THE CAST
John P. Barron, Edward Boyle, Frank Campbell, James Dalton, James J. Finan, John W. Finn, Joseph A. Daly, Daniel W. Clare, John Gaynor, Anthony Grieco, John P. Griffith, Daniel F. Hallihan, Edward Lennon, Henry Mugge, Richard Oliver, Gustavus J. Riley, James F. Shevlin, Joseph Toner, George Trojan, James A. Watson.
Detectives, policemen, informants, witnesses, denizens of the underworld, newspaper reporters, trainmen, ticket sellers, etc., etc.
Place—Chiefly in New York, with Scenes in Chicago, Albany, Memphis, Boston and Montreal.
Time—February and March, 1912.
TheGreat Taxicab Robbery
CHAPTER IWHAT THE PUBLIC HEARD ABOUT THE CRIME
On Thursday, February 15, 1912, the New York evening papers had a startling news story.
Between ten and eleven o’clock that morning two messengers were sent in a taxicab from the East River National Bank, at Broadway and Third street, to draw $25,000 in currency from the Produce Exchange National Bank, at Broadway and Beaver street, in the downtown financial district, and bring it uptown. This transfer of money had been made several times a week for solong a period without danger or loss that the messengers were unarmed. One of them, Wilbur F. Smith, was an old man who had been in the service of the bank thirty-five years, and the other was a mere boy, named Wardle, seventeen years old. The taxicab man, an Italian named Geno Montani, seemed almost a trusted employee, too, for he operated two cabs from a stand near the bank, and was frequently called upon for such trips.
While the cab was returning uptown through Church street with the money, five men suddenly closed in upon it. According to the chauffeur’s story, a sixth man forced him to slacken speed by stumbling in front of the vehicle. Immediately two men on each side of the cab opened the doors. Two assailants were boosted in and quickly beat the messengers into insensibility, while their two helpers ran along on the sidewalk. The fifth man climbed onto the seat beside the chauffeur, held a revolver to his ribs, and ordered him to drive fast onperil of his life. This fellow seemed to be familiar with automobiles, and threatened the driver when he tried to slacken speed. That is a busy part of the city. Yet nobody on the sidewalks seemed to notice anything out of the ordinary. The cab dodged vehicles, going at high speed for several blocks. At Park Place and Church street, after a trip of eleven blocks, at a busy corner, the chauffeur was ordered to stop the cab, and the three robbers got down, carrying the $25,000 in a leather bag, ran quickly to a black automobile without a license number which was waiting for them, and in a few moments were gone.
That was the substance of the story.
Information came chiefly from the chauffeur, because the two bank employees had been attacked so suddenly and viciously that they lost consciousness in a moment. When the chauffeur looked inside his cab after the crime, he said, he saw them both lying senselessand bleeding. They could give no description of the assailants. Eye-witnesses were found who had seen men loitering in the neighborhood where the cab was boarded shortly before the crime, but their descriptions were not very useful.
That night the New York evening papers published accounts of the crime under great black headlines, and on the following morning every news item of a criminal nature was grouped in the same part of the papers to prove that the city had entered one of its sensational “waves of crime.” And for more than a week the public read criticism and denunciation of the police force.
It was charged that the police had become “demoralized,” and various changes of administrative policy introduced into the department within the past eight months were blindly denounced.
The most important of these changes was that devised by Mayor Gaynor. Eight or ten years ago, every uniformedpoliceman in New York carried a club, and often used it freely in defending himself while making arrests. Abuses led to the abolition of this means of defense except for officers patrolling the streets at night. There were still undoubted abuses, however, and when Mayor Gaynor came into office, bringing well-thought-out opinions of police administration from his experience as a magistrate on the bench, he took a determined stand for more humane methods of making arrests, and strict holding of every policeman to the letter of the laws. Every case of clubbing was prosecuted, the plain legal rights of citizens or criminals upheld, and the Police Department began teaching its men new ways of defending themselves by skillful holds in wrestling whereby prisoners may be handled effectually and without doing them harm. Sentiment against the use of the club began to grow in the Police Department itself, it being recognizedthat clubbing was an unskillful means of defense, and that special athletic devices were more workmanlike.
