7THE ENFORCERS
Customs now has 240 special agents who police the Atlantic, Pacific, and Gulf of Mexico coastlines and the borders between Mexico and Canada. Their work is supported by 487 Customs enforcement officers (port patrolmen) and 2,551 Customs inspectors and supervisors.
Pressures for a special investigative force to combat smuggling and fraud developed after the Civil War, when normal trade was resumed between the United States and other nations of the world. Violations of the Tariff Act and a loose morality in administrative offices became so flagrant in those postwar years that in May, 1870, Congress passed a law providing: “The Secretary of the Treasury may appoint special agents, not exceeding 53 in number, for the purpose of making examinations of the books, papers and accounts of Collectors and other officers of the Customs,and to be employed generally under the direction of the Secretary, in the prevention and detection of frauds on the Customs revenue....”
With this act, the Secretary of the Treasury gathered under his direction for the first time a special police force to combat smuggling and frauds.
The need for such a force actually dated back to the first days of the Republic. But over the years, the enforcement work had been handled by inspectors, guards and other untrained personnel. In 1922 Secretary of the Treasury Andrew W. Mellon transferred the Special Agency Service from his personal direction to the Customs Administration, which was then a division of the Treasury Department. In 1927, the Customs Division was given the status of a bureau by Congress, with direct control over its own investigative force.
This force now operates under a Division of Investigations, headed by the veteran enforcement officer Chester A. Emerick, former Collector of Internal Revenue in Tacoma, Washington, who joined the Customs Service in 1920. Emerick has the title of Deputy Commissioner, and he is responsible to the Commissioner of Customs in the operation of his division.
The responsibilities of the Customs agents were not clearly defined in the early days of their operation. But a clear directive was issued in 1933 to dispel any lingering doubts. This directive read: “(a) Customs agents shall be employed generally in the prevention and detection of frauds on the Customs revenue and all matters involving such frauds requiring investigation shall be referred to them. They shall investigate and report upon all matters brought to their attention by the Commissioner of Customs, Collectors, Appraisers, Comptrollers, and others relating to drawback, undervaluation, smuggling, personnel, Customs procedure, and any other Customs matters.
“(b) undivided responsibility for the investigation and reporting to the proper authority of all irregularities concerning any phase of Customs administration or misconduct on the part of Customs employees, by whatever means brought to its attention, rests with the Customs Agency Service. This injunction, however, is not to be construed as abridging or modifying the responsibility of the principal field officers to maintain discipline and efficiencyin the Customs personnel. There shall be no differentiation in the treatment of chief administrative officers of Customs and their subordinates in the matter of investigating accusations of alleged official misconduct. Collectors and other chief officers of the Customs shall cooperate in making this policy effective.”
* * * * *
Jerome Dolan is a handsome, black-haired young Irishman. It was, literally, a swift and embarrassing kick in the pants which started him on the road to becoming a Treasury agent.
It began for Dolan when he was a twelve-year-old living on Selby Avenue in the Lexington Parkway area of St. Paul, Minnesota. The street was a quiet, comfortable, tree-shaded thoroughfare lined with the homes of middle-income families. The Dolan home was near a shopping center and only a brisk walk from the neighborhood school.
There were playgrounds not far distant and vacant lots where youngsters could play baseball after school and during vacations. But in the perverse way of small boys, Dolan and his pals found it more fun to play ball on the streets, much to the annoyance of the residents and Officer “Red” Schwartz, who frequently cruised through the area in Patrol Car 309.
Schwartz was a large, muscular man standing 6 feet 2. He was forever breaking up the ball games with gruff commands for the boys to get off the streets. If there was any backtalk, Schwartz was likely to box the ears of the impertinent rebel, or to boot him in the behind. Then he would growl that he wasn’t going to have anyone killed by an automobile on his beat if he could help it.
Dolan and his friends usually kept a sharp lookout for Schwartz, the enemy. But one day they were careless and Car 309 came rolling down the street into the midst of a noisy game. Officer Schwartz came boiling from behind the wheel of the car. He laid two heavy hands on Dolan and another youth who hadn’t been nimble enough to escape. He shook them until their teeth rattled and then he booted them in the backsides with the broadside of a large shoe—just hard enough to give emphasis to his words.
“Maybe that will teach you a lesson,” Officer Schwartz called to the retreating youths. “And don’t let me catch you again.”
