Crime -- United States; Criminal justice, Administration of -- United States; Criminals -- United States
Thus, for example, there are men in the detective bureau of New York
City who know by name, and perhaps have a speaking acquaintance with,
a large number of the pick-pockets and burglars of the East Side. They
know their haunts and their ties of friendship or marriage. When any
particular job is pulled off they have a pretty shrewd idea of who is
responsible for it and lay their plans accordingly. If necessary,
they run in the whole gang and put each of them through a course of
interrogation, accusation, and browbeating until some one breaks down
or makes a slip that involves him in a tangle. These men are special
policemen whose knowledge makes them detectives by courtesy. But
their work does not involve any particular superiority or quickness of
intellect--the quality which we are wont to associate with the detection
of crime.
Now, if the ordinary householder finds that his wife's necklace has
mysteriously disappeared, his first impulse is to send for a detective
of some sort or other. In general, he might just as well send for his
mother-in-law. Of course, the police can and will watch the pawnshops
for the missing baubles, but no crook who is not a fool is going to
pawn a whole necklace on the Bowery the very next day after it has been
"lifted." Or he can enlist a private detective who will question the
servants and perhaps go through their trunks, if they will let him.
Either sort will probably line up the inmates of the house for general
scrutiny and try to bully them separately into a confession. This may
save the master a disagreeable experience, but it is the simplest sort
of police work and is done vicariously for the taxpayer, just as the
public garbage man relieves you from the burden of taking out the
ashes yourself, because he is paid for it, not on account of your own
incapacity or his superiority.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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