Sacramento daily record-union. [volume] (Sacramento [Calif.]) 1875-1891, 1889-08-23
CAN IT Be TRUE /?
CROOKED METHODS ALLEGED AGAINST
PRIVATE DETECTIVES.
is Charged that Boys Are Employed to
Enter Saloons in Order to Secure
Convictions.

There are ugly rumors about concerning
the methods alleged to be employed by the
so-called detectives who are working under
engagement to the Law and Order League
of this city. Two convictions have been
made of persons charged with selling LIQUOR
to boys under fifteen years of age, While
the FIST case was on trial it was openly as
serted by Charles T. Jones, the defendants
counsel, that the detectives who made the
arrest were in the habit of hiring boys to
enter saloons and ask for drinks, in order
to secure evidence sufficient to warrant
arrests. This was at the time regarded as
the mere suspicion of an attorney seeking
to save his client from punishment. But
since then some directness has been given
to the charge, as the names of the parties
concerned have been freely used.
When saloon. keeper Mackall came to the
RECORD UNloN Office the other night to
make his explanation of the presence of a
couple of young girls in his place, he said
that on the preceding day boy also came
into his saloon, whom he recognized as one
he had seen employed at the Paris mutual
pool-stand during the last races at
Agricultural Park. The boy wanted to
play cards in the back room, and also asked
for drink. Mackall said he ordered him
out of the place, and that it then began to
dawn upon him that somebody was trying
to put upa job to get him into trouble. 1t
now turns out that the boy in question is
the same Harry Fisher on whose testimony
Tony Gerber was the other day convicted
of selling liquor to minor under Is years
of age.
80 oil to}a hat loI @
merfeld, whose parents reside on Twelfth
street. near II, has given up his situation
as messenger. boy and entered the service
of the so-called detectives employed by the
Law and Order League, and that his duties
can be quite as we'll imagined as described,
This latter statement is made by the police.
who say that neighbor of the Summer
fields, Peter Tietens formerly Justice of
the Peace, declares it to be fact.
If these statements and rumors have any
foundation, it behooves the ladies and gen
uemen who compose the Law and Order
League to wash their hands of this bust
ness at once, or employ only honest men.
1t is no defense for saloon keepers to say
that boys are hired to put them in hole"
they have no right to sell liquor to them,
even though boys are paid to go into their
places. On the other hand if the police
have proof that these so-called detectives
are playing matchmaking game upon
citizens, it is their duty to arrest the parties,
and prosecute them to the full extent of
the law. The one crime is no more less
reprehensible than the other. Neither
the man who would sell liquor to a boy,
under any circumstances, nor the party
who would substitute boy to enter a
saloon for the purpose of enticing the pro-
prietor thereof into violating the law, is
deserving of the least mercy If it can be
shown that boys have actually been paid to
do such dirty work, their employers de-
serve TO be placed behind the prison bars
or driven out of the community their pre-
sence disgraces.
One crime does not warrant the commls-
sion of another, and if the good people
who have been induced to form themselves
into league for the supposed purpose of
doing good can discover that they have
been innocently made the dupes of men
who seek to profit by Legitimate practices,
they owe it to themselves to go out of the
business at once. This whole matter is one
atconcerns the welfare ofthe community,
and deserves to be thoroughly ventilated,
that the truth may be made known.
Chief of Police Lee stated to RECORD.
UNION reporter yesterday that Sacramento
was now simply going through an expert
ence that most other cities have had, and
that the ocalled private detective business
had in most of them been squelched, as il
had been shown to be generally conducted
for disreDutable purpOses