There are many complaints in Paris that the police are short-handed, especially in the streets. The average is sixteen to a quarter inhabited by 30,000 to 40,000 people, so that the beats are long and the patrol work severe, especially at night, though the numbers of the _sergents de ville_ are then doubled. Some say that the streets of Paris are more unsafe in the more remote districts than those of any capital of Europe. The police are much abused, too, by the Radical and Irreconcilable Press. It is not uncommon to read in the daily papers such headlines as the following: "Crimes of the Police," "Police Thieves," "Murder by a _Sergent de Ville_"--generally gross exaggerations, of course. The truth, no doubt, is that the police of Paris, taken as a whole, are a hard-working, devoted, and generally estimable body of public servants. [Illustration: A VISIT FROM THE DETECTIVES.] CHAPTER IX. MODERN POLICE (_continued_): NEW YORK. Greater New York--Despotic Position of the Mayor--Constitution of the Police force--Dr. Parkhurst's Indictment--The Lexow Commission and its Report--Police Abuses: Blackmail, Brutality, Collusion with Criminals, Electoral Corruption, the Sale of Appointments and Promotions--Excellence of the Detective Bureau--The Black Museum of New York--The Identification Department--Effective Control of Crime. New York, by its latest charter of government, takes in the whole of the outlying suburban districts, and has become the second city in the world. It is known now as Greater New York, and its present municipal constitution is curiously at variance with the democratic traditions of a nominally free people. Supreme power, the absolute autocratic authority, is vested in a single individual, elected, it is true, by the popular voice, but, while he holds office, as despotic as any Czar. The only check on the Mayor of Greater New York is that of public opinion, expressed through a vigilant, often outrageously plain-speaking, Press, but a Press at times influenced, even to the point of silence, by party spirit. Holding his mandate on these terms, the head of the municipal executive in New York can, as a matter of fact, do as he pleases. The whole business of municipal administration is absolutely in his hands. He is assisted by eighteen boards, each controlling a separate department, but all of them except one, that of finance, composed of members whom he personally appoints. The first Mayor elected on these lines was Mr. Van Wyck, who, when he took up his office, was said to be as much master of New York as Napoleon III. was of Paris and France when he became President by virtue of the plebiscite.