The Birmingham age-herald., 1914-08-08
POLICEMEN ARE TARGETS FOR JOKERS Gotham Cops Must Have
 Sense of HumOr TYPICAL INSTANCES Stomach Pump Is Sure Cure, How ever, for Feigned Illness-Mur-
 der Mysteries Plentiful On
 First of April

Two policemen stood on the Man
 hatton bank of the Harlem river ont
 day last week talking shop" Any
 suicides from High Bridge lately?s on,
 of them asked by way of keeping uf
 conversation, says the New York Her l aid.
 l The other was about to make reply
 when he chanced to glance up at the l bridge. What he saw gave him mo-
 mentary faith in the fictionally over worked god of coincidence.' Hurtling l down from the topmost point of the bridge was the coatless, hatless body of man. Over and over it spun in de- scent that to the onlooking policemen seemed interminab ble. Finally it struck with mighty splash and disappeared. The policemen hurried to the spot. They jumped into a rowboat and put cut to the rescue. Before they were well started the head of the bridge diver reappeared above the water and he be- gan a violent struggle to keep afloat The rescuers realized that no time was to be lost and bent desperately to their task of rowing. It was plain that the unfortunate man could not last long. The boat indeed. reached him just as he was sinking for the second tine. The policemen leaned out of lntiI IOtklUS liltlt tidit anu dt tnt iiSh of a ducking managed to pull the half drowned man aboard.
 Drama Turned to Farce Something which the policemen de- scribe as a merry horse laugh echo
 ing in concert from half hundred
 threats along the parapet above turned
 the drama into farce comedy at this juDcture. Looking about them for an
 explanation the policemen discovered a
 moving picture camera apparatus Ptrained upon them from the deck of a
 float rocking against the shore, with
 the enthusiastic operator hard at his
 task
 The situation dawned upon them
 with a bang They had unwittingly
 played secondary heroes in new
 movie thriller. They had contributed
 realism to a stunt that might have otherwise seemed set and artificial. In
 short. they had been made the butt Of a great joke. Of course the bridge
 Jumper and the camera man were ar rested, but they were only too glad to take a little walk to the police station by way of paying for their splendid days gain. especially so when they were at length freed by the magistrate The same thing is going on con
 stantly in this big town. Jokesmiths Iare playing their pranks on policemen
 and getting away with it,' too. As someone has phrased it, there are 365
 April Fool days on every police calen
 dar. The jolSes range all the way from
 murder clues which stir the best de- tectives of the department to strenuous endeavor for days at time, down to lie thousand and one crank letters and false telephone tips which filter in to the police stations every "A hours only to be detected before they have caused sny trouble
 Most of the plausible jokes have scme selfish excuse behind them. For instance, there's girl living up In Harlem who has run away from home three times during the last 6 months. The police have conducted search for her on each occasion at the instance of the parents. Each time the girl has returned home during the feverish search with a thrilling tale of having been Kidnapped
 The truth is that she has tired Of her lark every time she has essayed it and has concocted her adventure story to excuse her derelfction and offset the possible effects of parental ire. Run hing away has become habit with her But the police have to send out an alarm for the girl every time they are asked to. That's one of the drawbacks of having 5000, ,000-odd bosses as every New York policeman has.
 Closely akin to this species of fake is the stock robbery yarr of the not too prosperous husband who loses his weekly wages-or allowance, if he is or the henpecked tribe-in a poker game. This antediluvian joke is generally rec ognized by the desk lieutenant the min ute it is brought in. Some pretence of officail duty has to be kept up. however and so the victim's name is always taken and detective assigned to in- | vestigate.
 | Usually interrogation of the victim will disclose the weak point in his story and the detectives will be saved the trou- ble of any extended work, Of course this joke is dressed up in a new garb to fit the ideal of an unusual imagination every once in while, but in the rough | 1t journeys merrly along from year to year.
 One of the most famous cases in the police record of "unforrded reports"- for that is the way the various jokes are recorded--is known as the hand and foot
 fake" On the night of March 31, 1911 some small boys at play found a wrapped up cigar box on the sidewalk in 125th street near Lexington avenue. Thinking that some shopper had grown careless with his purchase and accidentally dropped it. the urchins grabbed the box up and started for a more secluded spot with a view to satisfying their suspicious by detailed inspection of the contents. They had not gone more than half a block before one of them opened the box and a dismembered human hand and foot bounced out on tEe cement. In- evitably the incident drew it's crowd. Cor oner Holtshauser and half dozen detec- lives were summoned posthaste, and quickly the newspaper reporters were on the scene gathering the details of another great murder mystery"
 Under the overturned box the first detec, tives on the scene found the torn scraps of what seemed to have been a letter written in German That added another element of mystery to the case. The de- tectives spent hours searching the side walks and street for fragments of the letter which had been scattered by the wind The next day--April Fools Day the search was extended to take in other possible clews. The excitement lasted for three or four days. Then one fine morn ing a chemist took the hand and foot to his laboratory subjected themO to a chemical test and found their veins to be full of preservative fluids such as are used in medical colleges to keep the ex- hibits in d fit state for study. Some col lege student with an eye to April Fool'' fun undoubtedly knows the unrevealed de- tails of the hand and foot fake.' After that murder clews began to de- velop all over town, but the police were not so quick to forget their lesson as some of the pokesters seemed to imagine. The various finds were subjected to the regulation tests as fast as they were brought in and in time the prank players tired of their assiduities and the incident took its place in the annals of forgotten fun.
 (lna varsion of this class of joke on the