The daily morning journal and courier., 1902-04-15
REFORM IN NEW YORK.
Puriacation as a Boomerang.

I NN' iA'~e't tI'li e'5 d DuOlHeIdUS. Few of the opinions entertained con- 1 cernlng the police of Manhattan have ] remained unconfirmed, It appears that | they were ready to take anybody and | everybody into partnership, stipulating l only that there should be money in fl. | They concerned themselves about noth-
 ing but the amount. They were abso-
 lutely without scruple. The blood on some of the money was figurative, but had 1t been real that would have made no difference-it would have been taken
 Just the same. The partnership cover- ed almost all phases of human activity, from peanut peddling to front rank burglary, from the purveying of penny policy slips to the turning of the wheel patronixZed by the multi-millionaire
 member of a so-called club. Its more reVolting aspects cannot be discussed. Without offending susceptibilties not
 especially acute they can hardly be hinted at. Murder, moral and actual, figured in the list. In short, it would
 appear that the force stopped at abso- 1 lutely nothing, that it was, in case of trouble all for one and one for all, that blackmail became an exact science and
 brutality a commonplace
 There are those who believe that new era is at hand. The Eagle is not | so sure of that, though the signs are
 not all discouraging. Apparently, the
 department has been stirred so pro-
 foundly that from commissioner to pa
 troIman there is resoute determina-
 tion to clean house from top to bottom
 This is the optimistic way of looking at
 it, but ther are other points of view.
 The three conspicuous figures in the
 movement are those of the mayor, Col,
 Partridge and Jerome. The mayor says
 any officer who fails to do his duty, ne-
 glects it at his peril, As he said this
 while discussing the excise law, he ob-
 viously meant that the law must be rig
 orously enforced. Partridge, bound by
 no pledges. says it is his business to in-
 sist upon enforcement and Jerome calls
 the law a farce, but will compromise on
 nothing-he will have it that the law
 must be observed All this might have
 happened without materially affecting
 the situation had not the partolmen
 converted themselves into a body of crusaders, such crusaders as were dear
 to the heart of Dr. Parkhurst. That is to say. the officer on the beat has fallen into line. He is sallying forth with a
 Sunday dragnet.
 What shall the harvest be? The pri- mary purpose is to cut the ligature con- meeting the department with criminals. No better object over stimulated those in authority But the dragnet has neither eyes nor ears-it catches every thing, including fish of service to no- body. One policeman resnrted to the paltriest sort of an expedient placing with a pedder and finally persuading him to offend the majesty of the law by parting with collar button for pen ny, The sale was illegal. It placed the ! peddler at the mercy of an officer. It | was trivial enough but it suggests dag zling possibilities. If the patrolmen | obey orders, they go it blind, discrim mating nowhere and crowding the sta ton houses to suffocation. Assuming | this to be their programme, there will | be localities in which the word Fusion | cannot be safely breathed, in which the | word reform cannot be spoken above a whisper-tle administration will be ex- ecrated from the Battery to the Bronx. | ''Oh, for an hour of Tammany," will be heard on all sides It will even be heard
  Sunday saturnalias. If. on the other l hand the programme is not rigid, the aforesaid dazzling is to say the officer | himself a dictator.
 Before long the city will awken to full realization of what has been invit- ed A spasm can be endured even when extreme and beadlong fanatics are the source of it's inspiration, providing all ways that it be a spasm and nothing more. It Is otherwise with q policy up- on which the highest authorities set the seal of their approval and from which, after all that has happened, they can scarcely recede without making ridiculous. Filing Pelion on Ossa, the patrolman has become an en- thusiast, the embodiment of every blue law he can discover. sending the cru- sader into insignificance by comparison and becoming q nuisance no power in the city can abate In behalf of the only those who are them selves incorrigible will ever say word. Persistent war upon them has been made in these columns. There can be nothing but praise for the police off cials who would dissipate the clouds that have hung over the department ike pail, who would relentlesly run down every officer wearing a uniform he disgraces, but the forces set in mo- tion spread themselves over so to speak, all municipal creation So that he department may be purified 1t Is to run amuck, smashing at everything ex- posed to it's attack by every absurdity on the statute books And his i,, tho faoe of tho caIf ip,pncad ohlf sa ton upon the strength of which Set Low may be said to have procured his certificate of election.
 From 9 hundred sources have come ntimations that Deveryism is still ].