New-York tribune., 1913-07-15
Smashing the Police Graft Trust
Should Be the Primary Aim
nf EuSinn
of Fusion.

Those who say that the police problem should
M. treated as q side issue in the fusion campaign
this fall ought to take time to reflect on the att-
tude of the police benevolent associations toward
the widow of former Captain Thomas W. Walsh
1t is reported that Mrs Walsh t. about to begin
court proceedings in order to force the payment OF
her share of the benefits derivable from the iour
associations Of which her husband was a member
These societies have apparently gone out of their
way to emphasize their disapproval of Captain
Walsh for giving the state the benefit of his guilty
knowledge of police graft transactions. They have
violated all precedents in Withholding from his
widow the sums due his estate for burial and other
expenses Yet the animus which they have shown Is
not surprising. The higher police officials to man
absented themselves from Walsh'S funeral thus
paving him the tribute of imp cable hostility which
exposed corruption always pays to the "informer
who exposes it.
The attitude Of the police powers toward Waisn
does not differ from their attitude toward all other
agents or agencies seeking to make the corrupt
alliance between those who execute the laws anu
those who break them less permanent and less
profitable They regard District Attorney whitman
as even more their enemy" than Walsh was, ana
they despise and defy that portion of the puoile
which is trying to restore the police force to its
public protection instead of an agency for private
enrichment through the sale of lawbreaking III
fulgences.
The perversion Of police administration from lts
true purposes is the groSsest example of the mis-
government from which the city suffers The au-
thoritv which the community should exercise mas
been taken from it and vested in the system
Ku Klux league partly inside and partly outside
the Police Department. To recover an authority
exercised in so shameless and defiant way Is the
most serious civic problem which can CONFRONT
in honest government.
~ The CITY has had various Mayors willing to give
if administrations devoted to preserving the out
ward appearance Of order and to improving mechan
ical routine in many departments But II mas never
vet had a Mayor who was equal to attacking ana
exposing the police System intrenched IN NS
stronghold Those who now advocate ignoring the
police issue and pledging the fusion cause instead
to reform which cannot cripple the System ana
in which it is, in fact but little interested are
merely repeating the blunders Of the past Corrup-
tion cannot be ouenched until the System is at
tackled in its citadel.
Moreover a kindly Providence has made avail
able this wear as a fusion candidate for Mayor
the one man who has ever struck the System a
saries of deadly blows and who is more familiar
than any other living New Yorker with its secrets
and the ways in which it may be further attacked
The poison Of police corruption works every day
and twenty-four hours in every day Until that
noison IS gotten out of the citys blood it is futile
n talk Of civic regeneration through bookkeeping
schemes of efficiency and economy.