The control of the police force was considered as necessary as ever to success at the election. The changes of 1853, from which much was hoped, had proved of little benefit. The force was in a chaotic state. Political and pecuniary reasons alone guided the appointment of policemen. No record of merit was kept; there was no systematic instruction of policemen in their duties except as to drill. Some Captains wore uniforms, others refused. When an applicant appointed to the force was tested for qualifications in reading, a large newspaper was given to him, and he was told to read the title. Murder abounded, and the city was full of escaped convicts.[14] One of the most important provisions of a special act of 1857 was the transfer of the police from city control to that of the State. Unwilling to surrender so effective a hold, Wood resisted the Legislature’s action. For a time there were two police departments--the Metropolitan force, under the State Commissioners, and the municipal police, under the Mayor--each contending for supremacy. One day a part of the two forces came into collision in the City Hall, and twelve men were wounded. It was found necessary to summon the militia to quell the disturbances, and Wood was arrested. Finding resistance useless, he submitted grudgingly to the new order.[15] The police being so disorganized, the criminal classes ran the town. Chief among Wood’s supporters were the “Dead Rabbits” or “Black Birds,”--a lawless “gang” who overawed certain portions of the city and who had a rival in the “Bowery Boys,” whose sole profession seems to have been to pack primaries, break ballot boxes and fight the “Dead Rabbits.” On July 4, 1857, the “Dead Rabbits,” presumably having nothing else to do, attacked a body of police in Jackson street. A band of “Bowery Boys” hurried to the front, and a pitched street battle ensued, pistols and muskets being procured from neighboring places. Barricades were thrown up in the most approved Parisian style. The result was the killing of ten and the wounding of eighty persons, some of whom were innocent bystanders. This was the most deadly of the numerous collisions of these “gangs.” As they had a powerful political influence, the police did not molest them.[16] As a member of the Metropolitan Police Commission, Mayor Wood about this time was instrumental in giving out a contract for 4,000 glass ballot boxes, at $15 apiece. It was disclosed in James Horner’s affidavit before Judge Davis, in the Supreme Court, in November of this year, that the city needed no more than 1,200 of the boxes; that Wood’s brother had secured the 4,000 boxes at a cost of less than $5 apiece and that the Mayor was to share in the $40,000 of expected profits.