Police raid

“ You look as if you were beginning to. The police went blundering at wrong doors, and most of the gang got away. And while they were in the house after the raid a woman was able to slip in and take away on an express wagon the three trunks which were to have been held for evidence. ”

“ Paul's, for it is wise to get under shelter during the brief period of the raids, and most citizens obey the warnings of the police. It is odd, indeed, that more people are not hurt by shrapnel. The Friday following the raid I have described I went out of town for a week-end, and returned on Tuesday to be informed that a shell had gone through the roof outside of the room I had vacated, and the ceiling and floor of the bedroom of one of the officers who lived below. ”

“ A ruffian robs a man in a public-house, in broad daylight. He is pursued by a constable and taken. On the way to the watchhouse a mob collects, the police are attacked, pistols are pointed, bludgeons and axe-handles are brought out of the adjacent houses (all still in broad daylight, and in a busy street) , and distributed amongst the crowd, loud cries inciting attack are heard, a scuffle ensues, the police are beaten, the prisoner is rescued, the crowd separates, and a man is left dead upon the ground. ”

“ I am a general housecleaner, and work in all parts of the city. As I was walking home on 7th Avenue, about four o'clock in the afternoon, between 14th and 15th Streets, I saw a man run up to a police officer and say something to him. The officer then came up to me and said, "You've got a pistol; you give it up. I will arrest you." I handed him the pistol, and he arrested me. I said as I handed it to him, "I bought this pistol to protect my family at home. I heard of this rioting, and I bought this pistol to protect my home." He said, "Why don't you call to the officers for protection?" ”

“ 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. ”

“ With the police unable to function, banks and post-offices offered an easy prey to these ruffians. The meanest form of robbery was the taking of money to pay old-age pensions from mail-cars on their way to outlying districts.
A special murder gang was formed, which went about the country to murder any man—policeman, R.M., or civilian—who was particularly active in trying or helping to restore law and order in the country—that is, any man who was too tough a nut for the locals to crack. ”

“ I boarded a car at the West Shore ferry at the foot of West 42nd Street and transferred to an 8th Avenue car at 34th Street, and had proceeded as far as 40th Street, when the car was assailed by a mob shouting, "There's another nigger! Kill him! lynch him!" I stood up and was ready to defend myself, when a passenger on the car asked me to sit down, saying that if the mob got on the car he would help me defend myself. I sat down as requested, and happening to look over my shoulder I saw three police officers in uniform running after the car. ”

“ Ferguson should be strangled to death in a place considered to be so well policed and watched as Riga; and yet all the vigilance and all the cleverness of the police were powerless alike to stay the crime and to bring the criminal to justice when the crime had been committed.
‘Our lives and property are not safe,’ exclaimed the rabble. ‘The police are supine; they are useless; they are in league with the knaves who prey upon honest citizens. ”

“ Just as our plans were ripe for execution, we were, however, forestalled by the arrest of five members of the dangerous confederacy on two gigantic cases—one for forgery, and the rest for a great railway robbery, which had been suddenly disclosed to the police authorities by a wretch who craved vengeance upon an associate in the gang because he had been successful in carrying off the affections of “a lady” with whom the informer had cohabited. ”

“ A cop can arrest a man whom he sees in the process of house-breaking on burglary, but if he then fans him and finds a gun he cannot charge him with a concealed-weapon violation, because he had no warrant for the search. When police have information that a crime is being committed on a premise, they must first get in touch with the U.S. Commissioner or a judge, then locate a deputy marshal to come and serve the warrant.
But don’t you assume you can get away with anything in Washington. The cops are death on jay-walkers. If you cross against the light you’ll be jugged. ”

“ Many of the police were beaten in this riot; and the executioner, who was for some time in the hands of the mob, was severely injured. In the meantime the police-officers rallied in augmented force, and re-took the criminal from the mob, at the head of the Advocates’ Close. The unhappy man, half alive, stripped of part of his clothes, and with his shirt turned up, so that the whole of his naked back and the upper part of his body were exhibited, lay extended on the ground in the middle of the street, in front of the police-office. ”

“ When the police, in force, in answer to a riot-call, reached the spot a quarter of an hour later and dispersed the mob, it looked as if the sea had swept over the scene. The car was overturned and stripped to a mere broken shell; and on the ground a hundred paces away, with only a shred of bloody clothing still about it, lay the battered and mutilated trunk of what had been a man trying to make bread for his children, while a wild cry of hate and joy at the deed raged about the street. ”

“ 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. ”

