failure to perform these services is equivalent to an application for discharge. Efficiency in the line of duty will not atone for a lack of zeal in elections, and skill in detecting crime is of less moment or value than skill in managing primaries or conventions. Thus, the morale of the force is constantly being depreciated. It is impossible to appeal to its professional pride, its enthusiasm, or its professional esprit de corps. And the members of the organization, instead of constituting a dignified and respectable department of the municipal government, degenerate into time-serving placemen.
As a matter of experience, we have learned to expect, at the end of a newspaper paragraph announcing the perpetration of a crime, the assurance that no arrests have been made; and the comparative immunity of the criminal classes among us is a continual disgrace to our civilization.
The police system of some European cities is far more efficient than anything of the same sort in this country. Especially is this true of Paris. It may be objected that in the latter city the system is too efficient, and partakes too largely of a method of espionage and surveillance. I think that this objection would be valid. The Parisian police force would not be, and ought not to be, tolerated in any American city; but the reasons for this apply to some of the inquisitorial and detective purposes for which the force is used, and do not apply to the plan on which it is organized.
I would make the police service a profession in the same sense that the army is now a profession. Let its rank and file be composed of enlisted men who would be subject to discipline and dishonorable dismission for proper cause, in accordance with appropriate regulations adopted for the government of the force, but who could not be otherwise discharged. Let the officers be gentlemen trained to their profession, men holding a commission as honorable and desirable as that held by a military officer and subject to similar conditions. Let promotions be made for faithful and efficient service, and in recognition of exceptional ability.
Let the service be organized on the theory that it is a worthy profession for men of high character and ability. Let it be lifted out of the domain of politics and take its proper position as a department of the city government—a department which can in no way be affected by the mutations which attend the annual elections—and we would have as a result a police force which, either as to its personnel or the character of the work which it would perform, would be unexcelled.
The best method of raising the revenue necessary for carrying on the municipal government is an intricate problem, and one which, at one time or another, has received a great deal of attention. The systems in operation in different localities are widely different, and the proper discussion of any of them would not be practicable at this time.
