political contribution of 100 dols. both to Mr. Martin and to Mr. Sheehan, who were both Police Commissioners and Tammany leaders in their respective districts. I had nothing much to do with handling money in payment for promotion. I acted as go-between in the case of Martens. I took 1,600 dols. of his to Captain Williams, and he got him made sergeant. Martens afterwards told me it would cost him 14,000 dols. to be made captain. On the whole, I have been four years a police captain. In that time I have been in command in six precincts, in every one of which I found the custom of collections regularly established from of old.
It would seem that the tariff was fixed: the commission to the collectors, and the proportion for the Inspector. The figures were as follows:—
| Precinct. | Time of Stay. | Sources of Revenue per Month. | Collectors’ Com. 20 per cent. | Inspectors’ Share. | Total Net Receipts. | ||||||
| 37 | 13 | months. | Blackmail on ships, $190 | 495 | — | 1,975 | |||||
| 25 | 3 | " | 10 policy shops at $20 | 168 | 200 | 472 | |||||
| Liquor dealers, $80 | |||||||||||
| 27 | 9 | " | 10 policy shops at $20 | 1,450 | 1,800 | 3,950 | |||||
| 3 pool-rooms at $200 | |||||||||||
| 5 | 2 | " | 2 pool-rooms at $200 | 160 | 150 | 590 | |||||
| 9 | 7 | " | Policy shops, $20 | 700 | 1,050 | 1,750 | |||||
| Houses of ill-fame, $10, | |||||||||||
| $25, and $50 = $500 | |||||||||||
| 19 | 12 | " | Houses of ill-fame, $200 | 480 | — | 1,920 | |||||
| 46 | 3,453 | 3,200 | 10,657 | ||||||||
The ransom extorted from the vicious and criminal classes of a single precinct by the police would seem to be an irreducible minimum of a thousand pounds per annum.
The Lexow Committee reported:—
The confessions summarised show the existence throughout the city of a system so well regulated and understood that upon the assignment of a new captain no conversation was necessary to instruct the precinct detectives or wardmen as to their line of conduct. Without a word they collected the illicit revenue, simplifying their duties as much as they could, either by granting monopolies of a special kind of crime to individuals, or imposing upon certain individuals who had knowledge of a particular class of crime the obligation of collecting for them, thus collecting monthly from all licensed vice and crime, and paying over their collections to the captain, deducting for their services twenty per cent. from the total. Or, rather, at first, paying the whole to the captain, and receiving twenty per cent. back from him, and thereafter making the deductions themselves. The captain, on his side, visited the inspector and paid over to him a substantial proportion of the amount collected.—Vol. i., pp. 45, 46.