It never occurred to Schwartz to complain to the youths’ parents. This was his beat. It was his responsibility to maintain lawand order, and to protect the lives of those in his charge. He also felt it was his duty to discipline the youths who showed a lack of proper respect for authority.
“I’ll get even with that red-headed cop,” Dolan vowed. “Just you wait and see.”
“How are you goin’ to get even?” his friend asked.
Dolan considered the problem. At last he said, “Well, I’m going to be a policeman and when I’m his boss, I’ll fix him.”
As a sophomore in high school, Dolan had forgotten his vow to “fix” Schwartz, even though he often looked from the window of his classroom to see Car 309 cruising by the schoolyard. But he had not lost his determination to become a law enforcement officer. In writing down his ambition for the class yearbook, he wrote: “I want to be a Federal law enforcement officer.”
One reason Dolan had fixed his sights on a career in Federal law enforcement was the fact that the father of his friend, Sam Hardy, Jr., was an FBI agent. Sam Hardy occasionally came to the school and talked to the students about the work of the FBI. These talks only strengthened his desire to become a Federal agent.
After graduating from high school in the spring of 1950, Dolan entered the Army. He was assigned to the Army’s security section and he travelled throughout the Far East as a courier. When he was mustered out of the service, he enrolled in St. Thomas College in St. Paul and worked part time as an investigator for business firms.
He was graduated from St. Thomas in 1958 and became chief security officer for the Golden Rule Department Store in St. Paul. Then he joined the city’s police department.
One morning Dolan reported for roll call at the main police headquarters in the Public Safety Building. After inspection the lieutenant read off the list of assignments for the day. He said, “Dolan, you will work Car 309 with Officer Schwartz.”
Dolan climbed into the car beside Schwartz and all the old memories came flooding back of how he once hated this gruff policeman who had booted him in the pants. He remembered wryly his vow to one day get revenge.
Now “Red” Schwartz’s hair was sprinkled with gray. He was heavier and the lines on his face were deeper. His hands, though,were just as big and powerful as Dolan had remembered, and he had the same stern air of authority about him.
Dolan said nothing about the remembered indignities, and the older man apparently did not recognize the rookie as one of the youngsters who had given him such a bad time out on Selby Avenue. He could not know, either, that he had had such a strong influence on the youth who sat beside him.
They made their rounds without incident that day until late in the afternoon when the car radio said: “Car 309 ... Hague and Dunlap ... a child has been struck by a car....”
Schwartz picked up the transmitter and said: “309 to Hague and Dunlap ... 4:05.” He swung the car toward the scene of the accident. A little girl lay beside the curb, and her weeping mother was wiping blood from her daughter’s face with a cloth. The child had darted from the curb into the path of an automobile. There had been a screech of brakes and the girl had been hurled to the curb, unconscious.
As Dolan recalled the scene later in talking to me: “Schwartz, as big as he was, was out of the car ahead of me. He went straight to the little girl and her mother and I never would have believed those big hands could be so gentle. He soothed the mother with a few words, and when he saw the girl wasn’t seriously hurt, he picked her up in his arms and carried her into her home as though she were his own daughter.”
Then Dolan added, “I was very proud of Schwartz that day and of being his partner in Car 309.”
Twelve years after receiving the kick in the pants from Schwartz, Dolan was among the students selected to attend the Treasury Department’s Law Enforcement School at 711 12th Street in downtown Washington, D. C. He finally had decided to become a Secret Service agent, and now he was receiving basic training with rookie agents from the Customs Bureau, the Narcotics Bureau, the Secret Service, the Coast Guard, and units of the Internal Revenue Service.
Watching these young men in training, you wondered what it was that moved each of them to choose Federal law enforcement as a career. The work is difficult and demanding, calling for stern self-discipline. The hours are long, irregular and often filled with danger. No agent ever knows when he may be called from hishome on an emergency assignment which may last for weeks. The pay, ranging from $5,355 per year for a rookie to a high of $10,255 for a veteran agent (only the supervising agents receive higher pay) is not exactly an economic bonanza for a college graduate. Salary is not the primary inducement; many of the youths have wanted to be in law enforcement since childhood.
One youth told me, “My father was shot and killed by a bootlegger when I was just a boy. I grew up in a tough neighborhood. I’ve always wanted to be in law enforcement to help fight crime.”
“I like the excitement of the work,” another said, “never knowing from one day to the next what the problem will be or how it will be solved.”
“I didn’t have much chance for advancement as a city policeman, but it’s different as a Federal agent.”
