All in a Policeman's Life

HEN William E. Jones, printer, joined the police force, in December, 1896, and began to hit the sidewalks of New York with shoes having soles half an inch thick, he promised to become an excellent patrolman. He passed both the physical and mental examinations with credit. His superiors were pleased with him. On the night of April 7, 1897, Jones walked into the Old Slip station, his uniform covered with congealed fog, his face expressing mingled misery and determination.

“Sergeant,” he said, as he placed shield, fire key, and police manual on the desk, “I’m through. I resign right here. This job is too lonely for me. I’m dead sick of it.”

That was the last heard of William Jones officially. He was willing to forfeit six days’ pay to escape from the department at once. His beat was in the down town office district, where, after nightfall, he saw not a human being for hours at a time. The solitude and quiet among the skyscrapers is more oppressive than in the woods. Then, too, Jones found the discipline of the force, particularly the hours, most uncomfortable.

Policemen are recruited from all classes of men. Patrolman Quackenbush, of the West Thirty Seventh Street station, was formerly professor of Latin in St. Francis Xavier’s College, and afterwards a practising physician.

Adam Cross had been admitted to the bar in Albany before he joined the force in October, in 1878. His legal training prejudiced his superiors against him, but before long he proved that it was of distinct advantage. When it came to getting evidence it was noticed that Cross’ proof always stood in court.

Cross’ first experiences were those of the ordinary green patrolman. When a man in the department wishes to be quite correct he refers to a member of the uniformed force as a po-liceman [sic]. Usually the name is shortened into “cop.” That word can be found in so sedate an authority as Webster’s Dictionary.

Cross was sent forth, just as new policemen are today, to do a tour with an experienced man. His guide began by pointing out criminals whom he knew.

“That’s Pat Casey,” remarked the instructor. “He'll do anything. There’s Tom Tobin, his pal. I wonder what they are up to now.”

Cross made a mental note of the two men. A couple of years later he sent both to State’s prison for three years. He recognized their work, just as an art critic recognizes a painter’s style.

Cross was told how to distinguish saloon thieves from second story men, and learned a vast deal about crooks generally, all more or less exact. If the patrolman had been as good as he pretended, he would not have been wearing a uniform.

A sturdy, handsome man, with a very strong face, very black hair, and a little black mustache came along. He was very well dressed.

“Have you connected with Mike Cahill lately?” asked the handsome man.

“No,” said the policeman. “Is he wanted?”

“The inspector wants to see him at headquarters.”

“He’s a Central Office man,” explained the patrolman.

Now a policeman, whether he be chief or the humblest patrolman, never meets a man or keeps an appointment. He always “connects” with him. And a Central Office man never tells a prisoner he is under arrest. He used to say, “The inspector wants to see you.” Now he says “the captain,” meaning Captain McCluskey, head of the detective bureau, or “the chief,” who is Chief Devery.

Cross, like all new patrolmen, was told that it was his business to find out all about his post. He must know the business and habits of the residents and all manner of things. If he has a tenement district the policeman must have along memory. It is a part of his business to know whether the men are regular or irregular, “all right” or “suspicious.”

It sometimes happens that the unhappy lot of a policeman is impressed upon a beginner at the very start. For instance, William J. Tynan, a probationary policeman attached to the Fifth Street station, made his first arrest in May last, a hunchback peddler “wanted” for larceny. Tynan was slashed so badly with a knife that he had to be carried to a hospital.

Nowadays a new policeman is under the instruction of an experienced man for weeks; and this is a wise arrangement, for the responsibilities are great. An inexperienced man may make the most serious blunders. And they are absurdly simple at times. He may arrest the wrong person or permit a guilty one to escape. A new policeman went to the East Thirty Fifth Street station to report for duty. He was in plain clothes.

“Where’s your uniform?” demanded Captain Delaney.

“Well—er—I was a little late, and I forgot it,” stammered the new man.

