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OUR POLICE COURTS
' \
SPEECHES OF D. B. EATON, ESQ.,
ON THE
BILL TO SECURE BETTER ADMINISTRATION IN THE POLICE COURTS OF
THE CITY OF NEW YORK, MADE
Before the Judiciary Committee of the Assembly,
Feb. 7th & 18th, 1878.
PRINTED BY THE COUNCIL OF POLITICAL REFORM,
MARCH, 1873.
WITH AN APPENDIX RELATIVE TO THE THREE NEW
BILLS ON THE SAME SUBJECT.
I!*<[& *
JOHN P. PRAIA, PRINTER BY STEAM, No. 9 SPRUCE STREKT.
1873.PREFACE.
The Council of Political Reform has felt it to be impor-
tant to publish these documents at this time, more especially by
reason of the great peril in which the bill is placed, and the great
responsibility which must rest somewhere, by reason of the sud-
den and unexpected presentation in the Assembly of three new
bills upon the same general subject. The original bill had at
that time been favorably reported to the Assembly, and there
was every prospect of its early passage. It is true that none of
those regarded as leaders in the dominant party had shown it
much favor, but, on the other hand, they had not opposed it.
The bill advanced on the merits of the principles it involved
and the known support of the people of New York, and commend-
ed itself to the favor of all that was most intelligent and honest in
both parties.
The origin and aim of the new bills are much in doubt. Whe-
ther they are to be used to defeat the original bill remains to be seen.
Nearly all of their valuable provisions are appropriated with ac-
knowledgments from that bill; and it is quite possible and it is much
to be hoped that they only present a different plan, in some particu-
lars, of securing the same reform. It is, however, unfortunate and
unwise that they should have been secretly prepared and presented
without co-operation or conference with those who had been so long
laboring for the same great reform—we say nothing of any question
of courtesy, which is as nothing on a question of so grave public in-
terest ; and apparently there is no justification on the part of their
authors for having no policy at the opening of the session ; for delay
until divided councils threaten defeat ; for appearing in the field of
reform only when victory was almost certain and little more than the4
distribution of patronage remained to be done. An open enemy of
reform could have devised no more cunning and dangerous scheme
for its overthrow. Nevertheless we hope for aid and strength rather
than fear a secret enemy and an unexpected opponent. We shall
also be prepared to make surrender of our own preferences and to
co ^operate in any way in which we may secure the main features of
the reform, provided it can be done without involving too serious
evils. If the reform shall be lost at this session, the responsibility
must rest on, those who have so strangely and needlessly introduced
these new bills at this late stage of the session, and we are resolved
that responsibility shall be made to rest where it belongs.
There will be found an Appendix, in which the merits of the
new bills are briefly considered.OUR POLICE COURTS.
Mr. Chairman and Gentlemen,
The object of the bill upon which I have been requested to
address you, is to improve the criminal administration in the
City of New York ; and as the most efficient means of accom-
plishing that object, it is proposed,
1.	To abolish the method of electing police justices in that
city;
2.	To substitute a safe, non-partizan method of appointing
them; and,
3.	To surround the discharge of their duties with every practi-
cal safeguard of fairness, honesty, intelligence and vigor.
With such ends in view, I have prepared this bill, and have
had the benefit of much valuable advice from distinguished
members of The Council of Political Reform, which has for a
considerable period been promoting this important measure.
We have had neither aid nor encouragement from any polit-
ical party ; and though I belong to the party now in power, and
am anxious it should have the honor of conferring so great a
blessing upon the people, I am more anxious that the end should
be sought by means not partizan in tendency nor open to any
just criticism on party grounds.
However irresistible the arguments we can bring as to the
need of improving these courts; however universally they stand
condemned in popular judgment ; however clearly we can make
it appear that our method would secure a better administration,
it is plain that all such demonstration would be useless if we6
cannot also show that what we propose will be valid under the
constitution of the state. We may be sure that the justices in
office, their dependents, and all the criminalty that has long
been bold and prosperous in the city, will make a united strug-
gle in self-defence in behalf of the existing laws. They will
resort to constitutional theories at least for e^ery fair purpose
for which they may be available. I believe I may safely assert,
here in the presence of those who came to oppose this bill, that
they are engaged to appear only on behalf of the police justices
themselves ; and that no other portion of the people appear to
be represented in opposition to this measure, or have a word to
say in defense of the existing system.
Let us first, then, inquire whether there are any constitutional
provisions under which the justices in office can retain their
places against the will of the people and the authority of the
Legislature. The fact that the profits of their office enable
these police justices year after year, to retain eminent counsel to
come and argue here, creates no presumption against the prac-
ticability of reform.
In the proper connection I shall state a little of the history
of the laws under which these justices hold their places, and how
they secure their elections and discharge their duties. It will
suffice now to say, that their tenure and name of office and mode
of election originated in a statute of 1848, that they are nine in
number, are elected in small districts for six years, have only
criminal jurisdiction as committing justices, [save when some of
them sit in the Court of Special Sessions,] and that the name of
police justices, or the courts they hold, have no mention or
recognition in the constitution of this State.
The attempt on their behalf will be made to show that they
are really Justices of the Peace ; and hence (as is conceded to
be the fact as to justices of the peace,) that they must remain
elective. We, on the contrary, maintain they are in no sense
justices of the peace, and that under the constitution, as amended
in 1870, they are allowed to be made appointive officers.
I will now present to the Committee the main citations upon
which we rest our constitutional and legal reasoning ; but I do
not intend to enter upon any extended reasoning, for an exam-
ination of the authorities cited, will, I feel sure, be an adequate
and the best argument.7
I.—1. The § 7 of the 4th Article of the Constitution of 1822,
provides for the appointment of Justices of the Peace, by Super-
visors and County Judges; declares they shall hold office for
four years, and that they may be removed by the County Court.
This is the first reference to justices of the peace in our State
Constitutions.
