Theodore Roosevelt: An Autobiography
any one Commissioner had power to hold up most of the acts of the other
three Commissioners. It was made easy for the four Commissioners to come
to a deadlock among themselves; and if this danger was avoided, it was
easy for one Commissioner, by intriguing with the Chief, to bring the
other three to a standstill. The Commissioners were appointed by the
Mayor, but he could not remove them without the assent of the Governor,
who was usually politically opposed to him. In the same way the
Commissioners could appoint the patrolmen, but they could not remove
them, save after a trial which went up for review to the courts.
As was inevitable under our system of law procedure, this meant that the
action of the court was apt to be determined by legal technicalities.
It was possible to dismiss a man from the service for quite insufficient
reasons, and to provide against the reversal of the sentence, if the
technicalities of procedure were observed. But the worst criminals
were apt to be adroit men, against whom it was impossible to get legal
evidence which a court could properly consider in a criminal trial
(and the mood of the court might be to treat the case as if it were a
criminal trial), although it was easy to get evidence which would render
it not merely justifiable but necessary for a man to remove them from
his private employ--and surely the public should be as well treated as
a private employer. Accordingly, most of the worst men put out were
reinstated by the courts; and when the Mayor attempted to remove one of
my colleagues who made it his business to try to nullify the work done
by the rest of us, the Governor sided with the recalcitrant Commissioner
and refused to permit his removal.
Nevertheless, an astounding quantity of work was done in reforming the
force. We had a good deal of power, anyhow; we exercised it to the full;
and we accomplished some things by assuming the appearance of a power
which we did not really possess.
The first fight I made was to keep politics absolutely out of the force;
and not only politics, but every kind of improper favoritism. Doubtless
in making thousands of appointments and hundreds of promotions there
were men who contrived to use influence of which I was ignorant. But
these cases must have been few and far between. As far as was humanly
possible, the appointments and promotions were made without regard to
any question except the fitness of the man and the needs of the
service. As Civil Service Commissioner I had been instructing heads
of departments and bureaus how to get men appointed without regard to
politics, and assuring them that by following our methods they
would obtain first-class results. As Police Commissioner I was able
practically to apply my own teachings.
The appointments to the police force were made as I have described
in the last chapter. We paid not the slightest attention to a man's
politics or creed, or where he was born, so long as he was an American
citizen; and on an average we obtained far and away the best men
that had ever come into the Police Department. It was of course very
difficult at first to convince both the politicians and the people that
we really meant what we said, and that every one really would have a
fair trial. There had been in previous years the most widespread
and gross corruption in connection with every activity in the Police
Department, and there had been a regular tariff for appointments
and promotions. Many powerful politicians and many corrupt outsiders
believed that in some way or other it would still be possible to secure
appointments by corrupt and improper methods, and many good citizens
felt the same conviction. I endeavored to remove the impression from the
minds of both sets of people by giving the widest publicity to what we
were doing and how we were doing it, by making the whole process open
and aboveboard, and by making it evident that we would probe to the
bottom every charge of corruption.
For instance, I received visits at one time from a Catholic priest, and
at another time from a Methodist clergyman, who had parishioners who
wished to enter the police force, but who did not believe they could
get in save by the payment of money or through political pressure. The
priest was running a temperance lyceum in connection with his church,
and he wished to know if there would be a chance for some of the young
men who belonged to that lyceum. The Methodist clergyman came from a
little patch of old native America which by a recent extension had been
taken within the limits of the huge, polyglot, pleasure-loving city. His
was a small church, most of the members being shipwrights, mechanics,
and sailormen from the local coasters. In each case I assured my visitor
that we wanted on the force men of the exact type which he said he could
furnish. I also told him that I was as anxious as he was to find out
if there was any improper work being done in connection with the
examinations, and that I would like him to get four or five of his men
to take the examinations without letting me know their names. Then,
whether the men failed or succeeded, he and I would take their papers
and follow them through every stage so that we could tell at once
whether they had been either improperly favored or improperly
discriminated against. This was accordingly done, and in each case my
visitor turned up a few weeks later, his face wreathed in smiles, to
say that his candidates had passed and that everything was evidently all
straight. During my two years as President of the Commission I think
I appointed a dozen or fifteen members of that little Methodist
congregation, and certainly twice that number of men from the temperance
lyceum of the Catholic church in question. They were all men of the
very type I most wished to see on the force--men of strong physique and
resolute temper, sober, self-respecting, self-reliant, with a strong
wish to improve themselves.
