CHAPTER IX.

MODERN POLICE (_continued_): NEW YORK.

Greater New York--Despotic Position of the Mayor--Constitution of the Police force--Dr. Parkhurst's Indictment--The Lexow Commission and its Report--Police Abuses: Blackmail, Brutality, Collusion with Criminals, Electoral Corruption, the Sale of Appointments and Promotions--Excellence of the Detective Bureau--The Black Museum of New York--The Identification Department--Effective Control of Crime.

New York, by its latest charter of government, takes in the whole of the outlying suburban districts, and has become the second city in the world. It is known now as Greater New York, and its present municipal constitution is curiously at variance with the democratic traditions of a nominally free people. Supreme power, the absolute autocratic authority, is vested in a single individual, elected, it is true, by the popular voice, but, while he holds office, as despotic as any Czar. The only check on the Mayor of Greater New York is that of public opinion, expressed through a vigilant, often outrageously plain-speaking, Press, but a Press at times influenced, even to the point of silence, by party spirit. Holding his mandate on these terms, the head of the municipal executive in New York can, as a matter of fact, do as he pleases. The whole business of municipal administration is absolutely in his hands. He is assisted by eighteen boards, each controlling a separate department, but all of them except one, that of finance, composed of members whom he personally appoints. The first Mayor elected on these lines was Mr. Van Wyck, who, when he took up his office, was said to be as much master of New York as Napoleon III. was of Paris and France when he became President by virtue of the plebiscite.

All this would be beyond the scope of my subject were it not that the government of New York, past and present, is intimately bound up with its police. The Mayor, as the chief of executive power, is the head of the force by which it ought to be protected, and peace and good order maintained. Not long since, that police was attacked by many reputable citizens and declared to be a disgrace to modern civilisation. The situation had grown up under the shadow of Tammany Hall, that strange product of modern democracy, an organisation, originally political, which grew with steadily increasing, irresponsible power till it overshadowed and overawed the city of New York, ruling it with barefaced chicanery and imposing an outrageous despotism. In 1894 the power of Tammany was temporarily overborne by an outburst of popular indignation. But it was scotched, not killed. The almost irresponsible power wielded by the Chief Magistrate under the latest charter is working again for