But as there was at this time no justices of the peace in
the sense of the Constitution in the City of New York, (where
the civil duties of that office were then performed by officers
called “ Assistant Justices/5 and the criminal duties by “ special
justices/5) there was added the following provision in the § 14
of the same article.
Sec. 14. “ The special justices and the assistant justices, and
their clerks, in the City of New York, shall be appointed, &c.,
by certain city officers ; and shall hold their offices for the same
term that the justices of the peace, in the other counties of this
State hold their offices, and shall be removable in like manner.55
Thus, the Constitution of 1822, without in any degree assim-
ilating the jurisdiction of either class of these peculiar New
York City Justices, to those of a constitufional justice of the
peace, and while making the two former appointive, in a pecu-
liar manner, did provide that all three classes of justices should
hold for the same term and be removable in the same manner.
Now it is familiar law, that, though originally justices of the
peace, were mere conservators of the peace in criminal matters,
they had been long before the Constitution of 1822, clothed with
a varied civil jurisdiction. The latter must be exercised in the
town, but the criminal jurisdiction extended through the county.
Such was the jurisdiction of the officer called a justice of the
peace, in that Constitution ; and there was no such officer in
the city of New York.
Gurney v. Lovill, 9 Wend. 919 : decided 1832.
The justice of the peace known to the Constitution, has at
all times been an officer of both civil and criminal jurisdiction.
2. There was no justice of the peace in New York at the
adoption of the Constitution of 1846. The § 17 of the 6th arti-
cle of that Constitution, without creating any new judicial officer,
provides for the election of justices of the peace as an existing
class of such offices.
The § 18, evidently referring to such peculiar judicial offices
in New York and elsewhere, as I have referred to, says :8
§ 18. “All judicial officers of cities and villages,[and all sucli
judicial officers, as may be created therein by law, shall be elected,
at such times and in such manner as the Legislature may
direct.” Hence, under the Constitution of 1846, a police justice
as well as other judicial officers, inferior to justices of the peace,
must be elected. This we concede.
And the § 20, of the same article, further makes the distinc-
tion between such judicial officers and justices of the peace by
declaring, that
Ҥ 20. No judicial officer, except justices of the peace, shall re-
ceive to his own use any fees or perquisites of office. ”
The § 10 and 12 of the 14th article, further discriminates
justices of the peace from other local judicial officers, especially
in New York City, as follows :
Ҥ10. Sheriffs, clerks of counties, (including the Kegister
and clerk of the City and County of New York,) ^nd justices of
the peace, and coroners in office, when this Constitution shall take
effect, shall hold their respective offices, until the end of the
term for which they were respectively elected.
“ All local courts, established in any city or village, inclu-
ding the Superior Court, Common Pleas, Sessions and Surro-
gate’s Court of the City and County of New York, shall remain,
until otherwise directed by the Legislature, with their present
powers and jurisdiction ; and judges of such Courts and any
clerks thereof in office on January 1, 1847, shall continue in
office until the expiration of their terms of office, or until the
legislature shall otherwise direct. ”
(a) These provisions also make it plain, that justices of the
peace, unlike the justices of the lower courts before men-
tioned in the city of New York, were fixed in their offices
for the residue of their terms; and also that while the
higher local courts of that city were somewhat protected,
the power was given to the legislature to change their
jurisdiction and the tenure of their judges, but such lower
courts were not named nor have they the slightest constitu-
tional recognition, save in the aforesaid § 18 provided that
their officers shall be elected—and in the § 12, providing
that they “shall remain, until otherwise directed by the
legislature.
8. Two years after the adoption of the constitution of 1846,9
Cliap. 154 of the laws of 1848, was enacted, by which these two
last mentioned New York City Justice Courts were abolished
and the present Police Court and Justice Court of the City of
New York were created, with elective justices, respectively, as
that constitution required. These justices courts were by a
second act of 1848 p. 404, chap. 276, called assistant justices, to
conform to the Code, and by an act of 1852, p. 471, chap. 324,
the name was changed to District Court Justices, and the courts
are called District Courts.
The City, for the purpose of electing such justices, was
divided into judicial districts.
The § 12 of this act, using the very language of the Constitu-
tion of 1822, already cited, declares that ‘ ‘ the present assistant
justices and special justices, &c., shall deliver to the respective
justices and police justices elected under this act all their official
papers/’ &c., &c.
The power and jurisdiction of the courts to which the newly
elective justices thus succeeded, were not changed by the law
of 1848.
Under this law, as amended in details, the police and dis-
trict of New York City have existed to this time.
The code of procedure, also enacted in 1848, defines the
civil jurisdiction of justices of the peace in the country. When
it comes to the city of New York, it speaks of the justices’ courts
under the name of “Justices’ Courts in the City of New York,”
(being the same which the law of 1852, just cited, orders to be
called, and which the constitution of 1870 calls,u District Courts,)
and gives them jurisdiction in the following, among other cases:
“1. In actions similar to those in which Justices of the Peace
have jurisdiction, as provided by sections 53 and 54.”
The next chapter gives the justices’ courts of cities a similar
jurisdiction.
Now, if the attempt was made to establish the position that
such district or justices’ courts in New York and other cities
were really courts of justices of the peace under another name,
there would be much in these code provisions favorable to that
reasoning ; but they are utterly hostile to the theory that the Police
Justices of New York city are Justices of the Peace under another
name.10
The titles of the Code also strongly favor our view. Title
VI. is ‘‘of the courts of justices of the peace.” Title VII. is “of
justices5 and other inferior courts of cities.55 In the same way
the constitution amendment of 1870 treats all justices5 courts of
cities as inferior to the courts of justices of the peace.
4.	Disgraced and alarmed by the evils of elective, inferior*
judicial officers with only criminal jurisdiction, we now desire to
return to the method of nominations ; but we have next to con-
sider the constitutional amendments adopted in 1870. It is
plain that if that instrument allows judicial officers inferior
to justices of the peace to be appointed, and otherwise presents
no obstacles, the Legislature has a right to reform the police
courts as we propose.
