CHAPTER I.

THE POLICE BANDITS OF NEW YORK.

The Lexow Committee experienced great difficulty in procuring evidence owing to the Reign of Terror which was established in New York by the police. The story reads more like a description of an Indian province terrorized by a band of Thugs than a statement of how New York was governed. When unwilling witnesses--and the vast majority of witnesses were most unwilling--were placed on the stand, they were thus addressed by the Chairman:--

Any testimony you give now, under oath, before this Committee with reference to bribery or corruption, cannot be used against you in any form, shape, or way. The fact of your confession here before this Committee will be a complete bar against any prosecution against you for that offence. In other words, if you sit here and tell the truth, and confess that you have committed any crime of that description, you will be absolutely relieved from any punishment for the commission of that crime. On the other hand, if you swear to anything that is false, then, not only could you be punished for the crime that you committed, if you did commit the crime of bribery, but for the crime of false swearing, or perjury, besides; you understand that?--Vol. iv., p. 3,615.

Notwithstanding this, the amount of perjury committed, especially by policemen, was appalling. One of them, of the name of Interman, admitted frankly that it was the common understanding among the members of the force that it was their duty to swear falsely to conceal the facts about bribery and corruption. If they spoke the truth they would be bounced or persecuted, whereas if they came forward and perjured themselves they would stand high with their superiors. The wrath of a captain who can make it hot for you next day evidently weighed much more with the police than the wrath of an offended God, whose mills grind so slowly that retribution may not begin till the day of judgment.

The answers to questions put to brothel-keepers and others as to their belief in the binding character of an oath and the reality of a future state were hardly edifying. One woman, Julia Mahoney, broke the record for the unhesitating candour with which she answered counsel’s questions.

“Do you not know,” said Mr. Goff, “that you would meet your punishment in the world hereafter?”

“I hope not,” Julia replied simply.

“And you know that you would be liable to go to the State’s prison?” persisted Mr. Goff. But Mrs. Mahoney was proof against that threat.

“If I was in prison I would be out in twenty-four hours,” she remarked. “She has got a pull,” sagely observed Senator Bradley.

It must be admitted that it was a task of uncommon difficulty to extract the truth from witnesses such as these, who fear not God neither regard man. Why should they? They have got a pull, and the pull ends all things.

Two competent American observers have recently told us what a policeman is in an American city. Both confirm to the letter what was stated by a leading citizen of Chicago five years ago. “Never mind what is said about this or that system of city government. In Chicago and all the West the police govern the city, and that is all there is to it.” In New York it would appear to have been much the same. Mr. Theodore Roosevelt, who was head of the New York police in the first two years of the Reform Administration, writing in the _Century Magazine_ for October, says:--

The police occupy positions of great importance. They not merely preserve order, the first essential of both liberty and civilisation, but to a large portion of our population they stand as the embodiment as well as the representative of the law of the land. To the average dweller in a tenement-house district, especially if born abroad, the policeman is in his own person all that there is of government: he is judge, executive and legislature, constitution and town meeting.

The other witness is Mr. Godkin, the editor of the _Evening Post_, who, writing in the _North American Review_ seven years back, says of the newly landed immigrant:--

No sooner has he established himself in a tenement-house or a boarding-house than he finds himself face to face with three functionaries who represent to him the government of his new country--the police justice of the district, the police captain of his precinct, and the political “district leader.” These are, to him, the Federal, State and municipal governments rolled into one.... These three men are to him America. Everything else in the national institutions in which Americans pride themselves he only sees through a glass darkly, if he sees it at all.

These dwellers in tenement-houses in New York, to whom the police--of whom there were then 4,000--are judge, executive, and legislature, constitution and town meeting, comprise two-thirds of the population of the city. To the foreign denizen of these districts--say one-half of the whole--the policeman and his masters of the political machine are all of America that he can see or understand.

Now let us see what kind of an America the New York police presented to the eyes of the majority of the population of the city. The Lexow Committee in its final Report, after commenting on the difficulty of obtaining evidence owing to the terrorism practised by the police, said of a typical case:--

This situation was characteristic. A consuming desire to put an end to an outrageous servitude on the one hand, and a dread lest failure might result in a still more galling thraldom on the other! It seemed, in fact, as though every interest, every occupation, almost every citizen, was dominated by an all-controlling and overshadowing dread of the police department.

Those in the humbler walks of life were subjected to appalling outrages which to some extent continued, even to the end of the investigation. They were abused, clubbed and imprisoned, and even convicted of crimes on false testimony by policemen and their accomplices. Men of business were harassed and annoyed in their affairs, so that they too were compelled to bend their necks to the police yoke, in order that they might share that so-called protection which seemed indispensable to the profitable conduct of their affairs. People of all degrees seemed to feel that to antagonize the police was to call down upon themselves the swift judgment and persecution of an invulnerable force, strong in itself, banded together by self-interest and the community of unlawful gain, and so thoroughly entrenched in the municipal government as to defy ordinary assault. Strong men hesitated when required to give evidence of their oppression, and whispered stories; tricks, subterfuges and schemes of all kinds were resorted to to withhold from this committee and its counsel the fact that they had knowledge of acts of corruption or oppression by the police. The uniform belief was that if they spoke against the police, or if the police discovered that they had been instrumental in aiding your Committee, or had given information, their business would be ruined, they would be hounded from the city, and their lives even jeopardised.--Vol. i., pp. 25, 26.

For wrongs inflicted by the police there was no redress. Mr. Goff in the concluding stages of the investigation referred to this phase of the question in the following significant terms:--

A great many innocent people who have been clubbed by the police in our city have thought that the city was responsible for the actions of its employés; but the courts have held time and time again that the city is not responsible; and then from the further fact that nearly every policeman in the city has his property in his wife’s name, it has become a notorious thing that it is useless to bring an action for assault against a policeman.... Mr. Jerome reminds me now of the celebrated case of Mr. Fleming; I think it was a Decoration Day parade. Captain Williams clubbed him in Madison Square, and he got a judgment of $2,500; but the judgment was never collected. We have never been able to get it on the record that a judgment against a police official has been paid.--Vol. v., p. 4,661.

It is not surprising after this to read the answer of a witness, a journalist of standing, who had been nearly murdered by a police captain in the cells of the police-station. He was asked if he had taken proceedings against his assailant. He replied:--

“I never did, sir. It is no use going to law with the Devil, and Court, and Hell!”

To quote the more formal but not less emphatic finding of the Lexow Committee:--

It appears, therefore, that the police formed a separate and highly privileged class, armed with the authority and the machinery for oppression and punishment, but practically free themselves from the operation of the criminal law.--Vol. i., p. 30.