Now, however, the newspapers published every chance opinion of discharged, retired and anonymous police officers who objected to the new regulations. It was alleged that criminals had got out of bounds because policemen no longer dared club them into good behavior, and the editors, without paying much attention to the many good points of the new regulations, or trying to understand the merits of a settled policy applied to an organization of more than ten thousand men, set up a cry for the presumably “good old days” of Inspector So-and-So and Chief This-and-That, when every known criminal was promptly struck over the head on sight and thereby taught to know his place. If the files of New York journals for those days following the robbery are examined they will reveal a curious exhibition of pleading for official lawlessness and autocracy.
GEORGE S. DOUGHERTY Second Deputy Police CommissionerGEORGE S. DOUGHERTYSecond Deputy Police Commissioner
GEORGE S. DOUGHERTYSecond Deputy Police Commissioner
GEORGE S. DOUGHERTYSecond Deputy Police Commissioner
Another point of criticism centered on a new method adopted in the distribution of the detective force. This comprises more than five hundred men. For years they were all required to report at Police Headquarters every day, coming from distant precincts, and had an opportunity to see whatever professional criminals were under arrest. Then they went back to different precincts to work. This took too much time, it was found, and the old-fashioned “line-up” of criminals was chiefly a spectacle, the same offenders dropping into the hands of the police with more or less regularity. So detectives were re-distributed on a plan that attaches a proper number of plain-clothes policemen to each precinct, according to its needs, and in those precincts the men live and become acquainted with local criminals. Many of them work in sections where they were born,and detectives speaking foreign languages are assigned to foreign quarters.
The newspapers charged that red-tape had brought the Police Department to such a low state that young detectives had no idea what a real criminal looked like, and urged the restoration of the old system, with its picturesque “line-up.”
In the days of Inspector Byrnes, when practically all the banking of the city was done around Wall Street, the police established a “dead line” beyond which criminals were supposed not to operate. In its day, the “dead line” was real enough, undoubtedly. But it was not necessarily an ideal police measure, and the growth of the city has long made it a mere memory, living only in newspaper tradition. To-day, banking extends as far north as Central Park, and millions upon millions of dollars are being carried about daily by people of every sort. Despite the fact that the last loss of money from a New York bank throughprofessional criminals (apart from fraud and forgery) dated back some fifteen or eighteen years, the newspapers seemed to agree that life and property were no longer safe in the city because this purely mythical “dead line” had been disregarded by the robbers.
There was other comment of the same character, and it had an immediate and grievous effect.
On the day after the robbery a chance remark about a safe in an East Side bank, coupled with the general excitement, led to a run of its depositors, chiefly people of foreign birth. The bank was solvent, and the run was undoubtedly stimulated by gossip started by criminals for their own ends. But the frightened depositors insisted on drawing out their money, and exposing themselves to danger of robbery and assault. The situation was met by careful police co-operation.
About six months before the taxicab robbery, the New York legislature putinto force a measure known as the “Sullivan law,” providing penalties for the carrying of pistols and concealed weapons. This is unquestionably a wise measure fundamentally, and one that was badly needed for police administration and public safety. It is perhaps open to certain modifications, to be made as actual conditions are encountered in practical working of the law. Newspaper opinion drew a connection between this law and the “wave of crime,” and its repeal was urged, so that every citizen might arm himself as he pleased. Hundreds of persons who had felt safe in going about their business unarmed now applied for permits to carry pistols.
Fortunately, a sensation does not last long in New York.
Though the Police Department felt this criticism keenly, and was hampered by it, pressure began to slacken in about a week. Other sensations came along. There was nothing to publish about thetaxicab case, as police information was withheld for good official reasons. Presently the town ventured to joke about the case. At an elaborate public dinner one night, among other topical effects, a dummy taxicab suddenly scooted out before the guests, held up a dummy police commissioner, took his watch, and scooted away again. The diners laughed, and that was fairly representative of the town, which was now ready to have its joke about the crime, too. Had there never been any further action by the police, the case would have quietly dropped out of sight. But fortunately there was police action, and with that we shall now deal.