AMERICAN POLICE.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXI, Issue 12, 30 August 1911, Page 2

AMERICAN POLICE.

There lias been a great to-do about the New York police, and Dr. Lyman Abbott’s pvoekly, pap.qr, . “The, Out-, look,” compares the opposition to its reorganisation to that which confronted Sir Robert Peel when ho instituted the “now despotism” that is still, facetiously associated with his name. There is a good deal of disagreement about the facts, and opinions range from the “Outlook’s,” that in some American cities, and especially in New York and Chicago, there is a widespread lawlessness that expresses itself in anything from stoning streetlamps to murder, to that of the Mayor of Now York, Mr Guvnor, who says that the “crime-wave” recurs in newspapers very much as the marble season with boys, and that in no city in the world is crime better “kept down and prevented” than in New York. He does admit that before his advent to office appointments and promotions in the police and lire departments were obtained regularly by bribery, but this lias boon stopped by the adoption of the ‘simple and, we should suppose unsatisfactory principle of appointment in order of number or seniority. Mr Guvnor in his vigorous defence points to the statistics of arrests ami convictions, which do not conlirni the charges of exceptional lawlessness, but bis opponents affirm that the comparatively small number of those is a measure of incompetence and that the imtubulated complaints should have been the index to the condition of the city. According to the arraignors of-the police system, the fundamental evil is the combination of “a removable head and ii removable men.” Mr Gaynor declares that the genius of free government depends on frequent changes of public officials, and there have been four Police Commissioners within two years; hut no policeman can ho dismissed against his will without' a trial before the civil courts. A superceded Commissioner may not be an unbiassed witness, but one of these has rather vaguely described lawbreaking as the easiest and most lucrative business in Now York, though the present Commissioner is, perhaps, naturally, in general agreement with the Mayor who lately appointed him.