“Look a here!” shouted the captain fiercely. “A little’s damned late. Do you understand? Hustle!”

“Yes, sir,” said the green “cop,” and he did hustle.

“Oh, Lord!” groaned Captain Delaney, “this civil service will ruin the department.”

Captain Delaney became a policeman more than twenty years ago. After one tour of duty with an educator he was assigned to the worst post in the precinct. The regular man was in a hospital as a result of an attack “the gang” had made upon him. A “new cop” is meat and drink to a New York “gang,” made up of the young toughs of a certain neighborhood. There is no distinction greater than to “do a policeman.” Delaney was told what to expect. He fought the gang by day and by night until the leaders were either in the hospital or in jail. And Delaney stayed on the post.

It is true that the gangs are not as desperate as they used to be, but they are still dangerous in certain parts of the city. Only last spring one of Delaney’s men—Cornelius F. Dougherty is his name—was set upon by a crowd of toughs at Thirty Third Street and First Avenue. The original disturber was rescued by his friends, but Dougherty took one of them to the station house. He made three trips with a prisoner before he locked up the man he wanted most. Dougherty had been terribly pounded with his own club. He was ready to drop from exhaustion and pain, but nevertheless he finished his tour for the moral effect of it.

Captain Delaney won his first promotion by “meritorious conduct.” He saw a man shoot and kill a woman, and then jump into a carriage. Delaney gave chase and grabbed the man, who turned from lashing his horse to shoot the policeman, the bullet striking him in the eye. Delaney drew his own revolver, shot the murderer dead, and then fell unconscious by his side. For some time it was thought that the policeman’s wound would prove fatal.

To return to Cross, who is an excellent illustration of what an intelligent policeman can accomplish, he quickly learned the routine of a policeman’s life. It is the same now as it was then—an absurd routine, yet a better one cannot find favor in the department. It reads thus:

Then the process begins all over again. Those citizens who see a fat and peaceful policeman standing on street corners in the daytime, and at night swinging his night stick as he moves from door to door to make sure that they are locked, do not realize how many interruptions there are in a “cop’s” life.

The men on the Broadway squad have regular hours. Their principal business is to regulate traffic and to see that people cross the streets without being run over. They and the members of the court squads are the aristocrats among patrolmen.

Cross was patrolling Sixth Avenue on the night of December 6, 1880, when Fred Diehl came into his range of vision at Eleventh Street. Diehl was a “suspicious character.” Cross questioned and then arrested him. The policeman had to go to court the next morning when he should have been sleeping. False keys and a bad character warranted the police justice in remanding Diehl. Another policeman had to take Cross’ post while the latter pursued investigations that resulted in the conviction of Diehl for robbing the house of John Sauer, at 137 West Eleventh Street, two weeks before the arrest.

Not long after this incident Cross was coming down Sixth Avenue to the station house to go on patrol at six He was in plain clothes. He saw two men throw bricks through the plate glass window of Alexander Newburger’s jewelry store, at No. 531. One of the robbers grabbed a tray of diamonds and Cross grabbed him. Bernard McGovern showed fight, but Cross subdued him, and McGovern was sent to prison for seven years. His pal was afterwards arrested through Cross’ description.

When Cross had nothing else to do he was learning his manual, studying the photographs in the rogues’ gallery, and learning about criminals from his brother policemen. His knowledge of evidence stood him in good stead, and after a time he was made a ward detective, as they used to be called. Now they are designated as “plain clothes men.”

To those who know about the inner life of New York, the plain clothes man is a familiar figure. When he has no especial business on hand he is usually lounging about the street corners and in crowded places.

These plain clothes men are at once the most valuable and most dangerous adjunct of the force. Those persons who became known as the “collectors” during the Lexow investigation were plain clothes men. Whenever a police captain is transferred his plain clothes men go with him. He can trust them absolutely.

