ETECTIVE-LIEU

TENANT FLYNN, ornament of a midwestern city's police department, welcomed his visitor. Lieutenant Flynn is aggressively in charge

of the Detective Bureau at night.

"Say, brother"-the big man sat well back in his swivel-chair and bit off the end of a cigar-"you ought-to been with us last night. We was to the swellest racket you ever seen. The fight-club manager thrown it for us detectives. Yeah. He had th' whole brains department up there, an' every burlesque chorus girl in town, too."

Lieutenant Flynn sighed as he remembered the entertainment. "But you'd be surprised," he added as an afterthought. "There wasn't nothin' rough about it. Nope. It was perfectly refined, the kind of a party you could take your wife to. They had two half-barrels of beer on th' table an' all the hard liquor we could drink. Just as soon as a lady or a gent got too tight, we'd put 'em in a taxi an' send 'em home. There wasn't no rough stuff a-tall. It certainly was one swell evenin'."

His recital was interrupted by a telephone report that "some kind of a foreigner," driving a battered Ford roadster, had just held up a gas-station on the boulevard drive that circles the city. The official record of the bandit's exploits appeared in this manner upon the complaint sheets:

7:38 P. M.-Man described as foreigner, driving Ford roadster, license unknown, entered fillingstation conducted by Henry Robinson at 378 Grand Boulevard. Bandit compelled Robinson and his helper to lie down on floor, threatening them with large revolver. Bandit took $55 from cash-register, re-entered his car, and escaped. He

was not masked.

8:05 P. M.-Same bandit entered filling-station of Martin Buck at 861 Grand Boulevard. He volver, securing $116.45. stuck-up owner and three customers with reHe drove away, headed south.

8:18 P. M.-Same bandit stuck-up gas-station at Grand Boulevard and Lincoln Highway. Station leased and occupied by William Easton. Bandit fired two shots at Easton, took $9.85 from cash drawer and escaped. Easton was not injured.

8:27 P. M.-Same bandit entered Homestead Garage at 1728 Grand Boulevard, taking $69

from cash-register and $250 from office safe. All the money was in $1 bills.

8:43 P. M.-Same bandit stuck-up filling-staMrs. Gould was in charge. Bandit locked her in tion of Jas. Gould at 2109 Grand Boulevard. stock-room in rear of shop, took $37.20 from cashregister, and drove away.

9:05 P. M.-Patrolmen Murphy and Donovan of the Eighth Precinct report bandit's car found abandoned in alley near Gould filling-station. No trace of bandit. Car had been stolen from parking space at Main and Grove Streets about 6:30 P. M. Car is property of the Schnelling Cut Price Grocery Co. The car was undamaged. Case referred to Detective Bureau for investigation.

From this brief record it may be seen that, between the time when he received the first complaint and the time when the last of the series of robberies was committed, Lieutenant Flynn had more than an hour in which to invent and execute a plan for capturing the bandit. During that hour every one at headquarters expected to hear the robber had killed some resisting gas-station owner. Only the robber's poor marksmanship saved Easton's life.

The next morning Flynn made formal complaint to the police commissioner.

"Listen," said he, "if we don't get some faster autos for this department, we might just as well give up doin' police business. We ought to have cars that will do ninety miles an hour." The commissioner agreed and ordered $30,000 worth of new equipment.

On the other hand, the district attor

to work in. Why didn't he take that city map that shows the location of all the filling-stations along the Grand Boulevard, look up the numbers in the classified telephone directory, phone ahead of the bandit, and warn the garage men? He could have prevented all but the first robbery anyhow. The chances are he would have caught the bird as well. Faster cars? Hell! What he needs is a faster think-box."

The magistrate grinned. "Let's see," he replied, "we pay Flynn $2,700 a year and we pay you $7,500. If Flynn was smart enough to think, he'd have your job or a better one."

Flynn is not only a real character but also a typical police-department executive. The filling-station bandit is a fair sample of the modern criminal, with whose apprehension the police are concerned. The odds are heavily in favor of the criminal.