“There’s no politics in Federal law enforcement—not like you find in local law enforcement. You don’t have to worry about the politicians.”
A good many of the rookie agents who come to the school studied police administration in college and then worked on city police forces before taking the Civil Service examination required of candidates for Federal law enforcement jobs.
When an applicant passes the examination, his name goes on the Federal Registry, and it is from this registry that most of the new agents are chosen. Regional boards composed of representatives from the various Treasury divisions interview the applicants as openings occur from time to time in the agents’ ranks. Customs may need a Spanish-speaking agent for duty on the Mexican border. Narcotics may be looking for a man of Italian ancestry who speaks Sicilian fluently. Or Revenue may be searching for an investigator with a knowledge of accounting.
If an applicant wins approval on the regional board, his background is investigated and he is given a physical examination. If all goes well, he is sworn into the service of his choice.
The rookie agents spend their first months in service receiving on-the-job training by working with experienced officers. Then they are sent to the Treasury’s Law Enforcement School for six weeks of study in basic courses such as how to make searches and seizures, how to conduct a surveillance, how to plan a raid, how to photograph the scene of a crime, how to take latent fingerprints,how to interview witnesses and interrogate suspects, and how to conduct themselves in a courtroom under cross-examination.
The Treasury school was established permanently in Washington in 1951 and has now graduated more than 15,000 agents. It is headed by Director Patrick O’Carroll, a forty-two-year-old former Narcotics agent who was reared in New York City. O’Carroll was graduated from Fordham University in 1944, where he majored in psychology. Dark-haired, handsome Pat O’Carroll guides a staff of fifty instructors, who give the basic training to rookies and also instruct veteran agents in specialized courses involving administrative duties. At present the school is conducting six 6-week courses a year for rookies, with an average of eighty students in each class. There also are a scattering of foreign students, sent by their governments to study American police methods.
O’Carroll and his aides strive to make the instruction as realistic as possible by providing problems which simulate actual situations the young agents will face in their everyday work. In the 9A.M.to 5P.M.classes, held five days a week, the men spend about half their time working on practical law enforcement problems. The other half is spent in listening to lectures by agents, police administrators, college professors and attorneys. The lectures cover such subjects as constitutional law, civil rights and rules of criminal law procedure.
Toward the end of the course, the students are divided into squads of five men and given the problem of arresting a suspected criminal, searching his apartment for evidence, preparing the case for presentation to a grand jury, and appearing in court as witnesses.
On the fourth floor of the school building is a furnished room in which have been hidden narcotics, counterfeit money, betting slips, jewels and other incriminating evidence. The room is occupied by a veteran agent posing as “Richard Roe,” the suspected criminal.
Roe gives them a rough time. He complains of a serious heart condition and asks to be given medicine from a bottle on a table. He accuses the agents of stealing money and a diamond ring from a desk drawer. He continually demands to see his lawyer. A postman delivers a registered letter and Roe challenges the right ofthe agents to open the letter after he has signed for it. He tries everything short of violence to impede the search.
Sometimes the young agents refuse to give Roe his medicine. They ignore his accusations of theft. Or they accept his argument that they have no right to seize the registered letter.
If the searching party fails to find at least 80 per cent of the items concealed in the room, they do not obtain a “conviction.” Then experienced agents carefully explain where they made mistakes in the handling of the suspect.
When Roe claimed he was ill, the agents should have called his doctor to determine the truth. Upon their entering the room, Roe should have been advised to collect any valuables so that an inventory could have been made on the spot to be signed by him. When Roe signed for the registered letter, then it legally could be seized with no invasion of his privacy. Roe’s rights were not violated when his requests for an attorney were ignored during the search, prior to his arrest.
In a mock courtroom scene, an agent who formerly was a U.S. attorney acts as the defense counsel. He grills the rookies on every move made in Roe’s apartment, seeking to confuse them while driving home the point that months of careful police work may be wasted by an inept or careless presentation of facts in court.
The school has proved to be such a success that it is now supported enthusiastically by all the Treasury agencies, which prorate the cost and make their best men available as instructors. But for many years a few men struggled to keep the school going in the face of apathy and even active opposition.
The man who perhaps contributed most to keeping alive the idea of a professionally directed school for Treasury agents was Harry M. Dengler, a retired Internal Revenue agent who now lives in Washington, D. C. A short, plump man of enormous energy, Dengler joined the Internal Revenue Service in 1918 after a dozen years of teaching in high schools in southeast Virginia and Montana. He was thirty-six at the time he was assigned to the IRS’s Intelligence Division, working on internal police problems and on tax conspiracy cases.