5.	The § 12 of the 6th article, as amended in 1870, mentions
various courts, some of these being local courts of the city of New
York, which it declares shall “ continue; and it declares that
the judges of said courts, in office at the adoption of this article,
are continued until the expiration of their terms.55
But among these are neither the police nor the district
courts, nor the terms of office of these justices; from which it
maybe fairly inferred that, so far as they are concerned, the
framers of this amendment to the constitution intended the
Legislature should exercise its discretion as to their continu-
ance ; as was also the fact under the constitution of 1846.
The § 15 regulates county courts, and the § 16 provides for
certain new judicial officers ; but both without reference to these
New York city local courts.
The § 18 relates to justices of the peace which are to be
selected in towns.
“ Justices of the peace and district court justices shall be
elected in the different cities of this State,55 &c., as shall be pro-
vided by law.
It should be noted that there have long been, justices of the
peace in cities having civil and criminal jurisdiction like those in
the country towns, as well as justices5 courts of inferior jurisdic-
tion. See 1 Edmunds, Statutes at Large, p. 88, which speaks in
the same connection and on the same page, of three justices of
the justices5 courts of the city of Albany; “ two assistant justices
for the 12th ward of the city of New York.55
“A justice of the peace for the 5th ward of the city of
Albany.5511
£ ‘Four justices of the peace for each town of the State.”
YoL 2, p. 235; of the same work, says, “ every justice of the
peace elected in any town of this State, or appointed for any city
in which special courts are not established,” &c., are given the
same jurisdiction, &c.
A law of 1866, chapter 189, gives the justices’ court of the
city of Troy the same civil jurisdiction as a justice of the peace.
The 497 chap, of the laws of 1866 uses this language : <c The
justices of the peace of the city of Brooklyn shall each have an
annual salary of $2,500, ” &c.
But when the lower courts of the city of New York are men-
tioned they are called “ justices’ and police courts of the city of
New York.” (Laws 1865, ch. 688, pp. 1397 and 1398.)
It will be seen that this classes together justices of the peace,
(who have a civil jurisdiction,) and that class of local justices in
New York city, which has the civil jurisdiction of a justice of
the peace, and makes them both elective as they were before ;
while no mention is made of police justices. And in the former
sections quoted there is an equally marked omission to declare
elective, or to mention any judicial officer in that city whose
jurisdiction is solely criminal. Hence the Recorder, the city
judge of New York city, as well as the police justices, may, as
for any language, yet considered, be made appointive officers.
In other words, under the constitution of 1870, every judicial
office having only a civil jurisdiction in New York city must
probably be elected, while every judicial officer having only a
criminal jurisdiction may be appointed.
Next comes the last sentence of this § 18, which is conclusive
as to the foregoing inferences; for it declares that <c all other
judicial officers in cities, whose election or appointment is not
otherwise provided for in this article, shall be chosen by the
electors of cities, or appointed by some local authorities thereof,1”
And in the same spirit, but more comprehensive, is the
§ 191 the same amendment, as follows :
“ Inferior local courts of civil and criminal jurisdiction may
be established by the legislature; and except as herein otherwise
provided all judicial officers shall be elected or appointed, at such
time and in such manner, as the legislature may direct.” Such
are the changes made by the amendment of 1870 in regard to our
minor judicial officers in this city.
I12
This change recognizes and favors the growing feeling as to
the peril of electing inferior judicial officers especially of crimi-
nal jurisdiction, and marks a disposition to return to appoint-
ments.
And the inclination to encourage the return to appointments
is further manifest in the omission of several of the old pro-
visions as to certain officers having a right to serve out their
terms.
5. The § 25 is the only one securing that right to inferior offi-
cers, and it is given only in favor of £e Surrogates, Justices
of the Peace,” and certain new judicial officers that ma^ be
created to discharge the duties of Surrogates and County
Judges, for which the § 16 makes provision.
(b) If any further authority was needed to show that Police
Justices are not Justices of the Peace, the 40th Barb., 409,
15 N. York, 297, and 22 N. York, 469 may be referred to.
In Sill v. The Village of Corning, 15 N. Y., 297,
It was decided that the legislature could provide for the
election of local magistrates in the village of Corning, and
that as their jurisdiction was less than that of a Justice of
the-Peace they were not justices of the Peace, they were in-
ferior judicial officers—inferior to Justices of the Peace.
Brandon v. Avery, 22 New York, 469 is a still stronger case.
Justice Comstock, who dissented from the last decision, gave
the opinion in this. The head note is
“The only limitation by fche constitution of 1846 to the
“ jurisdiction of new magistrates to be created by the legis-
“ lature, in cities and villages is that it be local and inferior.”
Hence they decided in substance that a Police Justice in a
village was such an inferior magistrate—not a justice of the
Peace.
The Court says (there being only one opinion) p. 471:
“ The difference between the office of police justice, as con-
“ stituted by this statute, and that of a justice of the peace, is
“ sufficiently marked by the absence in the former of a va-
“riety of powers and duties which appertain to the latter,” &c.
The difference was not nearly so great as between our New-
York police justices and justices of the peace; for these police
justices, as we have seen, have not the slightest civil jurisdiction
whatever.13
So when a police justice for Albany, having the same civil
jurisdiction as a justice of the peace, was in substance treated
as such, under the constitution of 1822, in a decision in the
23 Wend. 414, that case was overruled; see 26 Wend. 598.
This case shows that for half a century there have been justices
of the peace in cities as well as in the country; both being in
point of jurisdiction, tenure and constitutional recognition dis-
tinct from police justices and district court justices in the city
of New York.
II. The bill proceeds on the theory of terminating the police
courts, as tribunals to be presided over by elected officers, and
provides for nominated police justices to preside in such courts.
1.	Existing laws are repealed in general only in so far, as in
spirit, inconsistent with the provisions of the bill.
