2i2 The New York Police Force 



to keep the department honest and efficient for any 

 length of time ; and the machine politicians, by their 

 opposition outside the board, and by the aid of any 

 tool or ally whom they can get on the board, can 

 always hamper and cripple the honest members of 

 the board, no matter how resolute and able the lat- 

 ter may be, if they do not have an aroused and 

 determined public opinion behind them. 



Besides suffering, in aggravated form, from the 

 difficulties which beset the course of the entire ad- 

 ministration, the police board had to encounter and 

 honest and efficient police boards must always en- 

 counter certain special and peculiar difficulties. It 

 is not a pleasant thing to deal with criminals and 

 purveyors of vice. It is very rough work, and it 

 can not always be done in a nice manner. The man 

 with the night stick, the man in the blue coat 

 with the helmet, can keep order and repress open 

 violence on the streets ; but most kinds of crime and 

 vice are ordinarily carried on furtively and by 

 stealth, perhaps at night, perhaps behind closed 

 doors. It is possible to reach them only by the 

 employment of the man in plain clothes, the de- 

 tective. Now the function of the detective is pri- 

 marily that of the spy, and it is always easy to 

 arouse feeling against a spy. It is absolutely nec- 

 essary to employ him. Ninety per cent of the most 

 dangerous criminals and purveyors of vice can not 

 be reached in any other way. But the average citi- 

 zen who does not think deeply fails to realize the 

 necessity for any such employment. In a vague way 



