Sûreté

“ From the day you leave the Court you will be a suspected man. The police of all Europe will be on your trail. You have been highly successful in the past, and why? Because you have been above suspicion, an honourable and distinguished gentleman, belonging to the best clubs, counting as your acquaintances the flower of our society. Now you will be a suspect, a man with a past, a centre of strange stories. ”

“ As suspicion was aroused, no body of men could traverse the country in any direction without being subject to the strictest scrutiny by the police, and by informers who were stationed with them upon all the great thoroughfares and in the principal towns. ”

“ If a member of the secret society commit a crime he is to be protected or hidden away; if he be taken by the police, the society is [Pg 142] bound to secure him the ablest legal assistance, furnish as many false witnesses as may be required, and if he be convicted, pay his fine, or do all in its power to alleviate the discomforts of a prison. ”

“ A certain learned and eminent man of science has made a statement, which the police have not merely accepted but have, in practice, extended beyond its original meaning. That statement is as follows: 'A complete, or nearly complete, accordance between two prints of a single finger ... affords evidence requiring no corroboration, that the persons from whom they were made are the same.'
"That statement, gentlemen, is in the highest degree misleading, and ought not to have been made without due warning and qualification. ”

“ It is essential that the greatest possible secrecy be maintained, both in forming the organization and in conducting it, and that all arrangements must be kept as confidential as is practicable, and, further, that great care must be taken by your entire organization at all times that nothing is done by it or by any member of it to unnecessarily alarm aliens in this country or cause them any apprehension as to the fair manner in which they will be treated, and that no arrests should be caused excepting after consultation with the local Government Agent or his assistants. ”

“ Well, then, if you are a man as well as a police officer, it will be enough for you that justice is done. It is not detectives and magistrates that I want, it is doctors and nurses. Sometimes in a shop or in Society I see something sparkle in a particular way. ”

“ Mr. Hubert. I think you have already stated that in your discussions with the head of the chief of police, the head of the police department on Friday afternoon between 4 and 7, that there had not been discussed or mentioned any fear concerning his safety, is that right?
Mr. Crull. That’s correct. The concern expressed was that with the whole world looking on, the thing be kept in the open as much as it could be, with a reasonable degree of security. ”

“ I was in a position of great difficulty and responsibility and had to decide on a course of action. What ought I to do? Should I maintain the professional secrecy to which I was tacitly committed, or ought I to convey a hint to the police? ”

“ Suppose yourself a magistrate. A crime is committed; you are charged with the duty of investigating it, and you visit the prisoner to question him. Very well. This prisoner has, hitherto, succeeded in concealing his identity—this was the case in the present instance, was it not? Very well. Now, what would you do if, at the very first glance, you recognized under the prisoner’s disguise your best friend, or your worst enemy? ”

“ In a state organization such as we have described, the police official can be uniformed. They are quite as much the venerable witnesses of innocence as the accusers of crime. Why should honesty hate the eye of watchfulness? ”

“ One general interest is of course that of effective crime prevention and detection; it is this interest which underlies the recognition that a police officer may in appropriate circumstances and in an appropriate manner approach a person for purposes of investigating possibly criminal behavior even though there is no probable cause to make an arrest. ”

“ Tattooing, anthropometry, physiognomy, physical and mental conditions, records of sensibility, reflex activity, vaso- motor reactions, the range of sight, the data of criminal statistics, facilitate and complete the amassing of evidence, personal identification, and hints as to the capacity to commit any particular crime; and they will frequently suffice to give police agents and examining magistrates a scientific guidance in their inquiries, which now depend entirely on their individual acuteness and mental sagacity. ”

“ But if you should—and if you should have the misfortune to croak a citizen or a policeman, remember the safest hiding-place is as near the unfortunate victim of your temper as possible. The police will search everywhere, except in the immediate vicinity of the body. ”

“ Every credible threat on the life of a government official leads to an investigation and a series of security measures, such as the summoning of Secret Service Officers or Deputy United States Marshals for protective details. ”

“ It is well occasionally to recollect how far the safety and order of the city depend upon a brave, vigilant, and trustworthy police, that a due recognition of the fact may serve both as acknowledgment for the past and increased security for the future. ”

“ Divested of all complications, our task is to defend ourselves against the criminal population,—the professional criminals; to guard society against their outrages and depredations in the most prompt, effectual, and enduring fashion we can devise. ”

“ The police, a body of men selected primarily to preserve order, protect life, prevent crime, apprehend the criminal, and perform other administrative duties—men perhaps wholly unfitted as a body for anything else—have been expected to solve, by legislation, problems which have confounded the wisest from the time whereof the memory of man runneth not to the contrary. ”

“ Are our steps dogged then, and all our proceedings watched by non-commissioned detectives, who enjoy the immense advantage of being born in every house, and furnished with a passport into every other? Is a badge concealed in every reticule, to be displayed when the occasion comes to arrest us, which may be at the moments of our critical feelings, when confidence, and not exposure, is vital to us? ”

“ But is it not rather improbable that those who have so far transgressed as to apprehend the vigilance of the police, should venture into the very places where they must be aware of immediate detection? ”

“ But to the officers of the Society for the Suppression of Vice, and other kindred useful societies, newspaper men, the police, and others whose daily vocations happen to keep them out late o' nights, the truths here unfolded are of too frequent occurrence and are too familiar sights to need any other corroborative evidence than is supplied by their own experience and the exercise of their own observation. ”

