THE NEW YORK POLICE.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLIX, Issue 15175, 14 December 1912, Page 5 (Supplement)

THE NEW YORK POLICE.

CHIEF COMMISSIONER'S DIFFICULTIES.

When Mr. Roosevelt, in 1895 resigned his post as Commissioner of the Federal Civil Service to become Chief of the New X or Police, he gave a characteristic explanation what seemed like a step "I thought," he said, the storm centre was in New York, and so I' came here." The revelations that have followed the Rosenthal murder . show that the task of controlling the police in America's greatest city still offers unrivalled opportunities to any public man who is eager for a strenuous and exciting career. , The egregious Devery, according to a Tammany mayor ''the best chief of police New York ever had," admitted that in one year the police gTal't was something over £600,000. A little later the syndicate that divided the graft under Devury took in £80.000 a month from gambling and" pool rooms alone. The newspaper reports of police trials read like comic opera. One day a patrolman was brought before Devery and charged with recklean shooting in the streets. The chief glared at him: "Did you hit your man? No! Fined 30 days' pay for not hittio' him. Next time you hit 'imi" One threatened exposure of police complicity with a gambling house was eavediby the opportune and mysterious murder of a. witness while ho was being detained in a police station.

The present chief commissioner, Mr. Rhinelander Waldo, had proved his qual-" ity by creating a . splendid body of " .water board police," who • had kept crime down to a minimum among the thousands of : workmen of all nationalities who were building the great aqueduct in the Catskills. But as . head of the . New York police he ■ lias been practically helpless. . . . .

New York ought , certainly to be well looked after if the quality of . her guardians 'corresponded to their number. At the head of her police force is a chief commissioner, with «i salary of £1500. a year. Below him are four deputy commissioners at £1200 each. Then follow. 19 inspectors at £700, .97 captains at £550, 627 lieutenants at £450, 536 sergeants at £350, and 8564 patrolmen, whoso pay ranges from £160 to £280 a year, according to length of service. With all this protective equipment life in New York ought to be tolerable safe, yet during last July there 'was an average of one homicide a day, and in the majority of eases th&re was not even an arrest.

The New York police force is "solid" with one of the most powerful and most adroit political machines in the world. The authority of Tammany as regards.appointments, promotions, and everything tSjrf has to do with police discipline is kept up by the fact that nothing can be done without the State Legislature at Albany body that is largely ignorant or careless of the special conditions of a great city and that is influenced by considerations of petty politics. There exist in' the- New York police three so-called " benevolent" organisations, representing the lientenants, the sergeants, and the patrolmen respectively. These three associations are so strong at Albany that they can procure or prevent any police legislation they like. When a former police commissioner, General Bingham, was trying to get a law passed that would empower him to degrade inspectors and captains for just cause, he found that one of these associations had raised and deposited with a trust company a fund of £12,000, to be spent in "lobbying" to defeat the bill. Discipline is further hampered by a pension 'law, according to which' every policeman contributes to a pension fund. This is held to give him a vested interest in his appointment, so that if he is dismissed the city is -at once involved in a pension suit,, with the practical certainty " that the courts will order his reinstatement. Further, the local magistrate, which is responsible for the administration of criminal justice in New York, is appointed by the political machine. . Writing in 1894 the late Mr. E.' L. Godkin described the magistrates recently appointed by the Tammany regime as mostly " old ' toughs," liquor dealers, gamblers, or simple adventurers who nave lived from the age, of twenty by holding small offices, such as doorkeepers or clerks of the minor city courts." Things are perhaps better to-day, but the magistracy is still largely recruited from politicians who have made themselves useful to Tammany. Lastly, as though he were not otherwise sufficiently handicapped, the commissioner of police has no security of tenurej He can be removed at any moment, without cause assigned, either by the Mayor or by the State Governor He cannot get rid of an inefficient or corrupt patrolman without an elaborate trial in the courts. But, as to himself, lie may be in office to-day and out to-morrow. Under such conditions an occasional electoral upheaval may loosen, for a time Tammany's hold on the chief officers, and may cleanse the fouler spots on the surface of municipal government, but the "system" remains intact and impregnable. \