The Treasury school stemmed from the fact that in 1927 the Bureau of Prohibition’s enforcement of the Volstead Act was a mess. Part of the mess was due to the lack of trained enforcementofficers. Illegal searches and seizures by Bureau agents aroused public indignation. Also, they created a serious problem in obtaining convictions of rumrunners and bootleggers.
L. C. Andrews, the Assistant Secretary of the Treasury, became so concerned over the situation that he persuaded Dengler to join the Bureau of Prohibition and to start an enforcement school for the Bureau’s agents. Dengler had argued for years that Federal law enforcement officers should be schooled in their work to be effective and to deserve public confidence.
Dengler selected a few aides and they put together a course of instruction to be given to some 2,500 prohibition agents. Two men were chosen from each of the Treasury’s eighteen districts throughout the country to come to Washington for four weeks of intensive schooling in proper law enforcement procedures.
The theory was that these thirty-six men would qualify themselves as instructors and then return to their home districts to teach what they had learned to other prohibition agents. But the system soon broke down because the district supervisors sabotaged the school.
“I know how to enforce the law without any help from Washington,” one supervisor announced. He had the support of other supervisors.
The truth was that the supervisors were jealous of the men who had been brought to Washington for special training. They also were fearful that they would lose their jobs to the men with superior backgrounds in law enforcement. The result was that the schools were doomed even before they started. By the end of the year, the schools had been discontinued.
Dengler clung stubbornly to his belief that every Federal law enforcement officer should be trained for his job. He persuaded his superiors to let him organize a correspondence course, with the study to be voluntary. Hundreds of agents applied, convincing Dengler that the agents themselves were eager to know more about professional law enforcement.
The idea of a school was resurrected in 1930 by Amos W. W. Woodcock, when he became head of the Prohibition agency. Dengler again went to work to set up a course of study. But when Woodcock left office a few months later, his successor broke upthe schools with the remark: “If a man is smart enough to get a job with us, he doesn’t need any training.”
Dengler confided to a friend later, “That was one of the low points of my life. These schools were badly needed by the government to improve the quality of Federal law enforcement. Hardly anyone seemed interested.”
Indeed, for several years it seemed that no one was interested except Dengler and a few of his friends. But in 1937 Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau recognized that a major weakness in his department was the lack of organized training for new agents. He issued an order for all agencies within the Treasury to participate in a school program.
The first Dengler heard of the order was when Harold N. Graves, assistant to the Secretary, called him to his office. Graves said, “Harry, how long will it take you to get a course of instruction underway for our agents?”
“I can do it within sixty days,” Dengler said.
Graves was dubious. “I don’t think you can do it within that time,” he said.
“I can do it,” Dengler replied. “I’ve kept a group of instructors together. We’ve been giving some training to new men in our spare time. We’ve got a course of instruction already outlined. It won’t take much work to bring it up to date.”
Graves said, “Then get going. Bring your men in here this afternoon and we’ll decide on the next move.”
The decision was to open a pilot school in Boston. The first class met on March 15, 1937, and the course of instruction ran for four weeks. When it was ended, Graves was satisfied. He ordered a schedule of instruction for each of the Treasury districts. Attendance was not voluntary this time. Each man was required to attend classes, and to pass a written examination. Instructors were drawn from all the Treasury agencies.
In those early years, the instructors travelled from district to district to hold their classes. The classrooms were jury rooms, schoolrooms, banks, courthouses and Customs buildings.
Dengler argued that the school should be located permanently in Washington. Instead of having instructors moving from place to place, he insisted it would be far better to have the studentscome to Washington to get their training at a school housed in its own building and having the proper equipment.
Dengler’s persistence won. In 1950, Treasury officials decided to see how his plan would work. It worked so well that when Dengler retired in December, 1952, the Treasury Law Enforcement School was an established institution receiving all-out support from all the Treasury agencies.
The Treasury school, however, is only a phase of instruction in law enforcement for the young Customs agents (as it is for all Treasury agents). The intensive training comes when the men are assigned to work regularly with older agents.
The turnover among Customs agents is surprisingly small and is among the lowest within the government. Few of them leave the Service voluntarily once they have launched into their careers. The reason for this stability was summed up by one veteran agent in this manner: “Every man likes to feel he is doing something worthwhile—and you get that kind of satisfaction from this work. That’s why I’ll never leave it.”