Though they may
be armed as a protection from the drink-crazed, there is no evidence
of gun or club. They are not seen drinking in the saloons. They do
not meet you with rum-befouled breaths as in most cities, but with a
_welcoming_ face and a clear eye. Here the unfortunate is given kindly
consideration. In return, the Boston public seems to co-operate in
helping the police. The secret of this valued quality of the police of
Boston lies in the fact that the police are indirectly appointed by
the Governor of the State,--that is, the Governor appoints the Police
Commissioner, and he in turn chooses his officers, _after they have
passed a satisfactory civil service examination_ at the State House.
Such police officials should not receive the sobriquet of "bull" or
"cop," but that of "officer" and "gentleman."
The American citizen who chances to be a police officer is not brutal
by choice, but by command of the system which forces him to be brutal.
In municipalities where police brutality is their shame, the change
can only come through the elector and the tax-payer. A well regulated
city is one founded on the human rights of all the people, and a well
regulated police is the strong right arm of a good city government.
"What of the impostor at the Municipal Emergency Home?"
Study teaches us that the out-of-work men who are so from choice,
those that are mentally and physically normal, among the migratory
workers, are exceedingly rare. If we hesitate at a Municipal Emergency
Home and let ninety worthy men suffer or perish because ten out of
the hundred are unworthy, why not close our public libraries, our
hospitals, our parks, in fact, every public benevolence, lest some
unworthy ones creep in?
We strive to weed out the impostor in many communities by throwing
all idle men in prison, and when they cannot be used as a graft, and
become an expense, or the awakened humane spirit of the city demands
that they shall no longer commit this outrage, they are often run
out of town. Or, after they have been humiliated by arrest, they are
hauled in the police wagons to the outskirts of the city with a prison
threat not to return, and turned destitute onto the next community.
But this clearance test will not stand the light of constitutional
liberty. Though our missions and churches are filled with many grand
good people, the crucial treatment of the wage-earner is the underlying
reason for the crumbling of our Christian faith. The Carpenter of
Nazareth never questioned the man in need who came to learn of Him. To
heal him, that was the predominant thought of His mind.
Are we, all of us, quite sure that we have not, during some period of
our lives, appeared true and genuine when false? Let us not forget
that the highest conception of a citizen of a Christian city is not
what a man was yesterday, but what he is to-day, and what he is going
to be to-morrow, and what we are going to help him to be.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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