Police

“ 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. ”

“ What is the Police? This we can best answer by a deduction of the conception of the police power of the state. The state, as such, has entered into a common compact with its citizens by which each party assumes certain duties and receives certain rights. We have shown the means of connection between the state and the citizens in all cases in which the citizen can and undoubtedly will prefer complaint. ”

“ It is the duty of the police to suspect every man and woman under my roof—myself with the rest. These appalling things have occurred in my home, and I must bear the brunt of them and stand up to all that they mean. ”

“ No modern institution has been more talked about and written about than that of the police. The police problem is, in all cities, one to which continual thought is given by citizens as well as officials. ”

“ The diminution of our police force in so large a State with such difficult communications has had the result that the police force, moved incessantly from one end of the State to the other, never arrives in time to prevent crime! ”

“ Police as News Gatherers.—As a matter of fact, a paper has comparatively few paid men on its staff, though it has hundreds of non-paid watchers who are just as faithful. The police are the chief of these. As every reporter knows, a policeman is compelled to make to his captain a full and prompt report of every fire, robbery, murder, accident, or mishap involving loss of, or danger to, life or property occurring on his beat. This report is made to the local precinct or station, whence it is telephoned to police headquarters. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In each country the police are organised on a different principle, and act in the execution of their duty on a different code of rules. In all cases, for instance, of mendicancy, drunkenness, brawling, and disorder, the initiative rests practically with the police, and it depends almost entirely on the instructions issued to the police whether such offences shall figure largely or not in the statistics of crime. ”

“ Shall we substitute for an institution so noble, so admirable, a changeable police, whose numbers can be extended or curtailed at pleasure? Or, shall we have a legion of agents, who will be discharged the moment they are thought past service? It is generally known that the police of safety is recruited even at the present time from the prisons and Bagnes, which are a sort of preparatory school for spies on robbers, and the nursery whence they must be drawn. ”

“ Even the police, East and West, certainly no friends of mine, were not without a kind of—hum—let me say a kind of gratitude for the way I had come out of corners into which I had occasionally been crowded.
Law-abiding citizens, whom the police feel it their duty to protect and to avenge, do not shoot at people from the rear or from shadows, do not pick quarrels and lay traps. ”

“ The police, who are ever on the watch, immediately seize and carry off any offender, but from the statements of persons who have had an opportunity of observing, as well as from my own slight experience, I am convinced that there is an untold amount of misery and crime. ”

“ Fathers, schoolmasters, and wise professors are there to trim it, and if anything escapes them, there is the police. If ever the brute begins to shew itself in man,--in civilized man--quick comes the police with a summons to expel it ”

“ The detective's heart leaped. "Everything is happening. The police are here."
"The police!"
"Yes—the police—state troopers, federal officers and all. But don't think you're going to have a chance of squealing on us. I'm going to fix you, as I should have done a long while ago." ”

“ Police work is different. In stories and these fool plays any half-witted policeman could pick the criminal in the first chapter. You know all the characters; you're introduced to 'em, their peculiarities are described, and the more innocent they look the more guilty they are. But police work! You drag a man out of the river—no papers, no means of identity, laundry mark on his linen—and that's all. ”

“ I intend, if you do not tell me what you're up to, to call for an officer, give you in charge, and tell the police that, if they choose to send down a gentleman in plain clothes to your place, and put out the gentleman you've left there, they'll soon get plenty of evidence of your trade, and catch the whole gang of you. ”

“ Police authorities everywhere know that a man once a criminal is almost sure to commit another crime at the first opportunity; and for that reason they make it an invariable rule to keep a close watch over such persons. ”

“ Finally, it is ordained “that it shall be the duty of every citizen to act as a police officer for the detection of offenses and the apprehension of offenders, who shall be immediately handed over to the proper captain or chief of patrol.” ”

“ Hundreds as well as tythings had definite police functions to perform: when a crime was committed, information had to be at once given to the hundred-men and tythingmen of the district, and it was their duty to pursue, arrest, and bring to justice all peace-breakers. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The men belonging to the police are a mass of corruption which the Minister of that department divides into two parts: of the one, he makes spies or mouchards; of the other, satellites, exempts, that is, officers, whom he afterwards lets loose against pickpockets, swindlers, thieves, &c., much in the same manner as a huntsman sets hounds on wolves and foxes. ”

“ The immediate result of the institution of an effective police force, whose main object was prevention, was precisely that which was to be expected: convictions for crimes of violence decreased, because evil-disposed persons knew that they could no longer commit them with impunity, and convictions for minor offences increased, because the vigilance of the new policemen brought to their proper punishment many a petty depredator who had easily hoodwinked his familiar friend, the old parish officer. ”

