This is an afterword to the 1912 book The Great Taxicab Robbery, a true crime report by James H Collins. It's worth a read for what it says about crime-solving a hundred years ago. Courtesy of Gutenberg.

It has been the writer's good fortune to look into the work of both the London and the New York policemen recently, within the same year.

A somewhat embarrassing point arose.

In London, the 'bobby' was anxious to know which police force the writer considered best. The 'bobby' gets his ideas of the New York 'cop' from such accounts as filter through the cable dispatches from our newspapers. He hears chiefly the worst, and pictures the 'cop' as a lawless individual, wielding pistol and club indiscriminately, with whom it is not safe to pass a civil word. So, when he puts his little question about the respective merits of the two organizations, 132he reserves the right to keep his opinion that the London force is best anyway.

In New York, it is much the same. The 'cop' has heard just enough about the 'bobby' to regard him with mild tolerance. He pictures him as a policeman servile to the last degree, thankfully accepting sixpenny tips from pedestrians, and occupied chiefly with unarmed thieves and harmless political offenders.

When one has good friends in both forces, the question 'Which do you think best?' is to be met with tactful evasions. And the more one thinks it over, the more it becomes clear that there is really little difference at bottom. Both police organizations are made up of good men, following the same trade along the same lines, and dealing with about the same general conditions.

The London 'bobby,' however, enjoys excellent leadership, is governed by a definite administrative policy, has the backing of the courts, and therefore 133comes in for a general public good will which is exceedingly useful to him in the performance of duty.

The New York 'cop' rather lacks public good will. Administrative policy has not been well defined in the past. The courts do not always accept his evidence, much less back him up, and he has been made the scapegoat for various shortcomings in leadership.

But to-day the New York policeman is working on an entirely new basis. Before long his public is certain to understand and like him as thoroughly as London does its 'bobby.'

The change began with Mayor Gaynor, who insisted that both policeman and citizen have plain legal rights – until the citizen has committed a crime the policeman may not arrest him. The policeman has plain rights – the law empowers him to use all necessary force in making arrests in grave cases. But force must not be used for minor offenses. Confusion existed on these points to such a degree that when the Mayor began insisting upon them, many people thought he was putting into effect some of his personal whims. But they are all in the statute books, and many of them were there before the Mayor was born, because they are constitutional.

The present Police Commissioner, Rhinelander Waldo, is not only administering the department along the strict legal line pointed out by the Mayor, but is effecting improvements of organization and method that must favorably alter the whole future of the service.

Commissioner Waldo is a soldier, with a record of service in the United States Army, and the Army's fine standards to guide him.

In some ways the administration of the New York Police Department is a soldier's job. If the ten thousand members were mobilized, they would make quite an impressive little standing army, with 135eight or ten full regiments of patrolmen, a brigade of cavalry, a small transport corps, a little navy, and so forth. As in an army, too, the men are enlisted, and may only be discharged for serious offenses. It is a force scattered over three hundred square miles of territory. The leader must be skillful in laying down regulations, and handling men in the mass rather than by personal contact. He must define duty plainly, hold everybody to it, eliminate departmental politics and abuses. Every man, wherever he is stationed, must feel that the general knows his business, that he lays down regulations for good reasons, and that day by day he is taking the organization somewhere.

For years, every Police Commissioner has asked for more men to keep pace with the growing city. When Waldo took charge he asked, too. While he was waiting, however, he overhauled the organization and got one thousand additional patrolmen by cutting off men detailed for 136clerical and other special duty. Every large working force tends to create superfluous routine work. The useless routine was eliminated by better accounting methods, and the men sent back to do the street duty for which they originally enlisted.

Then Waldo's system of 'fixed posts' was introduced. Complaints that policemen were hard to find at night had become common. So the platoon on duty from 11 p. m. to 7 a. m. was distributed by a plan under which the men work in pairs, one patrolling a given beat and the other standing on a street intersection. Each hour they change places, or oftener in severe weather. The fixed posts are about a thousand feet apart all over Manhattan and parts of Brooklyn. The system has been indiscriminately criticised, but produces its results. Fire losses were cut down the first six months, night crime has decreased, and many notable arrests are due to the fact that policemen stand all over town like checkers through the 137night. The exposure is no greater than that endured by traffic men. The men have better opportunities to advance themselves by making meritorious arrests, and the Commissioner knows that, as citizens see the police on duty, night after night, and crime decreases, there will be a growing good will for the department.

The Detective Bureau has not only been reorganized so that plain-clothes men are distributed over the whole city, but a new spirit has been introduced. Formerly, when the patrolman rose to detective rank, he felt that he had 'arrived.' No longer wearing the uniform or keeping scheduled hours, he was in danger of going to sleep. To-day, however, the detective has, not a job, but an opportunity. He must maintain his rank by results, or be reduced. To help him do this, he is taught methods in the school for detectives. But he knows that hundreds of ambitious men in brass buttons are working to attain that rank.

In an organization of ten thousand men, it would be strange if there were not some intriguing and politics. New York policemen are exceptionally shrewd, and occasionally they will try to 'put one over' on the Commissioner, going around his authority. But Commissioner Waldo has proved singularly resourceful. He meets such an emergency with the quickness, certainty and impartiality of a natural force like gravity, and the department has found it out.

He has laid out a clear path for advancement all through the department. The newest uniformed patrolman understands that, for meritorious work, he will have a chance of promotion. If he makes a commendable arrest, he is sent to the Detective Bureau, given instruction, and tried at detective work. If he makes good, he stays. If unfitted for plain-clothes duty, he has still had his chance. What is just as important, the Detective Bureau has had a chance to see him.

Under Commissioner Waldo and Deputy Commissioner Dougherty, the so-called 'Black Hand' crimes among Italians have been checked, and will be stopped. Many of these cases were traced to sensational reporting of ordinary quarrels and assaults, and others to business rivalries. In the serious cases, arrests have been made and convictions secured.

Another well-known form of law-breaking in New York is gambling. This is particularly difficult to check because of ingenuity in concealing evidence, developed by long experience on the part of the law-breakers, and also the strong political alliances of gambling-house keepers. But after several experiments in dealing with it, the Commissioner now feels confident that he has a method which will result in the suppression of gambling, and that, as he says, 'When you put a crimp into things of that sort they don't generally come back.'

In other directions red tape has been abolished and economies brought about; the way has been opened for individual merit in all ranks; steps have been taken to develop and teach better methods; the work of the department has been brought closer to the public. There is a new spirit in the New York Police Department to-day – a spirit certain to develop the public good will and appreciation that is so necessary to the best order of public service.

Dmitri Gheorgheni

28.12.20 Front Page

Back Issue Page