During the past year or two Commissioner Bingham asked for several hundred men and $50,000 a year for a Secret Service. It goes without saying that these Secret Service men would be used not only to watch some of the men now in the Department, but the blackhanders, anarchists and other criminal conspirators that hang around the city. But it is not more policemen the city needs as much as the system thoroughly reorganized. The Parkhurst Society with a dozen of men has often been able to do more for the city than a whole platoon of policemen. There is room in New York for hundreds of plain clothes men, to deal with certain kinds of crime, like the Secret Service men of the United States Government. It is not necessary to keep policemen in uniform patrolling the city. Much more crime would be discovered if they went about in citizens’ dress. We would like to suggest to the Commissioner the propriety of selecting a hundred strong-minded women detectives with full authority to make arrests, and putting them in those localities that are now infested with the worst female characters. We believe before long they would put such women crooks out of business. The Policeman and His Work The work of the New York policeman may be briefly summed up as follows: He is an enforcer of the law, a protector of society, a judge and jury to settle scores of cases that must be decided offhand without a moment’s hesitation, a preventor and detector of crime and a suppressor of lawlessness and violence. In his daily duties he removes obstacles to good order, stands for the liberty, peace and security of the citizen and in general looks after the moral welfare of the people. More than that, the policeman should know the character of every gin-mill in the Precinct, the disorderly houses, the gambling hells, if any, where the crooks hang out, and the suspicious characters, who will need continual watching, to whom he should be a constant terror. All of which means that it will be necessary for him to patrol his post faithfully, otherwise he will not know these things. The law gives him vast discretionary powers, which on the one hand involves personal liberty and guarantees prompt measures of relief in cases of emergency; yet his work is two-fold—administrative and judicial—to enforce the law and if possible prevent crime.