“ These devote themselves to identifying and running down all criminals whose activities are dangerous to them. Here the agency and the police work hand in hand, exchanging photographs of crooks and suspects and keeping closely informed as to each other's doings. Yet there is no official connection between any detective agency and the police of any city. It is an almost universal rule that a private detective shall not make an arrest. ”

“ And for decisive evidence that the new establishment of a police force is not, by the crimes which it is the means of binging to light, the cause of the prodigious increase of crime of late years in the British empire, we refer to the contemporary examples of two other countries, in which a police force on a far more extensive scale has been established, and has been found the means of effecting a signal diminution of crime and commitment. ”

“ When in any division, offences are frequently committed, there must be reason to expect that the police in that division is not properly conducted.
The absence of crime will be considered the best proof of the complete efficiency of the police. In divisions where this security and good order have been effected, the officers and men belonging to it may feel assured that such good conduct will be noticed by rewards and promotions. ”

“ In his "History of the Criminal Law," Sir James Stephen thus explains the position. "The police in their different grades are no doubt officers appointed by law for the purpose of arresting criminals, but they possess for this purpose no powers that are not also possessed by private persons.... A policeman has no other right as to asking questions or compelling the attendance of witnesses than a private person has; in a word, with a few exceptions, he may be described as a person paid to perform as a matter of duty acts, which if he so minded, he might have done voluntarily." ”

“ 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. ”

“ How is a police force established in any part of Great Britain? If we except the metropolis, where the vast concourse from all parts of the empire unavoidably forced upon government, fourteen years ago, the establishment of a central police, since found to be attended with such [Pg 536] admirable effects, it is every where set on foot by the voluntary act of the inhabitants, or a certain portion of them, in a peculiar manner cognizant of the necessity which exists for such an addition to the means of public defence. ”

“ He drank at times to excess, and was known to the police as a strong-arm, or hold-up, man, and was considered by the police a hard and bad man to arrest—a task which they were frequently called upon to perform. ”

“ 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? ”

“ It is obvious, therefore, that an effective police, by making [407] the profession of dishonesty difficult and precarious, can remove the principal incentive that makes men criminal.
The circle of police employment is constantly widening, and many of the functions delegated to the Constabulary by Parliament and by local authorities have not been so much as touched upon in this book, which, in a small compass, has endeavoured to trace the main features of police development in England through a great number of years. ”

“ That's what the police are for. Criminals don't usually come here and give themselves up, I imagine, or even send you their address. But the city isn't so big that any man, however clever, could escape your dragnet. ”

“ Inquire at all garages, automobile stands, stables, etc.
If found, notify Detective Bureau.
Before noon, the Commissioner has postponed appointments, assigned routine business, and is engaged in an investigation that will keep him busy until that morning, twelve days later, when the first arrests are made, and the case is, in police parlance, “broken.”
Where do the police begin in such a crime? What do they start with when there is apparently so little to work upon?
In spite of the wide popular interest in police and criminal matters, the average citizen has no very clear idea. ”

“ The police touch all classes of the public at many points beyond the performance of their sterner duties as representatives of the law, and they touch them in a friendly way.... The police in short, are not the representatives of an arbitrary and despotic power, directed against the rights or obtrusively interfering with the pleasures of law-abiding citizens: they are simply a disciplined body of men, specially engaged in protecting 'masses' as well as 'classes,' from any infringement of their rights on the part of those who are not law-abiding. ”

“ To give some idea of the wide-reaching functions of the police, the power assumed in matters momentous and quite insignificant, we may quote from the list of circulars issued by the Minister of the Interior to the Governors of the various provinces during four recent years. ”

“ Police may commandeer any vehicle or means of communication, private or otherwise, if the situation demands. During chase or during investigation of flagrant crimes, they may enter private homes without permission or search them without warrant. ”

“ In fact, I was just going for the police—”
“I suppose you sent for the police this morning?” I said.
“No, I didn’t. I don’t trust the police. I wouldn’t trust the magistrates here, except you, of course, Excellency. ”

“ 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. ”

“ There are, no doubt, many occasions on which it is desirable to transfer bodies of police from one place to another in order to concentrate the forces of law and order at some threatened or strategic point, but in so doing the danger to be apprehended from the resulting increase of local animus, ought to be taken into account, and adequately provided for. ”

“ We are coming to understand that the policeman can be a social agent, a next friend, an instructor in obedience to the law. We are beginning to regard as the best officer the one who makes the fewest, not the most arrests. In some cities women [Pg 23] are being added to the police force, and there are police matrons, and jail matrons, and even women judges. ”