Harrisburg telegraph. [volume] (Harrisburg, Pa.) 1879-1948, 1917-06-06
THE POLICE SURVEY

THE POLICE SURVEY
TNHERE is little of the sensational
and very much of the practical,
as was to have been expected,
in the report of the survey of the
Harrisburg Police Department made
by experts of the Bureau of Munich
pal Research of New York at the
instigation of the Chamber of Com
| merce. That the survey was we'll
worth while has been demonstrated
ments adopted and put into practice
by the department at the suggestion
of those who made the investigation.
Little has been developed that the
| average citizen familiar with con-
ditions did not suspect, but suspicion
having been confirmed as fact, it is
now the part of Council. and the
Chamber of Commerce as we'll, to
follow the survey with action that
eventually shall eliminate the exist
ing evils.
Aside from the vice suppression
recommendations the suggestion that
saloons be closed at midnight and
the elimination of politics from the
police force, probably no recon-
mendation will receive more general
commendation than that for the
passage of a State law abolishing the
Mayors police hearings and substi-
tuting therefor a police magistrates
court which would take over not
only the police hearings of the city
but the criminal suits OF all alder
men. 1t is a mistake to require this
police duty of the Mayor. AS at
present conducted, the hearings not
only lower the dignity of the office,
but take from the executive valuable
time that we'll might be devoted to
other uses. And as for the alder
men, it is a fact approaching scan
dal that aldermen for years nave been
living on criminal prosecutions that
ought never to have been brought,
or, If brought, quashed at the very
outstart. This does not apply to all
aldermen or even to a majority of
them, but the practice of farming"
the office has been frequent enough
to call forth. the condemnation of the
county authorities at times and to
make criminal court much more
costly every year than it would be
under some such well-conducted po-
lice magistrate system as suggested
by the survey report.
Police knowledge of the existence
of commercialized vice in Harrisburg
is an open secret. It's suppression
has been attempted from time to
time, but only sporadically. Failure
to reduce it to a minimum has re-
suited in the expressed belief of some
police officials that the evil is incur
able; that when it is pus down one
place it springs up another But it
is a fact, nevertheless, that Harris
burg police never have tried seri-
ously to prevent this condition. Lax
liquor regulation. all-night saloons
and drinking places that cater to a
mixture of the sexes are all encour-
agements to commercialized vice.
Close the saloons at 1: o'clock or
put them out of business altogether
and the disorderly house problem
will be more than half solved. In
the meantime, as the survey experts
recommend, vigorous and continu-
Gus prosecution of the evil wherever
1t lifts its head will do as much to
suppress it as prompt arrest and
punishment do to keep down rob-
berry, murder or other crimes.
That Harrisburg has real traffic
problem" nobody who has occasion
to use the downtown streets in the
busy hours will deny. The survey
recommends as remedy proper po-
lice regulation and precisely what
the TELEGRAPH brought about
when last winter it published a series
of editorials and articles which re-
suited in the street railways COM
pany employing an expert to recon-
mend remedies for existing evils,
which report is now in the process
of formulation.
Taken as a whole, the survey was
worth the money it cost-or will be.
if its recommendations in the main
are put into effect as they should be.