Occasionally I would myself pick out a man and tell him to take the
examination. Thus one evening I went down to speak in the Bowery at
the Young Men's Institute, a branch of the Young Men's Christian
Association, at the request of Mr. Cleveland H. Dodge. While there
he told me he wished to show me a young Jew who had recently, by an
exhibition of marked pluck and bodily prowess, saved some women and
children from a burning building. The young Jew, whose name was
Otto Raphael, was brought up to see me; a powerful fellow, with a
good-humored, intelligent face. I asked him about his education, and
told him to try the examination. He did, passed, was appointed, and
made an admirable officer; and he and all his family, wherever they may
dwell, have been close friends of mine ever since. Otto Raphael was a
genuine East Sider. He and I were both "straight New York," to use the
vernacular of our native city. To show our community of feeling and our
grasp of the facts of life, I may mention that we were almost the only
men in the Police Department who picked Fitzsimmons as a winner against
Corbett. Otto's parents had come over from Russia, and not only in
social standing but in pay a policeman's position meant everything to
him. It enabled Otto to educate his little brothers and sisters who had
been born in this country, and to bring over from Russia two or three
kinsfolk who had perforce been left behind.
Rather curiously, it was by no means as easy to keep politics and
corruption out of the promotions as out of the entrance examinations.
This was because I could take complete charge of the entrance
examinations myself; and, moreover, they were largely automatic. In
promotions, on the other hand, the prime element was the record and
capacity of the officer, and for this we had largely to rely upon the
judgment of the man's immediate superiors. This doubtless meant that in
certain cases that judgment was given for improper reasons.
However, there were cases where I could act on personal knowledge. One
thing that we did was to endeavor to recognize gallantry. We did not
have to work a revolution in the force as to courage in the way that
we had to work a revolution in honesty. They had always been brave
in dealing with riotous and violent criminals. But they had gradually
become very corrupt. Our great work, therefore, was the stamping out of
dishonesty, and this work we did thoroughly, so far as the ridiculous
bi-partisan law under which the Department was administered would
permit. But we were anxious that, while stamping out what was evil in
the force, we should keep and improve what was good. While warring
on dishonesty, we made every effort to increase efficiency. It has
unfortunately been shown by sad experience that at times a police
organization which is free from the taint of corruption may yet show
itself weak in some great crisis or unable to deal with the more
dangerous kinds of criminals. This we were determined to prevent.
Our efforts were crowned with entire success. The improvement in the
efficiency of the force went hand in hand with the improvement in
its honesty. The men in uniform and the men in plain clothes--the
detectives--did better work than ever before. The aggregate of crimes
where punishment followed the commission of the crime increased, while
the aggregate of crimes where the criminal escaped punishment decreased.
Every discredited politician, every sensational newspaper, and every
timid fool who could be scared by clamor was against us. All three
classes strove by every means in their power to show that in making the
force honest we had impaired its efficiency; and by their utterances
they tended to bring about the very condition of things against which
they professed to protest. But we went steadily along the path we
had marked out. The fight was hard, and there was plenty of worry and
anxiety, but we won. I was appointed in May, 1895. In February, 1897,
three months before I resigned to become Assistant Secretary of the
Navy, the Judge who charged the Grand Jury of New York County was able
to congratulate them on the phenomenal decrease in crime, especially
of the violent sort. This decrease was steady during the two years.
The police, after the reform policy was thoroughly tried, proved more
successful than ever before in protecting life and property and in
putting down crime and criminal vice.
The part played by the recognition and reward of actual personal prowess
among the members of the police force in producing this state of affairs
was appreciable, though there were many other factors that combined to
bring about the betterment. The immense improvement in discipline
by punishing all offenders without mercy, no matter how great their
political or personal influence; the resolute warfare against every kind
of criminal who had hitherto been able corruptly to purchase protection;
the prompt recognition of ability even where it was entirely unconnected
with personal prowess--all these were elements which had enormous weight
in producing the change. Mere courage and daring, and the rewarding of
courage and daring, cannot supply the lack of discipline, of ability,
of honesty. But they are of vital consequence, nevertheless. No police
force is worth anything if its members are not intelligent and honest;
but neither is it worth anything unless its members are brave, hardy,
and well disciplined.
We showed recognition of daring and of personal prowess in two ways:
first, by awarding a medal or a certificate in remembrance of the deed;
and, second, by giving it weight in making any promotion, especially to
the lower grades. In the higher grades--in all promotions above that of
sergeant, for instance--resolute and daring courage cannot normally
be considered as a factor of determining weight in making promotions;