The Birmingham age-herald., 1909-09-07

~ sJ LDN"
 | tion under torture or otherwise. The only authority to question rests in the court in which the prisoner Is tried The police proceed upon a theory the exact opposite of that of the law They believe every man guilty until he is proven innocent. They punish him without trial. They act as judge. jury and eXecutioner. And they are the more ruthless the more helpless the person falling into the hands. Police meth ods make criminals worse than they would naturally be- We read of city | roughs who hated the law, and we think 1t just natural cussedness. We are wrong. Those men do not hate the law. They hate the police who abuse and maltreat them every time they are arrested. They are clubbed and drubbed on the street and in the cala- boose. Their arms are twisted until they talk or they are denied food and drink"
 Indeed the issue is not local.
 MT. Johnson, who has been for 50 years noted criminal lawyer, thus describes the situation: Tt is not go- ing beyond the domain of exact truth to assert that no ordinary citizen with out position political influence or wealth Is safe from an infringement of his rights if he unfortunately falls under the suspicion of the police. Tn such ease he is lucky if he escapes alone with deprivation of his liberty and is not subjected to humiliat tion, degradation, insult and assault The principal individual rights guaranteed by the constitution and the laws both state and national are not possessed by the mass of the people of our city, and the deprivation is through an usurped authority of the police depart ment, without right or reason'' And he adds:
 Caught in the Dragnet. One days visit to the courts will over whelmingly prove the charges made above. A morning paper says: More than half hundred men who sweltered in the cells of station houses during Sun | day, one of the most humid days of the summer. were adjudged innocent of wrong-doing when haled into police court Monday Again: There were l02 cases on the Clark avenue police court docket Monday. Of this number only 16 convc- | tions were recorded And this for one day, and about 100 falsely arrested credit ed to the police department. An exam | ination of the testimony in these cases will show that there was not particle l Of testimony to warrant these arrests 1 1t will show the most tyrannical abuse | of power in the officers making the ar- 1 rests, and heartless disregard of the | plainest dictates of humanity in unneces- 1 sarily shutting them up like negroes in the hole of slave ship with the ther- mometer at 90. Frequently in what is called the 'round-up' of certain localities a swarm of detectives go forth and indis- | criminately arrest persons and are at a loss to know what charge to put against | them; 1t usually ends with the entry,
 Held for the chief, or Idling.' | Passing to a consideration of the ''third ] daRrpa' the of Missouri expresses himself in the following force- | ful language: Note some of their official methods: They arrest citizens upon bare suspicion, and on the flimsiest hear | say evidence or at the dictum of their l chief The law-prescribing warrant, in l certain bases, is entirely ignored They | invade the sancity of the home and drag the innocent. male and female, at unsea- sonable hours of the night to the prison l But the principal outrages perpetrated by them occur after arresss and commitment to the cells of the hold-over. The occu- pant of the hold-over is a person against whom no formal charge IS made. "The arrested party. If suspected Of | complicity in a crime or thought to have | knowledge of others implicated therein, l is frequently brought forth and in the
 presence of members of the force is put | on the rack of series of the most in-
 genious questions, in fact, searching | cross-examination. When one official be-
 comes wearied another takes 1t up, in the effort to entrap the victim into in | obligatory statements. They are bent on | obtaining a confession from him. He
 may be innocent; they consider him gull ty. The more the accused insists on his
 innocence the more fiercely nsstent his
 examiners become. He is bullied. brow
 beaten. insulted, called foul names. and if especially obdurate and irritating to his tormentors, he Is cuffed and beaten. In administering the last indignity in va
 rious cities the favorite weapon is hard | piece of rubber hose. It bruises and 1 leaves no tell-tale lacerated flesh. This | ordeal for the accused, in the vulgar Ian | guage of the force, is called sweating"
 Admit Use of Torture. The recent bold avowal of the torture applied by the New York police to | Chinese in connection with the Elsie Slgel | case, and more than ordinarily full l exposure of police graft in Chicago, have 1 added fuel to the fire.
 Meanwhile the Georgia court of appeals, l in the case of Holmes vs. State, recently | upheld the right of a man to defend him
 self from illegal arrest. even at the cost
 of taking life The defendant in that case was a negro and used his gun af-
 ter the officer had shot at him. The
 Central Law Journal remarks: "The sac
 redness of one's person from illegal ar
 rest. or his habitation from unlawful n- l trusion, is often disregarded these later days, especially in our large cities, where | 1t frequently occurs that men are placed | under arrest without warrant and for
 offenses not committed in the presence of | the officer"
 Do you wonder that crime Is increas- ing?