The sun. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1833-1916, 1906-11-15
BONDING GRAFT DIVERSIFIED.
A FEW STARTLING FIGURES FROM
JEFFERSON MARKET BOOKS.
some BOndsmen DO n Just to ObIige the
Political Leader. but Many Are In the
business Because II Pays-EQuity In
some Property wiped Out Many Times.

W
about two kinds of places, police stations
and police courts. The bondsman up to
the present time has had IA much busin"l -
in the station houses "a in the police courts.
Tho station house graft consists Of bailing
out women Of the street at IS each who
rave been arrested by plain clothes men
at the instance Of an obliging police captain
or sergeant. The money made is divided
in and around the station house. Several
men have grown rich in this plundering OF
women. The women appear in court the
next morning after their arrest and usually
rave been fined or discharged.
Now that the police are beginning to adopt
a new line Of action in these arrests and are
letting many of the women go on sum-
monses to appear in court. the professional
bondsmen will have to rely on the police
courts largely for a livelihood. THE Sun
told yesterday how nearly IL 600 bonds
for good behavior had been given in this
city in the last eleven years and not one OF
them had ever been declared forfeited.
Giving that kind of a bono was the easiest
kind of money for a professional bonds
man.
There are other bonds given in police
courts, however, which net the bondsmen
handsome returns, although there is always
some risk in giving them. These bonds
are chiefly in disorderly house, disorderly
conduct and excise cases. h risk is
comparatively mall in the disorderly
house and excise cases. No one goes into
those kinds of business unless he or she
invests some money in them, and such
persons cannot afford to run away In
ninety-nine cases out of "A hundred they
always appear for trial.
No one engages in a lawless occupation
who does not prepare beforehand for such
a contingency as an arrest, and as a conse-
duence the professional bondsman has
become an institute n, Politics has brought
many of these men into the calling. The
political machine in every well organized
district has seen to it that no voter of its
faith is locked up a minute longer than
can be helped. Practically every district
leader has a professional bondsman on his
staf. Other bondsmen have sprung up
because of the demand for them by dis
orderly house owners and keepers and
by women who wdk the streets. Others
rave gone into the business because they
nave realized the large amount of money
90 he made from it with small risk.
Many police court lawyers nave these
bondsmen practically attached to their
Offices as part Of their police court outfit.
Police officials, police clerks, and even
men who have had no afiliation with
politics nave recognized the possibilities
in this kind of graft, and the result has
been that in and about every leading police
court in town there is a set OF men VINO
have fattened their purses by going on
all kinds of bonds for a consideration,
usually from s25 to $50.
One piece of real estate ia bonded usually.
The bondsman may cucumber it with a
dozen, a score, fifty or wen a hundred
bonds, and his equity in the property may
be completely wiped out. No one ex-
anime into that. In every police court
there IL wha is Known as a bond book.
The name of the bondsman, his address,
q description of the property, the name
of the person under bond, the time the bond
is to run and the date are entered. All
the bondsmen whose names begin with
A are entered one after another in the A
section of the book, the BIS in the b section,
and so on. The entries are simply day
book entries, and there is no posting done
TO show how many bonds a certain man
has given, how many are running at a
given time, how many have expired and
when the rest will expire.
IL one wishes to know how many bonds
John Smith is on he will have to look in
the = section and run his finger over age
after page and count up the entries. Like
all the rest of the police court system OF
keeping records the thing is done in a slip
shod manner and no one can get any real
information from the book unless he has
all the chief facts az TO names and dates
before he begins his search A Sun reporter
took the bond book in the Jefferson Market
police court one day this week and made
a protracted examination of il 10 discover
from the entries who are the chief bonds-
men operating in that court. He examined
the entries under the common ast initials
and then noted the names that occurred
there most frequently. BY counting up
the number and kinds of cases he was able
10 get some kim of a line on half a dozen
or more of these bOndsmen. Here are some
res Its OF the search:
Ths records in the last two years show
that Samuel Werner OF 34 Seventh avenue
has gone on the bonds OF forty persons ar
rested for keeping disorderly houses, of
three persons for violating the excise law,
five persons for disorderly conduct and one
person charged with violating a corpora
ton ordinance. Alexander Bellando Of j2O
Broome street has given bonds in eight dis
orderly house arrests, six disorderly con-
duct arrests, one arrest tor booHmaklng,
one arrest for violating the anti policy
law, two arrests for larceny and one for re-
Ceiving stolen goods.
Maurice Black Of 4O5 West Fifty-seventh
street has gone on ten disorderly house
ond two dlSorderly bonds n
five bonds for poolselling. uni Mintz
of i07 West Tenth street, right opposite
the Jefferson Market court, has gone on
ten disorderly house bonds, ten disorderly
conduct bonds. five petty larceny bonds
and several bonds in cases OF triiing inn
p~ortance.
Harry Kalisky has gone on nearly a
dozen bonds of various kinds. W
Holten of 1874 Seventh avenue has gone
on more than thirty bonds, all for good
behavior. Patrick J. Martin OF 232 West
Twenty-fourth street has gone on nearly
n dozen bonds for various offences, from
keeping d~isorderly houses TO larceny and
violating the liquor tax law. J. N. Thomp-
ron Of 800 Seventh avenue has gone on
more than thirty disorderly house bonds,
four disorderly conduct bonds and ten
liquor tax violation bonds, besides one
bond for violating the sanitary code.
Michael Savage of 34O Seventh avenue
is down for forty disorderly house bonds
and one for poolselling.
These are only a few OF the bondsmen
picked at random in a search of several
hours in the court bond book. There
are many others. and probably an ex-
animation of the books would disclose
even greater activity on their part. These
bondsnen may be divided into two classes,
those who make no money out of it, and
carry on the work solely to oblige the
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