He wanted an able and energetic man and
so sent for Roosevelt. The condition of the Police Department
sounds more like a chapter from a dime novel gone mad, than from
any real state of things which could exist in a modern city. Yet
it did exist.
The police were supposed to protect the city against crime. What
they really did was to stop some of the crime--when the criminal
had no "pull"--and to protect the rest of it. The criminal handed
over a certain amount of his plunder to the police, and they let
him go on with his crime. More than that, they saw that no one
bothered him. There was a regular scale of prices for things
varying all the way from serious crime down to small offenses. It
cost more to be a highway robber, burglar, gun-man or murderer,
for instance, than merely to keep a saloon open after the legal
time for closing. A man had to pay more for running a big
gambling-house, than simply for blocking the side-walk with
rubbish and ash-cans.
Roosevelt found that most of the policemen were honest, or wished
to be honest. But, surrounded as they were by grafters, it was
almost impossible for a man to keep straight. If he began by
accepting little bribes, he ended, as he rose in power, by taking
big ones, and finally he was in partnership with the chief
rascals. The hideous system organized by the powerful men in
Tammany Hall spread outward and downward, and at last all over the
city.
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