The Metropolitan Police Law

image 1image 2image 3image 4cropped image 1

THE METROPOLITAN POLICE LAW.

The opponents of the Metropolitan police law seem inclined to hallo before they are out of the wood.¹ Relying upon the almost unanimous repudiation of the law by the representatives of the district, they forget to take into consideration the Governor's veto power, which he has as good as promised to exercise if necessary, by undertaking in his message to declare his approval of the measure and its workings.

It is not probable that the supporters of the law will defend its more obnoxious features—such as the high pay; but they will probably contend that the system has not yet received a fair trial, though it has been in operation for several months. And there is more in this plea than would at first appear. The Commissioners have met with obstacles from all quarters, hardly yet surmounted; above all, they have had to deal—in this city at least—with incompetent elected superior officers, and a rank and file, most of whom owed their appointment to political considerations and aldermanic favor. Many of the most objectionable features now observed in our police force, have descended to us from the old system, instead of being the creation of the new.

We think our representatives, and all who desire that the city should have an efficient police force, will only defeat their object by an indiscriminate assault upon the present system. By opposing it in toto, they will make the police system what it never should be, a party question, besides exasperating the Governor's party, and inducing them to defend even the most faulty provisions of the law. If, on the contrary, our representatives will confine their objections to those parts of the law which it is on all hands agreed are in need of amendment, the better features may be retained, and a good and valuable force may slowly but surely be collected.

We must have a force, of some sort or other; and if the present system were altogether demolished the chances are that it would be succeeded by a far more objectionable one. The wisest plan therefore is, to retain the present system as a basis, improving on it as need be, amending its obnoxious provisions. Mayor Powell's late message points these out with great clearness and distinctness.² The enormous salaries, and contingent expenses, adding fifty per cent to our yearly payments; the unwielding centralising Board, transferring one of the departments of the government of Brooklyn to the other side of the river, and imposing on us a portion of the expense of maintaining the costly array of bureaucrats in New York, beside the police offices in our City Hall—these matters require alteration by the Legislature, and the sooner the better. But even with these drawbacks, the system has given us a better disciplined and more efficient force then we ever had before. That political influence is as sedulously kept at arm's length in making appointments, as it should be, we do not pretend to assert; but at least, an inquiry is extended into a man's character, before he obtains a position; and the public are spared the insult and disgrace of seeing literally "rogues set to catch rogues." The complaints about the political management of the force come, too, from that immaculate class who have gone the furthest, and worked the hardest, to prostitute the public service to party ends; and who, if they regained control of the police, would make it ten times more the engine of faction and partisanship than it ever has been heretofore.

---