Police baton

“ The policeman, like any civilian, fights for his skin; he gets a drubbing and returns it with interest. But since his weapon does not give him so manifest an advantage as a sword would, the public consider the fracas a fair fight. And after all, the combatants must appear before a magistrate; in the police-court they are on equal terms, and witnesses are heard on either side. There is no prejudice in favour of the policeman. ”

“ Wrench, I don’t know why it is, but the police seem to me to be so often in fault.”
“In what way, my lord?”
“Perhaps I am wrong in making use of so strong an expression. I don’t know that they are positively in fault, but certainly, scoundrels of the very deepest dye seem to contrive to elude them. I cannot see why this is. I should have thought, with the extensive machinery we have in the shape of a well-organised police force, together with the detective department, that it would have been next to impossible for a man who was well known to be concealed for any length of time.” ”

“ Now, when a police officer undertakes to investigate a crime, he is possessed and saturated with the thoughts and experiences he has with bad people. He is drifting and turning in the way of finding a criminal, magnifying this, minimizing that, throwing himself on this side in order to catch somebody, standing before a community that demands the detection and punishment of the criminal, blamed if he does not get somebody into the lockup before morning. “What are the police doing?” says the newspaper, and the newspapers, you know, are not always right, mostly. ”

“ Having thus roughly sketched the perimeters of the constitutional debate over the limits on police investigative conduct in general and the background against which this case presents itself, we turn our attention to the quite narrow question posed by the facts before us: whether it is always unreasonable for a policeman to seize a person and subject him to a limited search for weapons unless there is probable cause for an arrest. ”

“ The perpetrators of the deed, nevertheless, had disappeared, leaving no trace, and the police in their frenzied eagerness turned the city upside down. Searches innumerable of all suspected houses were made, and the most arbitrary arrests took place on the slightest whisper of anything wrong. Reports at the time put the numbers taken into custody at quite a thousand.
Yet “illegal” or “irregular” people, as they were styled by the officers of the law, came and went, moving about with impunity under the very noses of the police, and, as a rule, escaping scot-free. ”

“ The rioters soon became appalled at their punishment. Like a dark blue wave, with bloody clubs forming a crimson crest, that unfaltering rank of men steadily advanced and ingulfed them. All within reach went down. Those of the police who were wounded still fought on, or, if disabled, the ranks closed up, and there was no cessation in the fatal hail of blows. The rioters in front would have given way, had not the thousands in their rear pressed them forward to their fate. ”

“ Now, in 1851, the offended master would set the detective police to work; there would be no doubt as to their success; the only question would be as to the time that would elapse before the hiding-place could be detected, and that could not be a question long. It is no longer a struggle between man and man, but between a vast organised machinery, and a weak, solitary individual; we have no hopes, no fears—only certainty. ”

“ While the police were disciplined men, obeying every order and doing nothing at random, they WERE men, and they would not have been human if anger and thoughts of vengeance had not nerved their arms as they struck down ruffians who would show no more mercy to the wounded or captured than would a man-eating tiger.
Since the mob would not give way, the police cut a bloody path through the throng, and forced their way like a wedge to the factory. ”

“ A dozen police agents were underfoot somewhere, being pitilessly stamped and trampled by the frantic mob. The platoon that had charged was wiped out as a platoon. Those who were hemmed in fought like demons. Men [236] throttled each other and swayed back and forth and yelled imprecations and fell in struggling masses and got upon their feet again and twisted and squirmed and panted, like so many monsters, half serpent and half beast, seeking to bury their fangs in some vital part or tear each other limb from limb. ”

“ You know, of course, how the various strata of Russian society behave towards the police? It is not even respected by those who avail themselves of its dark services. But we despise and hate it three, ten times more—not because many of us have been tortured in the detective departments, which are just chambers of horror, beaten almost to death, beaten with whips of ox-hide and of rubber in order to extort a confession or to make us betray a comrade. ”

“ But within a year or two the police had developed into abominable petty tyrants, who held the country folk at their mercy, a prey to their exactions and brutality. They became, in fact, a perfect scourge in their districts, and even governors and high officials denounced them as brigands. It became clear that a bad police was worse than no police at all. Thus, an institution intended to help and protect the people soon degenerated into a new and terrible instrument of vexation and oppression. ”

“ Infinite pains, unwearied patience, abounding wit, sharp-edged intuition, promptitude in seizing the vaguest shadow of a clue, unerring sagacity in clinging to it and following it up to the end—these qualities make constantly in favour of the police. The fugitive{9} is often equally alert, no less gifted, no less astute; his crime has often been cleverly planned so as to leave few, if any, traces easily or immediately apparent, but he is constantly overmatched, and the game will in consequence go against him. ”

“ The momentary excitement caused by this altercation was swallowed up by the advent of a squad of police, which wheeled into the avenue from 43d Street, and checked the pursuit of the bleeding remnants of the invalid corps. Those immediately around the young man pressed forward to see what took place, he following, but edging towards the sidewalk, with the eager purpose to see the first fight between the mob and the police. ”

“ Their reputation for courage is unchallenged, their record for giving every man of whatever race or colour a square deal is unique, their inflexible determination to see that law is enforced is well known and their refusal to count the odds against them when duty is to be done has been absolutely proven again and again. All these elements and others have created the Mounted Police tradition to such an extent that the one constable you saw is looked on as the embodiment of the Empire which plays no favourites but which at the same time will stand no nonsense from anyone. ”

“ Sergeant gives us another lively view of the digger-hunting process:—
“‘Traps! Traps! Joe! Joe!’ were the well-known signals which announced that the police were out on a license raid, now becoming almost of daily occurrence. The hasty abandonment of tubs and cradles by fossickers and outsiders, and the great rushes of shepherds to the deep hole on the flat as the police hove in view, readily told that there were not a few among them who believed in the doctrine that “Base is the slave who pays.” ”

