Topic 39
 POLICE AND CITIZENSHIP

IF you'll promise to mail this promptly," said Colonel Roosevelt one day in 1918, "I'll let you in on a State secret — our friend Arthur Woods is going to France on a special assignment.  This contains some letters I am giving him to Clemenceau and others he may wish to meet.  He is an excellent fellow, and I'd like to help him."

"He made a good Police Commissioner, Colonel," I observed.

"The best New York ever had," came the prompt answer.  " I used to think that honor belonged to me, but it no longer does — Woods has been a better man than I was.  If that letter were not sealed, you’d find I say so in the enclosures.  You like Woods?"

" Yes, he's a friend of mine — he tried to help me get into the army."
" Did n't you like his police work?"

"Yes, sir, though until you had spoken I would not have ranked him quite so high.  I always felt that niche was permanently filled by you."

"I did myself; but to be entirely honest Woods has done everything I did as well as I ever did it, and he's done other things much better.  In some respects his work was easier, but this, I think, was more than offset by the changed conditions, the growth of the city, and a large increase in the potentially criminal classes.  Crime has become more refined — by that I do not mean criminals have become cultured — but that, as in other trades, criminals have made progress.  They have had newer and better tools to work with — the automobile is an example — new implements, and there have been more types of crime and criminals.

"The wealth of the city has increased enormously, especially its easily portable wealth; it has spread out more, and more than ever the city has become to America what Paris is to the world — a playground for men and women, particularly men, with more or less money and more or less sense.  This has served to bring in a larger number of criminal types of both sexes — you know what I mean — and it has made police work more difficult.

"Under Woods's control of the police New York is cleaner than it ever was — infinitely cleaner than I was ever able to make it.  New York, with all that has been said about it, has never been as unclean as other great cities of the world.  I am not as familiar with vice abroad as I have been with what we have had in New York, but I know we have had less than London, Paris, Vienna, Berlin, or other big cities.

We have been cleaner, too, than Chicago, San Francisco, or other large American cities.

"There has, it is true, been a sort of house cleaning in many of our big cities, and, I believe, a general improvement taking in the cities of the country as a whole, but that does not detract from the credit due Woods.  When I was Commissioner a reform wave in other cities usually sent the undesirables who were in funds here.  Presumably that sort of thing is still the rule.

"These changed conditions make it difficult to compare Woods's work with mine, but, on the whole, he did much better than I did, and as the friend of both, you might as well be prepared to concede it."

"I won't attempt to argue with you, but did n't he have your work to build on?" I asked.

"I'm glad you made that point — mighty glad.  To an extent, yes, but so did others — General Bingham, and Waldo, for example.  But only to a limited extent.  Had he followed immediately after me, that would be wholly true, but he did not and in between much of my work was undone.  Could he have come in immediately I left, he would have done even better.  You see what I mean?

"Woods is the sort of man I have always said should be in that office — he's a non-partisan; no politician had any strings on him.  To get the best results the head of the New York Police Department should be as nearly permanent as any public officer ever is, and he should be of the same non-partisan type that Woods has been while in office.  The theory that a temporary Commissioner can get the best results from a permanent police force is unsound.  It is this condition that was the life of what has been called 'the system.' We've all heard that 'the system' is dead.  I don't believe it.  I don't believe Woods believes that.  It has not been active, not been visible to the naked eye under Woods, but I think you'll find it has only been asleep.

"Woods was a splendid executive.  In all his work that I am familiar with he made one error that I consider serious.  That was with Enright — now in his place.  I told him, and I maintain now, that it was a serious error of judgment on his part, as it was on the part of others, not to give Enright the captaincy his place on the civil service list entitled him to.  As I told Woods, the just thing to do was to give him his promotion and see what he did with it.  If he did not do right, he could then break him.  I did not think his activity in department politics, so long as there was nothing else provable against him, should be allowed to keep from him the place that it was admitted he was competent to fill.

"That was bad judgment, I think, because it tended to make a martyr of him.  Woods would have done better to have tried other tactics.  However, that was a thing he had to decide for himself.

" In all other matters he has done splendidly.  You know that, despite my tyranny as Commissioner, I still have many good friends in the department.  The police, except the crooks I made life miserable for, have always been friendly to me.  What I mean is that I have always retained the intimate friendship of men who were under me in the department.  These men know what is going on and they have all told me Woods was all right.  They had no complaints to make, heard of none.  They all rejoiced in the absence of 'pull.' That has been the curse of the department.

"Under Woods the men have felt free, they all tell me, to do their work as it should be done.  They have not had to consider the politicians.  This has made their work easier and it has been better for the city.  I am not certain but that the politicians like it.  It makes less work for them, you know, less asking favors, less 'going to the front' for some scapegrace in trouble.  There have been Tammany leaders who have dropped men from their clubs as soon as they joined the police.  This was not done to discourage men from joining the force; these leaders would help men prepare for their civil service examination and that sort of thing, but they quit there.  They found policemen retainers to be something of a nuisance and at times worse.

"The police of New York, man for man, have always been a splendid lot.  They have been just as honest as the administration and the head of the department wished them to be.  There was more truth than poetry in what a captain or inspector — I think it was Herlihy — is said to have told Bingham: 'Put all your cards on the table.  I'm a cop and I'll do what I'm told to do; only let me know whether you mean what you say when you say it.' It was something like that.  That is the real spirit of the police — they'll be just as honest as the head of the department wishes them to be.  If he's honest and not influenced by dishonest politicians, they will run straight.  If dishonesty is favored or expected, the weaker ones most exposed to temptation will be dishonest.

"Woods, of course, was honest and he was not tempted or controlled by politicians and others.  Temperamentally he was admirably fitted for the place.  Mitchel left him a free hand.  Hence his success.

"Woods, by the way, was one of the very few of Mitchel's appointments that did not weaken him with the voter.  He blundered with Woods in not making more of his administration in his campaign for reelection.  It could have been made a very strong point.  Woods will do well in the army, but, personally, I would have preferred to have him stay at the head of the police.  He would have been of vastly greater value to the country there than in the army.  The law, however, made that impossible.

"When he comes out of the army I expect he will go into some sort of business.  His great executive ability will be in demand.  I do not suppose he will ever return to the police department.  He would hardly care to, though he never should have been allowed to leave it.

"Some day you may be called upon for your opinion of police commissioners.  If you are, put Arthur Woods first; if you wish, and feel that way, put me second.

"And if any one asks your authority, say I told you so."