POLICE TYRANNY by Editor

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Mountain View, California · Sep 21, 1904

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 30, No. 37.

POLICE TYRANNY.

By Editor

WHEN the spirit of imperialism becomes rampant it will not be satisfied in ruling far-distant colonies without their consent; it will manifest itself throughout the whole body politic, from Federal and state government down to police circles. That is the spirit of the age, and we shall see more of it instead of less as the days go by.

As an instance of this, note the tyranny of police in our cities, as shown by Justice W. J. Gaynor, of the Supreme Court of New York, in a recent decision of a Brooklyn case, Peter Hale, a restaurant and saloon-keeper, against Police Captain Joseph Burns. Mr. Hale asked for an order enjoining the police from entering his place without a warrant and interfering with business. Among other things the judge said:—

The facts disclosed in this case by the complaint and affidavits are undisputed in all essentials, and it is only necessary to state them to show the outrageous, criminal lawlessness being practised against the plaintiff by this captain of police. . . . We read of such official conduct in Russia and profess to be astonished over it, but we have had more of it in the city of New York for the last twenty-five years, and especially during the last eight or nine years, than there has been in any other place in the civilized world. . . . The defendant [police captain] evidently supposes that an arrest by a policeman in the City of New York is proof that the person arrested is a criminal, but this is not true anywhere, much less in the city of New York, where thousands of grossly illegal and oppressive arrests and trespasses have been made yearly at the instigation of police officials, especially in recent years.

But New York is not alone. She has many sister sufferers, in which corruption among police and officials is notorious.