“ America's law enforcement officers face extraordinary risks-breaking up a drug ring, apprehending a fugitive, responding to an incident of domestic violence, even making a traffic stop. Since the first recorded police death in this country in 1794, more than 13,500 law enforcement officers have been killed in the line of duty. On average, more than 62,000 officers are assaulted and some 20,000 are injured each year. ”

“ As I write, this middle of the afternoon, the battle rages. The police go right to raider head-quarters knock right and left and make their arrests. Sometimes the police are whipped and have to retreat, but they rally their forces and again make a charge in which they are successful. Can lay in our shade and see the trouble go on. Must be killing some by the shouting. The raiders fight for their very life, and are only taken after being thoroughly whipped. The stockade is loaded with guards who are fearful of a break. ”

“ These form a clever, mobile fraternity who operate swindles and robberies in one part after another, dodging in and out of various police districts. They are as slippery as eels, and, without some means of codifying information as to their movements and delinquencies, many of them would defy justice with impunity. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ About two o'clock A. M. I heard shooting in the street, and in a short while after I saw two police officers dragging a colored man from 341 West 36th Street, who had on no clothing except a gauze undershirt. The officers were clubbing the colored man, and the man was begging them not to club him, as he had done nothing. The only answer he got was more blows and a reply from one of the officers as follows: "Shut up, you black son of a b——, or I'll kill you." ”

“ I shouted with equal vehemence. “Your hour is come! Officers, enter and do your duty!”
In an instant the room was filled with police; and surprised, panic-stricken, paralysed by the suddenness of the catastrophe, the gang were all secured without the slightest resistance, though most of them were armed, and marched off in custody.
Three—Sandford, or Cardon; but he had half-a-dozen aliases, one of them—were transported for life: the rest were sentenced to various terms of imprisonment. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ We thieves by profession know better than any one else how these pogroms were organised. We wander everywhere: into public houses, markets, tea-shops, doss-houses, public places, the harbour. We can swear before God and man and posterity that we have seen how the police organise the massacres, without shame and almost without concealment. ”

“ I was then taken to the 37th Street station house, and while there I was kicked by the officers in the section room, and by the doorman, and when I protested I was told to shut up. I was locked in cell No. 13, and in the morning I was brought to the 54th Street police court, where the judge turned me loose. While in my cell I got into conversation with a colored man who is a porter for the N. Y. C. & H. R. R., and he said that he was dragged from a street car and clubbed by police officers. ”

“ The National Police is the pillar on which public activity fights against this evil, but that is not enough. Despite the efforts being made in this field, defending gangs, gangs and street robberies, assaults on the physical integrity of people and their lives. ”

“ All day and all night the raids and surprise visits by the police were in progress, and hundreds, if not thousands of men and women must have been arrested, until the gaols were crowded to suffocation point, and every spot where prisoners could be packed was crammed and choked with suspects. ”

“ Tragically, the dangers of law enforcement service are increasing. From 1960 to 1993, the number of violent crimes in America increased 567 percent. In the past 10 years, it increased 51 percent. During 1993, more than 1.9 million violent crimes-murders, rapes, robberies, and assaults-were reported to police. ”

“ It was thought, not without reason, that a thief could not long pursue his vocation undetected amongst neighbours, who were acquainted with his circumstances, and who saw how he occupied his time and how he spent his money, whilst a stranger who came to-day and was gone to-morrow, might rob from one end of England to the other with impunity. The police were therefore instructed to enforce the regulations against vagrants with increased vigour, and in the following manner. ”

“ The theatre of the crime was usually the market place or bazaar near-by, where quarrels were frequent and weapons such as knives, daggers and revolvers were constantly employed. Murderous assaults and hand-to-hand fights were repeated almost daily, and the police seldom took notice of the disturbance. ”

“ The prevention of kidnapping, bomb-throwing, and the other allied manifestations of the Black Hand depends entirely upon the activity of the police—particularly the Italian detectives, who should form an inevitable part of the force in every large city. ”

“ I saw a prisoner once being escorted by three guards armed with rifles and bayonets from the penitentiary to one of the barracks (to become a soldier) when he suddenly made a dash, got 227free, and ran up the street like a shot. The guards were hampered by their weapons and could not catch him, yet not one of them offered to shoot. The man finally ran into the arms of a policeman at a corner, who happened to be awake. In the States, on the other hand, the police are too free with their guns altogether, and will club a man on the slightest pretext. ”

“ So long as there is collision between police officers and criminals, crime will continue, and it will be difficult to suppress it. If police officers will suppress evidence against the perpetrators of offences; if they will associate and correspond with criminals, and participate in the fruits of robbery, crime will continue to increase, because the chances for escape are great. ”