Nowadays the criminals who maim and kill are few. The swindlers, confidence men, men, and gold brick workers are far more common. The green goods game is as popular as ever, despite all the exposures. The number of pure impostors policemen meet with is extraordinary.

Policeman Quinn, who has saved more than a dozen lives, found a woman weeping on the stringpiece of Pier 4, East River, on the night of March 13, 1898. She could not speak English, so the policeman took her to the station house. It transpired that the girl was a Bohemian. South Street was searched for interpreters. A German was found who could speak Bohemian, but he could not speak English. Some one was found to translate German. In this roundabout way a remarkable yarn was told to the sergeant on the desk.

The girl said she had been kidnaped by officers of a French war ship from a gipsy band to which she belonged, carried to desert islands, captured by savages, saved by sailors from a ship, and finally landed in New York with ten dollars in gold, part of which she had spent. Detectives were sent forth to search for the ship. It was finally discovered that the girl was a servant employed in Harlem who yearned for a little excitement.

A policeman is the natural arbiter of family rows, and all manner of disputes are referred to him. The kindliness, good sense, and generosity of most of the members of the uniformed force are remarkable.

A man who has a profound knowledge of philosophy, equaled only by his contempt for practical affairs, boarded a train in Buffalo to find that he had spent his last cent in cash for some fine books.

He sat up all night in a coach, after going without his dinner. He landed in New York with a large satchel, ravenously hungry and absolutely exhausted. He had a draft for five hundred dollars, but no money, not even car fare, and he was too weak to walk. He explained his plight to a red mustached policeman on duty at the Grand Central Station, who promptly loaned him a dollar. When the borrower returned the money the next day, the policeman said:

“Oh, that’s all right. I have to lend money every day. Sometimes I get it back and sometimes I don’t, but I can’t see people suffer for the want of a little change.”

Sergeant Braun was behind the desk of the Madison Street station on May 19, 1897, when Morris Sonn, of 64 Monroe Street, appeared before him in an agitated frame of mind.

“She said she would marry me,” Sonn cried between his spasms of weeping. “Everybody knew we was keeping company through two months. I knew her in Russia since seven years even. And now she says if I don’t her fifty dollars give already once she will marry me not. If she does not marry me”

“But what’s that to do with me?” asked the sergeant.

“Don’t you see that if you will a policeman send and make her arrested to the station house come, you can make us married, and we”

With much vigor the sergeant assured Sonn that the case was officially and unofficially beyond his jurisdiction. Incidents like that occur in every police station in New York.

While a policeman is granted a certain amount of liberty, he is always on duty. It doesn’t matter whether he is on post or in plain clothes, with his “shield upon his left breast in order that the same may be displayed when required.” Policeman Raphael, of the Oak Street station, started forth to enjoy a day off and ended in a hospital. He was shot by a man he arrested, but he didn’t lose his prisoner. Raphael’s regular post was in James Street, and he learned modern Greek from the peddlers, as well as Italian from other occupants of tenements in that locality. McCluskey, who was shot in Chinatown by Chin On, learned to understand Chinese. A sergeant who has been long in the Eldridge Street station learns to speak Yiddish and German, and a man newly transferred to that station needs an interpreter.

The fear of being transferred is one of the dreads of a policeman’s life. It is always explained by “the good of the service.” It is the most effective weapon in the hands of the chief of police, who can move his subordinates about as he chooses. Politicians employ the transfer to punish policemen who have offended them. A member of the force, after being in Harlem for years, and owning a home there, may be sent to Staten Island or to Flushing or to Coney Island at a moment’s notice. The policeman who is transferred has no redress. He is compelled to obey or resign.

There is one man on the force who was transferred four times in three months, from the Bronx to Kill van Kull—“from the goats to the muskrats,” as they say in the department—and from Staten Island to the sands of Rockaway. This policeman had offended the son of a politician by refusing to drop a complaint.

