68 NEW YORK ZOOLOGICAL SOCIETY 



Two years ago the order went forth from the Mayor's 

 office that all commissions held by special policemen should be 

 revoked. That order was duly transmitted to us by the Police 

 Commissioner's office. It affected the seven men of our force 

 on whom we had been relying for the protection of the Park 

 and its visitors. 



During the years 1909-11, inclusive, the police service in 

 the Zoological Park had become notoriously inefficient. This 

 was due to an endless chain of changes in assignments, by which 

 no officer was permitted to remain on duty in the Park long 

 enough to become familiar with the situation, or to become really 

 interested in it. Our urgent requests for permanent details for 

 the good of the service, and general economy also, were firmly 

 refused. The most hopeless of all policemen is the one who 

 is assigned each day to a new post, and has no chance to be- 

 come specially interested in any one. Officers who came as 

 strangers to the Park, to be here today and gone tomorrow, 

 were careful not to make any arrests, because an arrest often 

 meant an attendance at court on the following day on their 

 own time. Thanks to this system of constant changes, some 

 of the regular police officers detailed for duty in the Park were 

 like wax figures in police uniform, and little more. 



Worse than this, in 1912 and '13 the men of the police 

 force appearing in our Park were so terrorized that they did not 

 dare to make an arrest for an ordinary offense unless forced to 

 do so by some Park employee. I know this because I heard the 

 late Captain Hodgins instruct two of his policemen in the Park 

 to "make arrests whenever called upon to do so by Park keepers, 

 or other Park employees, but not otherwise" ; and at that time 

 I informed him that services on such a basis as that were of 

 very little value to us. This was during the period of demorali- 

 zation when "the citizen" was exalted and the officer of the law 

 was browbeaten and discredited. 



With the removal of our own special policemen, the Park 

 was left almost defenseless, A direct appeal to the Mayor final- 

 ly resulted in the reappointment of our special officers, Messrs. 

 Merkel, Costain, Von Benschoten and three others. Although 

 this gave us power to make arrests, it did not provide for the 

 handling of the great crowds on Saturdays and Sundays, when 

 rubbish-throwing and the annoying of animals was particularly 

 rife. Finding these features of the situation quite beyond our 

 control, and receiving in them no help whatsoever from the 