2.	The new justices are to be competent, as were the old, to
sit in the court of special sessions of the peace.
3.	The powers of the existing Boards of police justices are
enlarged, publicity and records of their proceedings are
provided for, and additional duties are to be performed
which will make the Board far more useful.
4.	There are many new provisions of the bill as to system,
order, regularity, records, publicity, accountability for
money, qualifications for justices and especially provisions
for publishing annual reports, which will elevate the crim-
inal administration and prevent existing abuses.
HI. It may be objected that it is not just to the existing
justices to terminate their offices during their term, and that it is
of general evil example to do so.
We reply.
(1.) That any justice is at liberty to resign at any time, and
that public officers habitually consult their interests in that
regard, without any feeling that they are bound to serve
out their term. There is the same right on the part of the
people to change their system when bad, and in doing so
determine tenures of office. Offices are not property.
Neither party to them contracts for an entire term.
“An office created by law maybe repealed by law, with-
“ out regard to the term or future salary of the officer en-14
<e trusted with its exercise. Offices created by the constitu-
tion, the tenure and compensation being fixed by a statute,
“ are equally within the legislative control as to the tenure
“ and compensation, except that the office cannot by a color-
ei able reduction of compensation, be taken away alto-
“ gether. There is no contract express or implied between
“ a public officer and the government whose agent he is.”
Conner v. The City of New York, 2 Sand. Supr.
Ct. Kep., 356.
In Conner v, The Mayor, &c., L Selden, 294 & 298,
The Court of Appeals says, c ‘ The legislature has always
“ exercised its control, &c., over the unearned emoluments
“ of office, without a question or doubt of its power, except
“ in those special cases in which the constitution has for-
cc bidden its exercise. *	*	* The incumbent may
“ die or resign, and his place be filled and the wages be
“ earned by another. The right to the compensation grows
“ out of the rendition of services, and not out of any con-
“ tract between the government that the services shall be
“ rendered by him.”
(2.) It cannot be admitted that the personal claims of officials
or any sympathy for them, even if ever so worthy, shall be
allowed to influence public legislation. This agreement is
too much of the nature of the abuses by reason of which
we demand the passage of the bill. In the case last cited,
where such a claim was set up7 p. 295, the Court says, The
“ terms are fixed with a view to public utility and eonveni-
“ ence, and not for the purpose of granting the emoluments
“ during that period to the office-holder. They are created
“ for the benefit of the public and not for the benefit of the
“ incumbent. *	*	* The length of the term
“ is regulated by considerations of that nature, affecting
“ the public interest, but having no regard to the interests
£C of the office-holder in the emoluments.”
The same rule was laid down in the case of the People v.
Morrell, 21 Wend., 575, where the change of the boundaries of
a county deprived certain judicial officers of their terms, just as
the abandonment of the elective system will here deprive certain
justices of their term. The Court says, “ It is of the nature of15
" legislation to create and abolish offices, accordingly as they
“ may be deemed useful or superfluous. *	* I do notunder-
“ stand the State legislature to be restricted in their power any
‘1 more than the British parliament, except by the State and
“ federal constitutions. ”
Without any inclination to raise personal issues, or willing-
ness to lower the dignity of the great principles involved by
calling attention to mere questions about individual character or
attainments in these justices, it is not immaterial to state that
there is no such learning, ability or record of wise administra-
tion to be invoked in their favor, as ought in the slightest de-
gree to qualify the discharge of high public duty with any refer-
ence to retaining any of these justices in office. They have not
reached their places by methods which good citizens feel com-
pelled to praise; they have suffered, there, as is generally be-
lieved, no pecuniary loss ; they have laid the foundation of no
fame which the people desire extended ; and I see no reason to
suppose that any law-abiding citizen will shed tears over their
departure.
The true question to be considered then is, whether the
public interest demands the repeal of the elective method of
selecting police justices, and the substitution of the method by
appointment, proposed by this bill. If there are any justices now
on the bench, whose services would be useful to the people, it
is to be presumed they will be appointed.
To that question I will therefore now address myself.
Here the Committee adjourned the further hearing to Feb-
ruary 13th, at 4, P. M.
At the adjourned session, Mr. Eaton continued as follows :16
SPEECH OE ME. EATON, FEB. 13.
Mr. Chairman,—The movement to secure better adminis-
tration in the Police Courts of New York City makes appeal to
the intelligent judgment of the people, and it is, therefore, of
the first importance, that they should understand its spirit and
its object. It aims at no party aggrandizement. Those most
active in promoting it belong to different parties, and the bill
proposes nominations by the Mayor and a confirmation by a
court, upon the bench of which neither party has any known
predominance. If any of those who have done most to advance *
this reform desire any office, which I have no reason to believe,
it surely is not any office created by this bill, or in any way con-
nected with Police Courts.
The question involved is one of principle, and not of per-
sons merely. The great object is not to legislate one set of men
out of office and appoint another set of men to office, but to do
away with a demoralizing system of electing judicial officers
having a criminal jurisdiction, and to substitute a better method
of selecting such officers. It is not a bill to remove Police
Justices, but to reform police administration.
So far as persons and terms of office are involved at all,
they are incidental, and they ought to be treated as subordinate
to the great questions of policy and method upon which the
whole reform turns. Whenever it is found necessary to change
an agency or method of governing, those in office under the old
system must be disregarded as the general welfare requires.
Whether the repeal be of a national bank charter, a freedman’s
Bureau, a Metropolitan Board of Health, a Tammany Hall
Charter, or a system of elective Police Justices, those holding
the offices under the discarded system must go modestly back
among the people. I cited authorities on the last argument to
show that such is the theory of our laws and the judgment of
the highest courts; and we all know it to be the practice in
every department of the government, both state and national.
