CORRUPT POLICE.

Greymouth Evening Star, Volume XXXI, 2 April 1901, Page 4

CORRUPT POLICE.

Officers who Regularly ilccuse Innocents. Chicago is a recognised haunt of tramps and theives, and it is asserted hy a writer in “M’Clurc’s Magazine” for February that wherever tramps and theives are permitted to congregate in large numbers in American cities the municipal authorities arc not acting honestly, the freedom of the criminal class to congregate being hold to he evidence of police corruption. It is (irmly believed that there exists in such cities an understanding between a number of the thieves and some of the defectives, and that it is comparilivcly easy to get out of the clutches of the law when (here is sulllcient money' to hand round to the various persons with influence. The Pinkerton Detective Agency, it is said, could moreover protect Chicago for less than fwo-thhds of what (lie

municipal police department non* costs the tax-payers, and the protection would be real and thorough. The writer of the article gets his information from the tramps, theives and burglars themselves, and tells the following incident in confirmation of his allegation;—• A Glaring Case. “George Worjngton and a campanion called Kennedy some time ago held up an elderly gentleman at the corner of Western Avenue and Sixteenth street, taking away the man’s watch and some money. An innocent man was arrested for the crime, and hound over to the grand jury. In course of time his case came to the notice of an acquaintance of mine, who made an investigation, and discovered that the accused man had not been away from his home on the night the robbery took place longer than was necessary to step across the street on which he lived to a saloon.

“ It so happened that Worington and Kennedy, together with the policeman who made the arrest, were in the saloon at the time the innocent man entered it. Worington and Kennedy left almost immediate]}', and half an hour after the innocent man had returned to his home the policeman arrested him as the guilty person.

“He would certainly have been punished had not this private investigator threatened an exposure of the whole affair, when the innocent man was quietly released.”

It is, of course, necessary for police officers and detectives to mix up with the class of people whom they arc expected to keep under control, and sometimes no doubt they have to be, in the performance of their duty, parties to very queer transactions, but the Chicago police and the police ot: some oilier American cities arc just now under the cloud of very grave accusations which remain for the most part unanswered.