POLICE SCANDALS.

Dominion, Volume 6, Issue 1671, 11 February 1913, Page 7

POLICE SCANDALS.

"GRAFT" IN NEW YORK.

By Telegraph-Frew Association— Copyright New York, February 9. Wholesale confessions of "graft" under .police protection of gaming houses have been made by keepers of such resorts at the, investigation into police methods. Ono witness admitted that he had paid the police for seventeen years, and that a regular system of tolls was lovied. Several police inspectors aro involved.

The troubles of Mr. Gaynor, the Mayor of New Ybrk, are .coming thick and fast (wrote the Washington correspondent of "The Times" on December 13). The Becker scandal showed his police drawing fat revenues from gambling hells and securing them by murder; before its echoes had died down tho Mayor's protege, Charles Hyde, was convicted of bribery; and now what the Mayor has called the "finest force in tho world" is accused of adding prostitution to crime as a source of income. "

■ The latest scandal is, indeed, said to have a close connection with'the Becker affair. Last Wednesday a woman 'called "Mrs. Mary Goode" told a Committee of Aldermen, which is investigating, the relations between the polioo and. the criminal classes, that tho sums mado by Becker had inspired some of his colleagues with the idea that prostitution as well as gambling offered a profitable field to the "crook." "Mrs. Goode's" reasons for appearing before the committee were sen-, sational enough. She was, it -appears, outside the "Vico Trust," a vaguely, defined group of keepers o.f disorderly houses who seemingly enjoy a monopoly of police "protection." Although she paid her regular blackmail of 60 dollars (,£l2) a month,, she was consequently "jobbed and mocked" and mulcted of most of her profits. Naturally her testimony has caused a great stir. In view of the revelations already made about the police, there is a disposition to take it at its face value. It is even suggested by newspapers like the "New York Times" and the "World" that it would be better to legalise vice and have it controlled by a committee of ordinary citizens as opposed to the present police control.