POLICE GRAFT.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LV, Issue 71, 10 August 1912, Page 5

POLICE GRAFT.

CAMPAIGN AO A INST CORRUPTION. By Cable—Tress Association—Copyright. New York. August 8. John 1). Rockefeller and son ale interesting themselves in the war against the vice revealed by the Rosenthal murder. Young Rockefeller has been conducting a resort in the Tenderloin district to obtain evidence of the corruption of the police.

THE ROSENTHAL CASE. A writer in the Sydney Sun suggests that Rosenthal, the man who was shot dead in New York after be had made charges of ''graft" against the police, was the victim of the police. Rosenthal was a well-known gambler. Gambling "joints" are conducted in New York by the score, and the police arc bribed to take no notice of them. If a man wants to run a gambling school, his first move is to approaeli an influential '•'go-be-tween," who will interview the captain of the police district in which it is proposed to establish the "joint." If the terms suggested are satisfactory to both sides, the gambling school will throw open its steel doors and invite all and sundry to partake of the dice game of "craps," roulette, and the many card games played in the gambling saloons throughout the United States. "Considering that there are 5,000.000 inahibtants in New York," says this writer, "the field for the gambler's operations is extensive. If the police lid is not down on graft—and it very rarely is—there are gambling dens in nearly every street, and their owners and the officials high up are reaping harvests of dollars. Not only is graft associated with gambling, but the police anu politicians have a thousand different ways of working on the public systems for extracting money from their victims, probably unknown in any other part of the world." Rosenthal, it is suggested, was one of those gambling saloon proprietors who were squeezed by the police and other Tammany blackmailers until he was goaded to tlie point of rebellion. He made open charges qgainst the Tammany-controlled police, and Tammany retaliated by •"removing Rosenthal." There are thousands of police informers who are at liberty because of their service to the force, and one of these might easily be forced to take bis choice between the shooting of a man of "Rosenthal's anti-graft tendencies or going to gaol for an indefinite period. In conclusion, the Run writer prophesies tn:'.t even if Rosenthal's murderer is arrested he will escape sentence.