Chapter 2

WHAT THE PUBLIC HEARD ABOUT THE CRIME

On Thursday, February 15, 1912, the New York evening papers had a
startling news story.

Between ten and eleven o’clock that morning two messengers were sent in
a taxicab from the East River National Bank, at Broadway and Third
street, to draw $25,000 in currency from the Produce Exchange National
Bank, at Broadway and Beaver street, in the downtown financial district,
and bring it uptown. This transfer of money had been made several times
a week for so long a period without danger or loss that the messengers
were unarmed. One of them, Wilbur F. Smith, was an old man who had been
in the service of the bank thirty-five years, and the other was a mere
boy, named Wardle, seventeen years old. The taxicab man, an Italian
named Geno Montani, seemed almost a trusted employee, too, for he
operated two cabs from a stand near the bank, and was frequently called
upon for such trips.

While the cab was returning uptown through Church street with the money,
five men suddenly closed in upon it. According to the chauffeur’s story,
a sixth man forced him to slacken speed by stumbling in front of the
vehicle. Immediately two men on each side of the cab opened the doors.
Two assailants were boosted in and quickly beat the messengers into
insensibility, while their two helpers ran along on the sidewalk. The
fifth man climbed onto the seat beside the chauffeur, held a revolver to
his ribs, and ordered him to drive fast on peril of his life. This
fellow seemed to be familiar with automobiles, and threatened the driver
when he tried to slacken speed. That is a busy part of the city. Yet
nobody on the sidewalks seemed to notice anything out of the ordinary.
The cab dodged vehicles, going at high speed for several blocks. At Park
Place and Church street, after a trip of eleven blocks, at a busy
corner, the chauffeur was ordered to stop the cab, and the three robbers
got down, carrying the $25,000 in a leather bag, ran quickly to a black
automobile without a license number which was waiting for them, and in a
few moments were gone.

That was the substance of the story.

Information came chiefly from the chauffeur, because the two bank
employees had been attacked so suddenly and viciously that they lost
consciousness in a moment. When the chauffeur looked inside his cab
after the crime, he said, he saw them both lying senseless and bleeding.
They could give no description of the assailants. Eye-witnesses were
found who had seen men loitering in the neighborhood where the cab was
boarded shortly before the crime, but their descriptions were not very
useful.

That night the New York evening papers published accounts of the crime
under great black headlines, and on the following morning every news
item of a criminal nature was grouped in the same part of the papers to
prove that the city had entered one of its sensational “waves of crime.”
And for more than a week the public read criticism and denunciation of
the police force.

It was charged that the police had become “demoralized,” and various
changes of administrative policy introduced into the department within
the past eight months were blindly denounced.

The most important of these changes was that devised by Mayor Gaynor.
Eight or ten years ago, every uniformed policeman in New York carried a
club, and often used it freely in defending himself while making
arrests. Abuses led to the abolition of this means of defense except for
officers patrolling the streets at night. There were still undoubted
abuses, however, and when Mayor Gaynor came into office, bringing
well-thought-out opinions of police administration from his experience
as a magistrate on the bench, he took a determined stand for more humane
methods of making arrests, and strict holding of every policeman to the
letter of the laws. Every case of clubbing was prosecuted, the plain
legal rights of citizens or criminals upheld, and the Police Department
began teaching its men new ways of defending themselves by skillful
holds in wrestling whereby prisoners may be handled effectually and
without doing them harm. Sentiment against the use of the club began to
grow in the Police Department itself, it being recognized that clubbing
was an unskillful means of defense, and that special athletic devices
were more workmanlike.

Now, however, the newspapers published every chance opinion of
discharged, retired and anonymous police officers who objected to the
new regulations. It was alleged that criminals had got out of bounds
because policemen no longer dared club them into good behavior, and the
editors, without paying much attention to the many good points of the
new regulations, or trying to understand the merits of a settled policy
applied to an organization of more than ten thousand men, set up a cry
for the presumably “good old days” of Inspector So-and-So and Chief
This-and-That, when every known criminal was promptly struck over the
head on sight and thereby taught to know his place. If the files of New
York journals for those days following the robbery are examined they
will reveal a curious exhibition of pleading for official lawlessness
and autocracy.

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Another point of criticism centered on a new method adopted in the
distribution of the detective force. This comprises more than five
hundred men. For years they were all required to report at Police
Headquarters every day, coming from distant precincts, and had an
opportunity to see whatever professional criminals were under arrest.
Then they went back to different precincts to work. This took too much
time, it was found, and the old-fashioned “line-up” of criminals was
chiefly a spectacle, the same offenders dropping into the hands of the
police with more or less regularity. So detectives were re-distributed
on a plan that attaches a proper number of plain-clothes policemen to
each precinct, according to its needs, and in those precincts the men
live and become acquainted with local criminals. Many of them work in
sections where they were born, and detectives speaking foreign languages
are assigned to foreign quarters.

The newspapers charged that red-tape had brought the Police Department
to such a low state that young detectives had no idea what a real
criminal looked like, and urged the restoration of the old system, with
its picturesque “line-up.”

In the days of Inspector Byrnes, when practically all the banking of the
city was done around Wall Street, the police established a “dead line”
beyond which criminals were supposed not to operate. In its day, the
“dead line” was real enough, undoubtedly. But it was not necessarily an
ideal police measure, and the growth of the city has long made it a mere
memory, living only in newspaper tradition. To-day, banking extends as
far north as Central Park, and millions upon millions of dollars are
being carried about daily by people of every sort. Despite the fact that
the last loss of money from a New York bank through professional
criminals (apart from fraud and forgery) dated back some fifteen or
eighteen years, the newspapers seemed to agree that life and property
were no longer safe in the city because this purely mythical “dead line”
had been disregarded by the robbers.

There was other comment of the same character, and it had an immediate
and grievous effect.

On the day after the robbery a chance remark about a safe in an East
Side bank, coupled with the general excitement, led to a run of its
depositors, chiefly people of foreign birth. The bank was solvent, and
the run was undoubtedly stimulated by gossip started by criminals for
their own ends. But the frightened depositors insisted on drawing out
their money, and exposing themselves to danger of robbery and assault.
The situation was met by careful police co-operation.

About six months before the taxicab robbery, the New York legislature
put into force a measure known as the “Sullivan law,” providing
penalties for the carrying of pistols and concealed weapons. This is
unquestionably a wise measure fundamentally, and one that was badly
needed for police administration and public safety. It is perhaps open
to certain modifications, to be made as actual conditions are
encountered in practical working of the law. Newspaper opinion drew a
connection between this law and the “wave of crime,” and its repeal was
urged, so that every citizen might arm himself as he pleased. Hundreds
of persons who had felt safe in going about their business unarmed now
applied for permits to carry pistols.

Fortunately, a sensation does not last long in New York.

Though the Police Department felt this criticism keenly, and was
hampered by it, pressure began to slacken in about a week. Other
sensations came along. There was nothing to publish about the taxicab
case, as police information was withheld for good official reasons.
Presently the town ventured to joke about the case. At an elaborate
public dinner one night, among other topical effects, a dummy taxicab
suddenly scooted out before the guests, held up a dummy police
commissioner, took his watch, and scooted away again. The diners
laughed, and that was fairly representative of the town, which was now
ready to have its joke about the crime, too. Had there never been any
further action by the police, the case would have quietly dropped out of
sight. But fortunately there was police action, and with that we shall
now deal.

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