“ I said, after we had been sitting in silence for some minutes. "So far as can be gathered from the report given here, the arrest is likely to prove important in more respects than one."
"Indeed," said the Countess, looking steadily at me as she spoke. "The police are certainly becoming more expeditious in the matter of arrests. The only difficulty they experience is the finding of any substantial crime against their victims when they have brought about their capture. Pray, who is this particular man?" ”

“ It is impossible to conceive of the sudden isolation in which a suspected criminal is placed. The gendarmes who apprehend him, the commissioner who questions him, those who take him to prison, the warders who lead him to his cell—which is actually called a cachot, a dungeon or hiding-place, those again who take him by the arms to put him into a prison-van—every being that comes near him from the moment of his arrest is either speechless, or takes note of all he says, to be repeated to the police or to the judge. ”

“ The magistrate listened with attention and then said—
'I have long been aware of the existence of the secret, subterranean Vaults of which you allude, and so have the officers of the police; yet the fact is known to very, very few of the citizens generally. Now you propose that an efficient and armed force of the police and watch, make a sudden descent into the den, with the view of capturing the villains who inhabit it. Ridiculous!—why, sir, the thing is impossible: they have a mysterious passage, unknown to any but themselves, by which they can escape and defy pursuit. ”

“ The people flocked in crowds about the streets, shouting and whistling, greatly excited, while the police kept dispersing them. To disperse a big crowd a dozen policemen are sufficient here. The police make a combined attack, and the crowd runs like mad. In one of these attacks the honour was vouchsafed to me—a policeman caught hold of me under my shoulder, and pushed me in front of him. ”

“ Next come a strong body of Kafir police, trudging along through the dust with odd shuffling gait, bended knees, bare legs, bodies leaning forward, and keeping step and time by means of a queer sort of barbaric hum and grunt. Policemen are no more necessary than my best bonnet: they are only there for the same reason—for the honor and glory of the thing. The crowd is kept in order by somebody here and there with a ribboned wand, for it is the most orderly and respectable crowd you ever saw. ”

“ Pursuers and native police collided with a shock, and there was a tangle of arms and legs as they rolled in the dirty street. The officers freed themselves first, and drawing their revolvers stood by while the others arose. ”

“ What redress can a penniless tramp secure against a stout inspector of police able and willing to spend a considerable sum of money in his own defence, and with the entire force ready and eager to get at the tramp and put him out of business? He swallows his pride, if he has any, and ruefully slinks out of town for a period of enforced abstinence from the joys of metropolitan existence. ”

“ If a fight takes place in the streets, the police arrest everybody, not only the principals and their seconds, but all the spectators. Thus a perfectly harmless paterfamilias trudging back to his home, yielding for a minute to the curiosity inherent in us all and peering over the heads of the crowd at the struggling men, may find himself marched off to the lock-up, where he must spend the night—for there is no bail system; and next morning he is dragged off before a magistrate as an accessory to a street row and fined according to the lying capacities of the police officers concerned. ”

“ The rough and the criminal do not fear the prowess of the individual policeman, they fear the organization behind him—take that away, and the constable becomes merely a big man armed with nothing more formidable than a wooden truncheon.
The result of this temporary and partial breakdown of the organization was that the whole force suffered a double loss; the general public, no longer feeling the old confidence in the power of the police to protect them, withheld to some extent their moral support ”

“ The police station and the feeing system are the parent of one most barbarous custom; an evil most elusive, its roots, like the roots of the vicious bindweed, so far underground, with such complicated entanglement of relationships, as to be almost ineradicable, involving in some instances State attorneys of good standing, detectives, policemen, sheriffs—in fact, more or less involving the whole force of agents supposed to be protectors of the public. This abuse is called the third degree, or the sweat-box.
A man is arrested, accused of a crime or of knowledge of a crime. ”

“ As there was no method known for the prevention of crime by an organised force of police, and no deterrent exerted on would-be criminals by the existence of a standing body of soldiery, the only possible weapon to be used against them was to be found in the law courts. ”

“ Upon suspicion that the person may be armed, the police should have the power to 'frisk' him for weapons. If the 'stop' and the 'frisk' give rise to probable cause to believe that the suspect has committed a crime, then the police should be empowered to make a formal 'arrest,' and a full incident 'search' of the person. This scheme is justified in part upon the notion that a 'stop' and a 'frisk' amount to a mere 'minor inconvenience and petty indignity,' [4] which can properly be imposed upon the citizen in the interest of effective law enforcement on the basis of a police officer's suspicion. ”

“ It is more effective to say, “Three patrolmen were discharged yesterday by the Police Board” than “At a meeting of the Police Board yesterday three patrolmen were discharged.” The meeting itself is an incident. The results of the meeting make the story.
Avoid the lead burdened with police data. For example:
Frank Smith, 23 years old, residing at 1010 A street, was arrested this morning at 10 o’clock by Patrolman Jones of the Fifth District on a charge of stabbing and severely wounding Arthur Brown, 27 years old, of 2510 B street. ”

“ At this moment the policeman moved and assumed a sitting posture.
"No, the man's right," he said in a labored tone.
"The fellow ran when he fired. I—I reckon he's done for me."
"Who was it?"
"The man we wanted—Bordine!"
"Is it possible?"
"It seems to me it would be wise to alarm the police and have them on the lookout for the villain," said the citizen.
Just then a hack was passing which was hailed, and the wounded officer placed inside with the citizen, who promised to set the city force on the lookout.
"You might question the girl, Mr. Sheriff," said the citizen. ”