Hence, when the Police Justices now in office asked delay,
and declared their intention to employ eminent Bepublican
counsel to argue for their continuance in office, I claim that they17
misapprehend the aim and spirit of the bill and their own duties;
that they were unwise to make it appear that nobody else but
themselves desired their continuance in office ; that they would
be better and more appropriately employed in their courts ; that
the people had a right to change their system and their judges
without the consent of any existing officials ; that the example
of officials setting up their personal claims, and asking delay for
raising funds to pay for special pleas in their behalf, was of evil
influence and ought to be discouraged. There would be, it seems
to me, great dignity and admirable modesty in their standing
aloof from these debates. The bill allows any of them having
adequate experience, who may be thought worthy, to be
appointed under the new law, and their fltness will not be
thought less, or be less likely to be overlooked, if they shall
decline to employ counsel to come here to extol their personal
claims, and to insist on their exclusive rights. The fact that
those who promote this reform, in the interest of the whole peo-
ple, come here at their own expense, speak without fee or possi-
bility of personal gain, while they are opposed only by retained
counsel, paid from police justices and police clerk contributions,
and by members of the Legislature, who, bound to be impartial,
yet openly appear here as the advisers of these justices, is no
new spectacle, but a common one, in every great work of reform.
I have been so anxious to keep this discussion upon the eleva-
tion of principle that I have refused to promote any inquiries
having a merely personal aim. Such inquiries would better
become a legal proceeding for a removal, such ts has taken place
in respect of the higher judicial officers whose elections had a
kindred origin with those of these Police Justices.
Whether, therefore, all these Justices were selected by old
Tammany Hall caucuses ; whether they are all the favorites of
the indicted and notorious officials who now await their tardy
trials ; whether all these Justices are of the same religion, the
same nationality, and the same political faith ; whether they
are of inferior capacity and attainments ; whether among them
all there is no more than a single lawyer of even the most mo-
derate attainments ; these are questions which are not very rele-
vant here. They are of little moment in the presence of the
impersonal and far-reaching principles involved in this bill. If
210
The Constitutional amendment of 1870 bears the impress
of this general opinion; for it reversed that rule of the Consti-
tution of 1846, which required Police and other Criminal Jus-
tices and Judges in this City to be elective, and it allows each
and all of them to be elected or appointed as the Legislature
shall see fit to provide. It is upon this new constitutional
platform that we now stand, and demand the reform proposed
by this biU. It was immediately after the adoption of the
Constitution of 1846 that Police Justices in this City were
elective in small districts. Twenty-five years of experience
under that method has exhibited no merits, but such ineffi-
ciency and corruption have ensued that the system is almost
universally condemned by all honest and intelligent citizens,
and therefore we improve the earliest practical moment tore-
turn to a method under which far better criminal administra-
tion had been secured here, and has been continued in Eng-
land and nearly everywhere else in the civilized world.
WHY THE ELECTIVE FRANCHISE WILL ALWAYS BE BAD.
It has been by no chance that the election of Police Justices
has produced evil continually. That result is inevitable from
the system: for the system is essentially false and demoralizing.
It is quite as much as the virtue and intelligence of our people
can bear to have that method applied to the selection of the
higher City Judiciary, which are elected on general ticket in the
whole city. It needs a great effort to preserve the dignity of
such elections even in the country. In that higher and broader
sphere filled by the courts of general civil jurisdiction, every
man of character and property feels that his interests may be
directly involved. The nomination and election are in a large
arena, and challenge the general interest and safety. In the
higher courts, too, nearly all proceedings are according to fixed
forms, and discretion is not general; counsel appear on both
sides ; one party stands opposed to another ; and the journals
report the daily proceedings. In this way the higher public
opinion is a steady and powerful check upon abuses. But the
moment you descend to the Police Courts, everything is differ
ent. They have no civil jurisdiction ; there are not two oppos-
ing parties ; and hence do not, like the courts of the country20
or village Justice of the Peace, attract to their ordinary doings
any persons above the criminal or lawless classes, save those
shysters who are the allies and servants of such classes.
In the country and the villages even, the criminal proceed-
ings before a Justice of the Peace attract some attention, because
they are comparatively rare, and the social and business struc-
ture of society is not so dense and complicated that the indivi-
duality of all crimes below the highest is lost. Nearly all the
people know of the small crimes and of the habitual law break-
ers. But in this great city of a million, not one person in five
thousand knows anything save of the shocking murders, and
other very conspicuous offenses committed by the 70,000 to
80,000 criminals who annually come before our Police Justices.
The higher public opinion has little influence in those lower
judicial regions. Pew of the worthy members of the bar even
appear there. The press makes no reports save of sensational
cases. Pew forms or rules control the arbitrary and audacious
discretion of the magistrate. He sits as an autocrat and a despot
in the dark and neglected halls, where these lawless, degraded
thousands file daily and nightly before him. He dispenses such
justice or injustice as pleases him, with a speed and irresponsi-
bility unknown in any other tribunal of the land. The civilized
world elsewhere knows nothing to match it.
Everything, then, depends on the sort of a man this Police
Justice is; on his insight of character and motive ; on his
honesty; on his disposition to promote the general welfare, and
especially on the sort of responsibility he feels. If he feels re-
sponsibility only to a party; to a little secret conclave in the
little district where he was elected ; to active partisans, mercen-
aries, and criminals who elected him, and with whom are all his
hopes of a re-election ; we can see why our lower criminal ad-
ministration should be no better than it is generally believed to
be. If he feels responsible to the higher officers of the city at
large that nominated him ; to the higher courts that may remove
him ; to a higher public sentiment, to whom all his public doings
must be laid open, as this bill provides for; then we can see
why he may aid in realizing the reform this bill aims to secure.
It provides for that complete publicity of the doings in those
police courts hitherto unfeared by the magistrate and unrealized
by the people. It seeks to secure this higher feeling of respon-21
sibility in the Justice, and to take away from the future the fear
of the loss of the votes of the vile and lawless he ought, but now
hesitates, to punish.