There is not a good policeman, and the majority on the force are good policemen, who would not vote to take pulls out of the department. And because of the power of influence it is a marvel that the force is not worse than it is. Those in high places are always looking for good policemen, and men are promoted whenever they distinguish themselves. Of course the higher officers cannot see why a good policeman should not be a good Tammany man as well, or at least be sufficiently discreet to escape getting into disfavor with the organization. The civil service law has put a stop to promotions based on favoritism and political pull.

There is one thing about the members of the New York police force that cannot be too strongly emphasized, and that is the great physical courage of the men. It is one of the unwritten laws, and one of the most strictly observed, that there is no room on the force for the man who is afraid of anything on earth, except pull and influence. I have no recollection of ever having heard that any New York policeman was afraid to take any necessary risk, and usually they will take the most desperate chances to save life.

There is hardly one of them who is not looking for glory and promotion. When you see the bicycle policeman lounging negligently and picturesquely over his wheel, perhaps you forget that these men-never stop for anything if there is an accident. I have seen them speed after a runaway when it looked as if their life was not worth a candle. It is the same with the mounted policemen. If you ask them why they take such risks they will say:

“Well, I’m young and active, and I’m willing to take a chance of winning out promotion.”

As for the policemen stationed along the water front, they seem to be amphibious. They will leap after a drowning person without even stopping to remove their helmets.

There is another thing that characterizes the New York policeman—his love of children. There is no more cheerful sight in the town than to see a seven foot policeman escorting a two foot baby across Broadway.

Adam Cross won his promotion to roundsman by meritorious services, and was advanced to sergeant by hard work. He had fights and narrow escapes enough to vary any monotony. When he was a sergeant, Cross fought Frank Capers, a burly negro, in a cellar for twenty minutes, while serving a warrant. Both were carried to a hospital.

As a captain, Cross was assigned to the Eldridge Street station, the “red light district,” as it is called. In one year he made 147 raids, and his men arrested more than seven thousand persons. “There were no fake raids, either,” Cross told the members of the police board, which throws a curious light upon department methods in relation to some police business.

Cross had been on the force sixteen years, four as patrolman, two as roundsman, six as sergeant, and four as captain, when the Lexow committee came along and he listened to testimony that bade fair to send him to prison. He was dismissed from the force, but the courts reinstated him on the ground that the witnesses against him were not worthy of belief. Cross celebrated his return to the force by unearthing a big gang of swindlers which operated in the wholesale mercantile district. He is now an inspector.

Policemen are punished by fines, suspensions, and dismissal from the force.

Nine out of ten of the charges are for minor offenses—intoxication, absence from post, unbecoming conduct, and assault are the usual ones. Sometimes the law takes hold of them after the police board has finished with them. Woe to the policeman convicted of theft! No mercy is shown him.

The men on the force are selected from the physically perfect of every trade. Sergeant Carson was an artist. Roundsman Fores is an inventor of ink, and an expert with a camera. Baxter was a sailor, and he gets a royalty from an invention which he made and his wife patented. A former sergeant has returned to the undertaking business. Another policeman was a motorman in Brooklyn during the trolley strike. He joined the force because he preferred clubbing to being clubbed.

As a rule, a policeman attends pretty strictly to his duty, and few of them mix up with politics any more than they can help. A third rate policeman with a first rate pull may be feared, but he is not respected, and if ever he shows the white feather even his pull will not protect him.

The irregularity of their life is responsible for the straining after “snaps”—places in the court squads and other assignments to special duty where arrests are never made, and where the hours are short and regular, with freedom on all holidays.

But, at the worst, the New York policeman is reasonably well off. Even the patrolman gets a good salary, from twelve to fourteen hundred dollars a year, and a good many perquisites are likely to be thrown in.

There is another great unwritten rule that must be obeyed, and it is impressed constantly upon the man. It is:

“Never be a better man than your superior officer.”

That is why the policeman on post, his roundsman, the sergeant, the captain, the inspectors, and the chiefs don’t interfere with things that cause legislative investigations now and again.