New Orleans daily crescent. [volume] ([New Orleans, La.]) 1851-1866, 1852-10-01
'7= or,5r1CTAL JOURNAL
FRIDAY MORNING, OCTOBER 1, 1867
OUR POLICE.

| OCh POLICE.
We have watched the police of our city care
! fully. We have even taken so much trouble in
the premises as to s'go the rounds Mt night
AT all hours of the day we have specially and
inquisitively noted their conduct,
The conclusion we have arrived at, is, that
they are not perfect, but that, upon the whole,
we must justly pronounce them the best and
most respectable body of police the city of New
Orleans ever had within our recollection We
might pick out individual members (and chiefly
in the First District) who presume somewhat
upon their &C brief authority and are some
what rude, upon slender provooation, to gentle
men. But these are merely exceptions to the
rule-spots upon the orb of order-which show
the more conclusively the general good bearing,
strict discipline and faithful service Of the men,
bers of the police.
We have no indiscriminate commentator
for the members Of the police, We have no in
terest, public or private, involved in their good
will or their bad will, and so long as we believe
| we are right, we are entirely indifferent to
either, and this some of their most influential
and prominent members have good reason to
know, and perhaps they entertain no very
friendly spirit therefor.
| But we will do them the justice to say, that,
as body, they are the best abused set of men
we ever knew, and abused upon the slenderest
proyocation. They are expected to be omnis-
cient and omnipresent, to anticipate every thing
and prevent every thing, to be quicker in pre-
vention than the lightning like flash of a dis
charged pistol or the sudden thrust of the dag
ger. They are about as one to thirty thousand
of our citizens, and yet they are virtually ex-
pected, If not required. to stand between every
couple of men, who may meet, to talk, in the
streets or in bar-room If anybody is killed,
it is their fault If any house is plundered, it
is their fault If anybody is robbed it is their
fault. Ii anybody is assaulted, it is their fault
If there is any rowdyism, tbs their fault. They
are responsible for every thing and always
guilty of every thing.
| We know Of an illustration, Of which we made
no note at the time from motives of delicacy
| homicide (the circumstances and incidents of
which we do not desire to discuss in detail) oc-
| CURED. Forthwith, two of our CONTEMPORARIES,
one wing and the other democratic (the latter
in tendency blazed forth in indignant denun-
citation of the police, and one, if not both, went
so far as to hold up the survivor of the tragedy
as an illustration Of the mpunity of crime, etc,
in this city.
We respected the living and the dead we
knew what was the heat of. sudden anger; we
could not reconcile ourself to prejudicing fell
low citizen before a jury; and, though strongly
tempted to do so, we said not one word or sylla-
Bile. The affair was unfnrtunata bu4 WIN l,,l
no right, as a journalist, to attempt to create
prejudice against, or favor for, the living, be-
leving that the laws of a free country would be
fairly carried out by u jury of American citi-
zens, and we were not in yirtuous fever to nut
up any one, no matter what the circumstances,
as a scarecrow. We thought the course of our
contemporaries, in the premises, wrong, if not
cruel, as calculated to create prejudice against
the prisoner, and impress those who may be of
the jury, with the idea that they must make an
example of somebody, no matter whom There
is temperance in all things, and it should spe-
cially be shown towards those who are unfortu-
nately placed. When man is pronounced
guilty by a jury Of his countrymen, it is time
enough to claim that he should be made an ex-
ample of.
But in the case referred to, wherein the police
were so severely censured, we happen to know
personally that three watchmen ordered the
coffee-house to be closed, and that it was (ap
parently) closed at II o'clock, p NJ, when they
proceeded on their rounds 1t is very easy to
make charge-it is difficult to rebut it.
Our worthy Mayor has, we are convinced,
done every thing in his power to secure a re-
spectacle and reliable body of police If any
thing, he is strictly severe in reference to even
the most trivial faults of the police; and, night
and day, we encounter him in the diligent exc
cution of has watch, in every portion of our
broadly spread city. The police should not COM
plain of this. The conduct of the Mayor, by its
very strictness, prevents the faults of a few neg
hgent and inefficient members being brought IN
in Judgment against the whole body, and if the
Mayor has, IN one or two cases, been too severe,
the jealous sincerity of motive ought to redeem
the error in act, At any rate the police of
Neworleans now have among moderate citizens
reputation for gentlemanly bearing and strict
fidelity, which they ought to earnestly seek to
preserve.