But there are other reasons why the election of these magis-
trates in small districts and for short terms must always degrade
the courts they hold. In the country all the voters know the
Justice of the Peace, and his election attracts the attention of
good men quite as much as of the bad men. As the end of his
shortterm approaches, he feels he cannot be elected if a few
high-toned, influential men oppose him. It is entirely otherwise
with the Police Justice in the great city. Having no civil juris-
diction, his decisions directly affect only the immoral, the vicious*
the criminal classes ; while all better citizens aye unaffected by
his election or his doings in court, save in that remote, slow and
indirect way in which a local poison taints the whole blood.
Hence, those most unfit to vote at all take the deepest inter-
est and exert the most influence in the election of such a magis-
trate. Those most fit to vote, feeling nothing directly depend-
ent upon such an election, do not vote at all. Thus, the very
classes that the Police Justice ought to fine, to sentence, to hold
to heavy bail, to confront and overawe, are those he is, by this
faulty system, made to fear and conciliate. To secure a nomina-
tion he is, by this system, made to feel that he must be in favor
with the keepers of the great dens of gambling and drunkenness*
with the owners of filthy tenement-houses and vile concert “
saloons, with the noisiest demagogues in the halls of party, with
the traders in nominations and the mercenary manipulators of
votes and canvasses. And when the nomination is secured, there
is a similar necessity for securing the votes of the frequenters of
all the halls, cellars, garrets and saloons of which the great dis-
pensers of nominations are the lords and proprietors.
It is not necessary for me to go into any details as to the ex-
tent to which any individual candidate or justice has practised
on the hints which this elective system gives him. If any per-
son , standing as a candidate for Police Justice—if any Police
Justice near the end of his shortterm—has boldly and faithfully
decided all cases, and has failed to descend to such demoralizing
methods of gaining votes, I can only say I shall be glad to honor
him for withstanding temptations which few men have the virtue
to resist, and which the law-maker has no right to place in the22
path of any judicial officer. The danger of corruption and
injustice from such cause is tenfold greater by reason of the
small districts in which these Justices are elected. If elected
on general ticket for the whole City, the election would com-
mand some general attention. But each of the Police Justices’
elections is in some one of the ten little districts. This gives a
junta of local politicians and criminals the best opportunity of
controlling the nominations ; and the thieves, robbers, gamblers,
and miscellaneous homeless villains and rowdies from all quar-
ters of the City can well afford to concentrate for the local elec-
tion. The moment the local candidate is elected, he emerges
from his little corner and becomes at once a criminal Justice for
the whole City, holds his court in any part, and his friends from
any quarter ma| seeks his official protection. Legislative officers
are elected in localities because local interests need to be repre-
sented, and after the election those assembled from every dis-
trict act together, making mutual surrender of local interests for
the common good. There is no reason for electing Justices in
small districts, but every reason against such a system. Each is
absolute, and acts alone as soon as elected. Elected in a little
district on the apparent theory that justice is intended to be
local, and not one and uniform for the whole City, each justice
naturally reasons that his personal peculiarities and the local
feeling of the district were approved, and that his discretion and
the wishes of that local majority may be made absolute. It is
not strange, therefore, that a system of selection which thus dis-
regards the essential conditions on which alone a pure, enlight-
ened, and uniform administration can be secured, has been
speedily followed by many degrading consequences.
*
OTHER DEGRADING EFFECTS OF ELECTING POLICE JUSTICES.
It has caused the police courts to be regarded as a part of
the machinery of party politics. Parties have not scrupled to
use the power of such magistrates to coerce the votes of tens of
thousands who came before them.
For that purpose thousands of the guilty may be wholly
released, thousands may be let off on straw bail, thousands may
be threatened with unjust complaints ; other thousands may be
mercilessly fined; still other thousands may be held at command23
by suspended judgments. It is generally believed that such
have been the facts. Hence the reason why Police Justices are
so generally found on the committees of the great parties; hence
the reasons why they are so active at the polls, and so often
engaged in speaking at partisan gatherings. What can be more
demoralizing than the spectacle of such a justice harranguing a
low party gathering in a corner groggery, no small portion of
the members of which deserve to be brought before his court?
To-day he has before him as a criminal the villain whose vote he
sought yesterday, and whom he may illegally discharge to-mor-
row. No avowed enemy of the general order and safety of our
Municipal life could have invented a scheme of criminal admin-
istration more favorable to the interests and power of the crimi-
nal, partisan, and mercenary classes, more destructive of the
influence of honorable and law-abiding citizens than this method
of electing Police Justices for short terms in small judicial dis-
tricts. The voter who wants to save a brother thief or gambler
from prison, the rowdy, the burglar, the low junk, grog-shop
and dance-house keeper, every member of the great order of
disorderlies, vagrants, repeaters, drunkards, and jail-birds, all
those fearing arrests, or under security to keep the peace, every
demagogue who thrives by leading this miscellaneous rabble,
has a direct personal interest in a Police Justice election, and
we may be sure every one of them will be active in the canvass,
and will vote at least once. But the honest, law-abiding citizen,
who was never in a police court or prison, and does not fear
being brought there, who knows little or nothing of the repul-
sive and demoralizing spectacles there exhibited, never appreci-
ates that such an election concerns him, until he finds general
lawlessness pervading the City, its jails full of murderers, and its
higher courts barricaded by the trials of great criminals. Even
then he but poorly, if at all, comprehends that the ferocious
murderer and rich plunderers of the Treasury bear the relation
to the smaller criminals that swarm in these police courts, which
the great rivers do to the springs and brooks from which they
were gathered, and without which they could not exist. The
fact is, that our twenty-five years of criminal administration
since the introduction of the elective system in 1848, during
which our Police Justices have become more and more the mere
reflection of the little corrupt partisan caucuses in the Police24
Justice’s district, and the central party caucus, has nearly de-
stroyed all fear of punishment, and all faith in criminal admin-
is1 ration; and our crimes of every grade are as needlessly and
as alarmingly excessive as are our murders and our wholesale
official robberies of the public funds. It is but natural, how-
ever, that the lower crimes should be less noticed. I believe the
fact to be that in no civilized city or country of the world are
crimes of every grade so frequently committed, and so generally
unpunished, as in this city. And if we do not introduce a sys-
tem which shall cause the criminal magistrate to feel a responsi-
bility to the sentiment above, instead of the sentiment below
him, we shall soon reach, as we deserve to feel, all the evils of
genera] lawlessness and disorder. Our civilization will die of
our own suicidal hands. We are fifty-fold more to blame than
the Police Justices, whom our folly and our partisanship have
left at the mercy of the viler classes.
