RURAL POLICE 305 



just because they move about on large areas, seem to have some 

 influence on killing game out of season, but their organization 

 leaves much to be desired. 



What is needed may be inferred from the statement of essential 

 facts in the situation. We need a larger unit of police control ; 

 under our political arrangements the governor is the natural head 

 of all the forces of public safety. It would be a good beginning 

 to clothe the chief magistrate of every commonwealth with au- 

 thority to direct county sheriffs and to hold them to strict account. 

 But a more important measure would be to furnish the governor 

 with a complete and thoroughly organized corps of detectives, 

 plain clothes men and mounted police, under a professionally 

 trained chief responsible to the governor for methods and results. 

 In the central office would be found an identification bureau, with 

 Bertillon and finger print records, in close and regular corre- 

 spondence with the federal bureau of identification; and this 

 office would furnish descriptions at a moment's notice for any 

 point in the state or elsewhere. The state police force of a 

 state would cooperate with those of other states in matters of 

 detection, arrest and extradition. Suspicious characters in 

 villages and cities would be kept under espionage and plots would 

 be discovered and thwarted. Of the necessary legal adjustments 

 between municipal police, sheriffs and the state force this is 

 not the place to write. Such adjustments could easily be made in 

 accordance with precedents already established. 



The men of this country owe it to the wives and daughters of 

 farmers to provide for them better protection. Self-appointed 

 patrols are not enough, and the state ought not to leave private 

 citizens to guard their own barns and homes. The insolence, the 

 fierce passion and the dangerous brutality of certain types of 

 negroes in the South could be effectually curbed by a guard of 

 mounted police. It is the hope of immunity which nurses sexual 

 passion into assault. Animal impulses meet with their best 

 counter-stimulus and inhibition in the frequent and unexpected 

 appearance of alert and omnipresent mounted policemen. 



Certain results may fairly be expected : In the war with 

 crime it is essential to make the way of the transgressor as hard 

 as possible, and, at the same time, open ways to honest industry. 

 Wild animals disappear before the hunters of civilization. Gangs 