“ The following pages narrate a story of detective experience, which, in many respects, is alike peculiar and interesting, and one which evinces in a marked degree the correctness of one of the cardinal principles of my detective system, viz.: "That crime can and must be detected by the pure and honest heart obtaining a controlling power over that of the criminal." ”

“ I may tell you frankly, sir, that I have never been a believer in your powers, and that I have always been of the opinion that the matter was far safer in the hands of the regular police force. Your conduct confirms all my conclusions. ”

“ In a highly disciplined body, like the police, excellent rules for hunting criminals, hearing witnesses, and drawing up processes are transmitted traditionally, and fortify the mind of the individual in its reliance on a higher reason. ”

“ That information comes from men so situated that if it could be traced to them they would be exposed to much annoyance, and in some cases the danger of total ruin. Among these are men employed in the police force, who have been brought in unwilling contact with the system we have endeavored to illustrate. These men would be quite ready to give information if a genuine enquiry were instituted. ”

“ The sudden sense of exposure after the re-established sense of safety came—not to the coarse organisation of a criminal but—to the susceptible nerve of a man whose intensest being lay in such mastery and predominance as the conditions of his life had shaped for him. ”

“ Too late the detective recognized that his reputation was not enough to protect his house and his private safe from violence, and that he had no right to keep such records there. They should all be in a safe-deposit vault. ”

“ It is possible, of course, that a criminal agent may plan his crime with skill, execute it without accident, and maintain the secret with equanimity, and that all interrogation following upon his act, will be wholly futile ”

“ I endeavoured to convince them how much better it was to owe an existence to honest toil, than to be in incessant fear from the police, which sooner or later catches all malefactors in its nets. I added that one crime generally leads to another ”

“ We may accept the unpleasant fact without theorising further as to the genesis of crime. I propose in these pages to take criminals as I find them; to accept crime as an actual fact, and in its multiform manifestations; to deal with its commission, the motives that have caused it, the methods by which it has been perpetrated, the steps taken—sometimes extraordinarily ingenious and astute, sometimes foolishly forgetful and ineffective—to conceal the deed and throw the pursuers{4} off the scent; on the other hand, I shall set forth in some detail the agencies employed for detection and exposure. ”

“ In the old days, the criminal, visible to our physical eyes, would be seen, fleeing from justice, and after him, at a decent interval, the officers of the law, tailing away in a long perspective, properly exhausted and furious, their horses foaming and reeking with sweat in most appropriate style. ”

“ The reasonable-suspicion standard is a derivation of the probable-cause command, applicable only to those brief detentions which fall short of being full-scale searches and seizures and which are necessitated by law enforcement exigences such as the need to stop ongoing crimes, to prevent imminent crimes, and to protect law enforcement officers in highly charged situations. ”

“ For this reason we criminalists assert much less than other investigators that we seek the truth; if we presume to such an assertion, we should not have the institutions of equity, revision, and, in criminal procedure, retrial. Our knowledge, when named modestly, is only the innermost conviction that some matter is so and so according to human capacity, and “such and such a condition of things.” ”

“ Upon receiving reports, accusations or information about organized crime, public security organs shall promptly conduct calculations, analysis, and assessment, or organize verification, or transfer them to competent organs for handling in accordance with the law. ”

“ First: the determined and persistent criminal who lives by crime, desires to live by crime, and to whom no other life has any attraction.
Against these men, after being adjudged by a jury to be habitual criminals, we ought to be safeguarded even as we protect ourselves against known madmen. ”

“ Crime and vice are two terms used for the infraction of different kinds of laws—social and moral—and detectives may be conveniently classed in the same way. The detectives who deal with the transgression of social laws, including such crimes as counterfeiting coin and notes, railroad bonds, scrip, etc., forgers, embezzlers, swindlers, and the wide class of criminals generally, are exceedingly useful members of the community when they are inspired by a high sense of duty, and guided by principles of truth and integrity. ”

“ The security of property may alternate with security of the person as an object of governmental care; and the classification of crimes and civil injuries, or even of crimes and religious offenses or sins, may be, in the highest degree, irregular and unsystematic. The vices, the selfishness, the ignorance of individual rulers, will, from time to time, bring into relief some classes of laws to the disparagement or neglect of others. ”

“ I have as much disposition to care for the reformation of criminals as is healthful, if I know myself; but the great object of all the punishments of society, viz., its own security, ought never to be sacrificed to this, which is but a secondary consideration. Render character, person and property as secure as possible, in the first place, after which, try as many experiments in philanthropy as you please. ”

“ Does not every man feel that his own personal security and the security of his property depends on that fairness? The judicial department comes home, in its effects, to every man’s fireside; it passes on his property, his reputation, his life, his all. ”

“ I was much amazed at the construction and possibilities of the human mind when I observed the manner in which certain suspected criminals were examined in order to prove or disprove the crime of which they were charged. ”

“ They also urge, based on cases which are inapposite to that at bench, that the justification defense applies only in emergency situations requiring immediate action to avert danger, or where the agent believes that the principal's documents are the fruits or instrumentalities of crime or fraud. ”

“ Nearly all who have for any length of time exercised their functions have had occasion to arrest cases of primâ facie suspicion on the way to interment that had escaped the only existing security and initiative to investigation, the suspicion of neighbours and popular rumour. ”

“ How then any more can you fancy that a man to whose sight and knowledge the only part of government practically exposed is the strong process of police, shall form a proper conception of the functions, reasons, operations, and relations of Government ”