WE MUST HAVE LAWYERS FOR JUSTICES.
So low has the practice fallen before these courts that
respectable members of the legal profession generally refuse to
appear there, and a despicable set of knaves, known as shysters,
have a monopoly of all those fountains of justice. Nor is this
the worst. The public sense has become so debased in regard
to criminal administration that not a few worthy people think
it is not important that a police justice should be a lawyer at all.
The proceedings in these courts have so long been regarded as
mercenary, partizan and arbitrary, that not a few people have
ceased to associate the ideas of justice and law with them at all.
Nowhere else, however, is there more need of men well versed in
the definitions of crime and the principles of evidence and jus-
tice than in the police courts.
It was only when these courts were greatly degraded that
any party had the hardihood to put forward rough, ignorant,
mercenary fellows for police justices. Sharpers, bullies, igno-
rant party hacks, brutal, uneducated tools of the great party
demagogues, made their appearance in these courts as the nat-
ural fruits of the system of electing these justices and of using
their decisions to aid and screen the party. We must begin the
work of reform by demanding both character and instructed25
intelligence as judicial qualifications. Short of this no reform is
possible. No courts so much as these deal with liberty and
character, and if they are to be protected, the law of the land
must be understood and justly applied by the police magistrates.
Nothing but the humane principles of law and conscientious
intelligence in their application, stands between the liberty of
thousands and the cells to which these magistrates may consign
any citizen, and especially the poor and the unbefriended. It
is frightful to think of the injustice done in the annual disposi-
tion of the more than 75,000 prisoners whose cases are adjudged
by the uninstructed magistrates who have presided in these
police courts. Let any man who doubts it go any morning to
one of them and see judgments rendered for an hour or two at
the rate of more than one a minute ; note the despair of unbe-
friended poverty as it is led to the cell; the leer of favored vil-
lainy as it flaunts unpunished from the court-room.
I do not ask that these judges be lawyers out of any inclina-
tion to favor my own profession, nor because I think there may
not be honest and generally intelligent men enough be found
out of it; but because the decisions and practice in these
courts should be according to law and in the spirit of the law.
Every crime has its definition in the law. No persons have the
knowledge needed to apply it but such as have made it a careful
study. Lawyers have little enough of this knowledge at the
best; and it is nothing less than a public outrage to subject the
tens of thousands of the humbler and the destitute annually
before these courts to the arbitrary decisions of men ignorant
of the law they pretend to apply, and unable to define the
crimes for which they send men, women and children, in vast
gangs, to prison. It is the disgrace of these courts that a law-
book is almost never seen before them, and that a lawless, bar-
barian, partisan discretion, has taken the place of justice and
legal reasoning. If a police justice is to be the electioneering
agent of a party, certainly he does not need any sense of amen-
ability to legal principles ; but if we are to have one uniform
rule of right, reason and justice applied to all alike, irrespective
of prospective votes and party policy, we must begin,by bring-
ing upon the police bench a comprehension of the criminal law
of the land, independence of low influences, and regard for legal
principles. If we are not to have those who know the law to26
preside, we need nothing better than shysters to argue, and
nothing higher than the arbitrary will of the magistrate or the
interests of his party as a rule of the court.
Let us then avow freely our purpose, and act upon it. No-
thing has given me so much pain and discouragement as the
suggestion of some persons of character and intelligence that
the clause requiring the justices to be lawyers—to have some
real knowledge of the law they ought to administer—should be
omitted. How those who would not engage a cook, a carpen-
ter, or a gardener, without some proof that he had knowledge
and experience in his calling, can suggest that a man ignorant
of all the definitions of crime, of all the rules of evidence, of
the common principles of justice and legal reasoning, of all in-
tellectual discipline and habits of thought, should be called to
preside in courts where he is annually to pass many thousand
times upon every variety of crime known to human depravity, is
more than I can comprehend.
We not only need legal learning, then, but a high capacity
for applying it with promptness and accuracy, united with integ-
rity of character. It is not the fact that one is a lawyer, which
alone makes him fit for a police justice, but because the study
and knowledge of the science he must daily apply is one of the
essential condition of fitness. It would be better still if no law-
yer could be appointed a justice until he had passed a special
examination in all that relates to his duties. It is no less dan-
gerous than disgraceful to any community to have justices in its
police courts, who have no adequate conceptions of what is
meant in the law by committing a crime wilfully, by premedita-
tion, by malice aforethought, by sudden passion, by probable
cause, by the right of self-defense, by overwhelming necessity, by
conspiring together, by disorderly conduct, or vagrancy, or lar-
ceny, or forgery, or desertion.
Not a day passes, I venture to say, in which ignorance in
the Justice does not releasejthose who should be held and hold
those who should be released. The counsel for the House of
Refuge informs me that nearly a hundred inmates have been
discharged in a single year by reason of the defective committals
of police justices. The moment the law says to a justice, you
need to know no law, the Justice says to the law, My will and27
my idea of policy are, then, the rules according to which I enter
my judgments, and open and shut the cells of my prison.