Louis Seibold, writing for the New York Evening Post, showed that the criminal

lazy, and incompetent as Detective-Lieutenant Flynn. There is also a wellfounded belief that they are dishonest. We have a national grudge against the "cops."

In a Pullman smoker it is not unusual to hear some American boasting that his city's police department is "the worst in the world," while the citizens of other nations claim that their police are efficient and capable.

Sent here to trace a stolen government document, a brilliant French detective asked a lawyer for advice. "My friend, the French consul, has warned me to keep away from your police. Your secretservice men do not trust them. I must have help. What the devil shall I do?"

A wealthy woman missed some of her valuable jewelry. She telephoned a newspaper editor. "I'm sorry to trouble you," she explained, "but every one tells me it is worse than useless to report my loss to the police. Can you recommend a good private detective agency?"

A former head of the British police system, the Scotland Yard, once commented to the writer: "You're the first person in the United States who has a word of praise for the police. Every one else has told me nothing but stories of corruption." As various distinguished writers have pointed out, the courts and parole boards share with the police the responsibility for existing conditions. But, in the final analysis, even the police must admit that theirs is the greatest responsibility. They are the shock-troops in the war on crime. The work of courts, parole boards, prison heads, and pardoning officials cannot begin unless the police make arrests.

There seem to be three primary causes of badly performed police duty: First, the method of choosing department personnel is wholly inadequate. Second, the real civic conditions are not generally understood by either police magistrates, jurymen, or taxpayers. Third, cheap ward politics balk any attempt at genuine reform.

Our present police system was developed to meet the conditions found in our cities during the 1870's and 1880's. The patrolmen now taken into the city's service are still the type best able to cope with the post Civil War type of criminal -a loud-mouthed drunk who occupied the sidewalk on a Saturday night. Even the number of policemen authorized by law for most municipalities was determined before 1900. This ratio, about one policeman to each 1,000 of population, is still retained in many city charters in spite of the fact that, since 1910, at least one-third of the city's patrolmen have been transferred from regular police duty to traffic regulation.

According to the "one-to-a-thousand" rule, a city with a half-million inhabitants employs five hundred policemen. That means that the department can furnish only one hundred uniformed men to be put on duty for a twenty-four-hour day; for each policeman works eight hours, and provision has to be made for special-duty squads, emergency assignments, days off, vacations, and sick leaves.

But in 1927 at least one hundred and fifty of the five hundred policemen must be assigned to a permanent traffic squad. So the department of five hundred patrol

men, instead of being able to send out seventy-five men during business hours and a hundred and twenty-five at night, when they are most needed, is now able to put out only fifty men during business hours and seventy-five men at night.

One precinct house in an Eastern city now sends out seven patrolmen to walk beats, asking them to replace the twentytwo who were assigned to that same territory in 1900. Some police heads claim to make up for this loss of man-power by sending out motorcycle patrols. A famous burglar laughed about the motorcycle men.

"Sure, the motorcycle cop went by while I was workin'," he remarked after he had been captured by a citizen. "I heard that bull's corn-popper three blocks away. Why don't they send them harness-bulls around behind a band?"

There is no better check upon petty and juvenile crime than the constant presence of a uniformed policeman upon a busy corner or along a beat. Juvenile delinquency, in some instances, is reduced as much as sixty-six per cent by establishing a fixed post where a policeman always stands in a particular neighborhood. In the possession of the writer are exhaustive statistics, collected by precinct captains, that prove this.

The first step then in a police reorganization is a material increase in the number of patrolmen. The old ratio of one policeman to each thousand of inhabitants should be restored, exclusive of the traffic squads. Various cities, including New York and Los Angeles, are making desperate efforts to accomplish this.

The second step is the securing of more intelligent men, those who are capable of adapting themselves to the changing conditions in the crime world. Crime to-day is as different from that found in 1876 as life in an apartment-hotel is different from life in a log cabin. Improvement of police personnel will cost more in taxes than a numerical increase in the department. The money expended to hire brains will, however, pay bigger dividends.

The pay of a policeman in our cities averages about $2,000 a year, varying from $1,500 in a few communities to $2,500 in New York. Detectives and police lieutenants receive from $1,800 to