New Britain herald., 1926-08-14
POLICE IN CANTON
 IGNORING INQUIRY
Giving Little Aid in Hunting
 Mellat'S SlayerS

Canton, O., Aug. 1.-The most
 conspicuous phase of the situation
 in Canton today is the total absence
 of the police department from a
 part in the cleanup precipitated by
 the murder of Don R. Mellett, editor
 of the Canton Daily News.
 The department is anathema to
 those who are carrying on the work.
 It was against it that the Daily
 News launched its most vigorous edi-
 torial attacks.
 A host of private investigators
 have been loosed on the town, not
 only to find the murderers, but to 1 ferret out the supposed conspiracy of liquor vendors and jungle" criminals responsible for plotting the crime. The aid of the towns own department has been neither sought nor offered.
 It has become a street-corner platitude that there are four men in the town who, although possibly not directly implicated, are power- ful enough in the underworld to be able to tell the whole story if they will One of the four is an officer in the police department.
 The names of these four have ap- ] peared in both of the two separate 1 investigations under way here and also in information held by the fed eral district attorney in Cleveland.
 The bitterness caused by MT. Mel let's editorial war on the police l played large part in the strife and acrimony which famed up after he was shot and delayed for almost a month a whole-hearted effort to penetrate to the bottom of the civic condition which made it possible for 1 a harassed underworld to brush aside it's most militant foe. The only member of the depart ment who is now taking an active part in the Investigations is Earl A. Hexamer, the safety director, who has been acting as chief of police since S. A. Lengel was suspended.
 c. B. McClintock. county prosecu- tor, is depending for his police work on Ora Slater, a private detective. Joseph R. Roach, the Chicago. law yer here as speci I prosecutor, al- though technically is adviser" to Acting Chief Hexamer, is steering clear of the department and has his own corps of investigators.
 The deposition of Chief Lengel | immediately after the murder was unanswered because of the long fight which "The Daily News" had l waged upon him and upon the civil l him in office.
 The principal charge the paper made against the chief was laxity. The more serious charges were made ! against some of his subordinates, and it was among them that MT. | Mellett's bitterest enemies were to | be found.
 Town Admits Vice Condition
 The editors crusades probably | stirred up more factional bad feel | ing. because they always struck at | the police department, than would have been the case had they only i arraigned the Jungle" The depart ment had its political strings.
 The manifold ramifcations of Jungle 'bootlegging, narcotic ped ding and vice has been clearly re- vealed as an aftermath of the edit or's murder, and now Is accepted by formerly dissenting citizens as sad, but fact.
 The way in which these ramifca- tions linked the Jungle" and the police department. as the newspaper alleged, is what Roach, the federal prosecutor, now is trying to deter mine. He will take his evidence to a federal grand jury.
 Already 1t is possible to see the highly efficient way in which the iungleland "down-the-hill" from the towns business section went about it's business.
 "Jungle' Unprepossessing
 It was the contention of the news paper that such efficiency was made possible by protection from "up-the hill" at headquarters. .....
 Its attacks were directly upon the department. and upon the Jungle" by implication. .......
 This now notorious Jungle" is not an unprepossessing district at first sight. It centers upon southeast Cherry and Tuscarawas streets and, thrusts it's branches out along dln- gier side streets for several blocks in either direction.
 Cherry and Tuscarawas streets are broad, we'll paved and enlivened even at night only by portly allen merchants flaming themselves be- fore shops, or groups of children or young "sheiks" lettering on the cor ners. It's automobiles are in the eight cylinder class, and it's only gloomy spots are the twenty or more darkened buildings with liquor padlocks on their doors. There IS nothing sinister about it.
 Yet it is this neighborhood which has produced the majority of the characters cast in dark roles in the present upheaval.
 The neat apportionment of power among the leaders of the Jungle" apparently never disturbed Canton until Mir. Melletts newspaper began to trace it to an equally remarkable alignment with members of the po- lice department.
 Working along this line, in his ef- fort to find the murderers, McClin- tock, the county prosecutor, an- nounced today that a conference yesterday with District Attorney Bernstein in Cleveland had revealed that many of the same names ap- peared in evidence he had gathered here and in liquor conspiracy evil dence about Canton which the dis trict attorney had accumulated.
 Seeks Trigger Man"
 McClintock, however, is not con- cerned with the liquor conspiracy. Roach is investigating that phase. and his detective, Slater {