The Police System in New York City in 1895, when Roosevelt took control, was a monstrosity which, in almost every respect, did exactly the opposite from what the Police System is organized to do. Moral values had been so perverted that it took a strong man to hold fast to the rudimentary distinctions between Good and Evil. The Police existed, in theory, to protect the lives and property of respectable citizens; to catch law-breakers and hand them over to the courts for punishment; to hunt down gamblers, swindlers, and all the other various criminals and purveyors of vice. In reality, the Police under Tammany abetted crime and protected the vicious. This they did, not because they had any special hostility to Virtue--they probably knew too little about it to form a dispassionate opinion any way--but because Vice paid better. They held the cynical view that human nature will always breed a great many persons having a propensity to licentious or violent habits; that laws were made to check and punish these persons, and that they might go their pernicious ways unmolested if the Police took no notice of them. So the Police established a system of immunity which anybody could enjoy by paying the price. Notorious gambling-hells "ran wide open" after handing the required sum to the high police official who extorted it. Hundreds of houses of ill-fame carried on their hideous traffic undisturbed, so long as the Police Captain of the district received his weekly bribe. Gangs of roughs, toughs, and gunmen pursued their piratical business without thinking of the law, for they shared their spoils with the supposed officers of the law. And there were more degenerate miscreants still, who connived with the Police and went unscathed. As if the vast sums collected from these willing bribers were not enough, the Police added a system of blackmail to be levied on those who were not deliberately vicious, but who sought convenience. If you walked downtown you found the sidewalk in front of certain stores almost barricaded by packing-boxes, whereas next door the way might be clear. This simply meant that the firm which wished to use the sidewalk for its private advantage paid the policeman on that beat, and he looked the other way. As there was an ordinance against almost every conceivable thing, so the Police had a price for making every ordinance a dead letter. Was this a cosmic joke, a nightmare of cynicism, a delusion? No, New York was classed in the reference books as a Christian city, and this was its Christianity.