“The corruption is so ingrained that the man of ordinary decent character entering the force and not possessed of extraordinary moral fiber may easily succumb. About him are the evidences of graft and the enjoyment of irregular incomes substantially increasing the patrolman’s salary. Inadequate condemnation is shown by his associates in the force for such practises; on the contrary, there is much indirect pressure which induces him to break his oath of office; the families of grafting policemen live better than his own, and the urgencies of his family and of his own social needs tempt him to thrive as do his corrupt associates. Such a system makes for too many of the police an organized school of crime. The improvement of recent years--and there is some--is not great enough to satisfy an aroused public. “But not resting with this general knowledge of the existence of such matters, this Committee has made an intensive examination of the conditions in a number of police precincts. We know that the connection between members of the police force and crime or commercialized vice is continuous, profitable and so much a matter of course that explicit bargains do not have to be made; naturally this “honor among thieves” is occasionally violated, as is customary among thieves, both the keeping and the breaking of faith being determined by these policemen for their own profit. “Well knowing this police ‘system,’ grand juries will not on police testimony indict violators of the law, lest they [the grand juries] be lending themselves to police persecution of a selected criminal who had refused tribute, and so be helping the police ‘system.’ For the same reason petit juries will acquit, and judges will discharge, and crime increases and goes unpunished, while honest policemen are discredited and discouraged. “Evil thus breeds new maggots of evil. The sums collected by the police excite the greed of certain politicians; they demand their shares, and in their turn they protect the criminal breaches of the law and the police in corruption. The presence of ‘politics’ brings strength and complexity to the ‘system’ and makes it harder to break up. The city, we believe, is convinced that it is time for more radical efforts at improvement.”[1]