Let us, then, require that none but upright, well-instructed
lawyers shall be police justices. Let them carry into their
courts some ambition to deserve the respect of the profession to
which they belong, and feel that they are under its observation
and criticism. Let no one be allowed to practice before these
justices who is not qualified to practice in the higher courts. In
that way a true reform will be inaugurated, and the career of
barbarian discretion, general distrust, and partisan and personal
favoritism will be arrested : and in no other way. Let any lay-
man who wants to be a police justice, be told to first study law
until he can pass a respectable examination. It will be a last-
ing disgrace to any party to desire, and to any Eeformer to con-
sent, that uneducated men shall longer preside in these courts,
in order that facility may be afforded to party hacks to rise to
judicial station, and for party policy to usurp therein the place of
the law of the land. If this community had any just sense of
what is required in these courts, it would resent as an insult to
itself any proposition to allow an uninstructed policeman, caucus
demagogue, or partisan favorite to hold a seat there for a single
day.
WHAT THE STATISTICS OF CHIME INDICATE.
Our vicious and defective system, and the worse adminis-
tration, unlike the criminal records of better-governed cities,
fail to supply any adequate statistics of crime or its punishment.
In these particulars as well, the new law will work a great reform
by enabling the people to know how every crime is punished
and every prisoner is disposed of in these lower courts. Still
there are some statistics, and they are full of interesting and
alarming suggestions. If they do not actually prove, they go
far to make probable, the worst that is generally believed of
these tribunals.
The reports of the Board of Police tell us how many pris-
oners are annually taken before the police justices in the City of
New York. In 1867 there were 80,532. Of these 20,762 were
arrested for disorderly conduct, 17,762 for intoxication, 1,121 for
gambling, 131 for robbery, and 59 for murder. The others were
distributed through all the grades and names of crime. Of the28
persons thus arrested, 58,948 were males, and the returns show
that 48,207 of them were over twenty years of age. The num-
ber twenty-one years old and upward is not given ; but making
all reasonable deductions for those between twenty and twenty-
one, we may assume that the number of those immoral, unscrup-
ulous voters thus annually subjected to the discretion of partisan,
uneducated judges is not less than 45,000, or more than a fourth
of all the voters of the City ! In view of such facts, ought we
to be surprised at the low moral tone, the mercenary partisan-
ship, and the stupendous frauds of our city elections ? If it be
said that some of these men are several times arrested, so that
their aggregate number is less than 45,000, I fear it may be re-
plied that many of them vote many times, so that their relative
power in the canvas is far in excess of their numbers.
In 1868, the police reports show but 78,451 arrested and
brought before these courts, and only 16,866 for disorderly
conduct; and in 1869 only 72,988 brought there, with only
14,985for.disorderly conduct; but it would be a great mistake
to assume that the City was becoming more orderly and law-
abiding as we approached the saturnalia of municipal barbarism
and depravity which produced the crisis of 1870. The deplor-
able facts are, as I believe, that the efficiency and fidelity of
the Police Department itself was seriously impaired, so that
arrests were less frequent at the very time that crimes of every
grade were increasing. What are we to say, in presence of the
known increase of murders in the City, of the facts that, while
78 are reported as arrested for that crime in 1868, and 57
in 1869, only 24 are reported as arrested for murder and
homicide united in 1870! What of the facts that, while 1,121
gamblers were arrested in 1867, only 270 were arrested in 1870.
What of the facts that, while 131 persons were arrested for rob-
bery in 1867, 132 in 1868, 217 in 1869, only 12 were arrested in
1870,—that year in which the Mayor became a member of the
Board of Police, and the great officers of the City freely robbed
its treasury, or allowed it to be robbed, of tens of millions!
But there is a secrecy and a dread more significant than
facts. So long as we had a Metropolitan Board of Police—un-
til the Police Department was made a portion of the partisan
machinery for ruling the City—we had annual reports from that
board which shed some light on its doings. But on the 5th of29
April, 1871, the curtain was drawn over the dangerous secrets
and all the doings of the past year. Since that date no report
of the Police Department has been made! A single meagre
document, issued in April, 1871, for the year 1870, contains the
only report made of that new and ominous City Police Depart-
ment, which was a twin birth of the infamous Board of Audit.
When the public will see another, no mortal can tell. I believe
there are good men connected with that department; and that
if they shall ever speak freely in regard to this bill, they will
disclose facts and opinions, which, if uttered now, would give
us great support.
Though, as I have said, no -reports of the Police Justices
give us in any year the secrets of the disposition made of the
annual thousands adjudged there; though no official document
tells us how many were arrested in 1871 or 1872, I have suc-
ceeded in finding some criminal statistics for 1871, that I regard
as reliable, and which are fearful and suggestive in the highest
degree. Public feeling was demanding vigor in the police de-
partment, and it was again exhibited in that year. No less
than 84,514 prisoners were brought before our nine Police
Justices in 1871, more than 9,800 to each justice—almost thirty
to each justice for each day in the year, Sundays not excepted;
and it ought to be remembered that these courts do the largest
business on Sunday. Does it not require some knowledge to
try thirty cases, involving personal liberty, every day the year
round? But what was done with this 84,514 in 1871? Well,
27,781 were committed for examination. This ‘c committed for
examination ” is an ominous phrase. The witnesses may be at
hand when the prisoners were committed, and may never be
again. It may be known how every male over twenty-one, so
committed, voted or intends to vote. No man but a police
justice is wise enough to say when the examinations will ever
be made, if at all. Our new bill strikes at this abuse. No less
than 25,814 of these prisoners were discharged summarily, so it
would appear; 10,290 were bailed; of 4,541 no knowledge of
the disposition can be gained; 725 were committed for trial;
2,816 were sent to the Commissioners of Charities and Correc-
tion, as to which more will be said; 3,845 were “not holden,”
but why I know not; 1,014 are admitted to have been fined, but
I know not how many more; a few hundred were sent to various30
institutions; 584 are reported as “otherwise disposed of,” and
only eighty-two were ‘ ‘ committed without bail. ” Can any man
read such a record without feeling that independence of tenure,
freedom from partisanship, accurate and ready learning, and
high character are demanded on the bench when such multi-
farious and miscellaneous justice or injustice is administered?
Can any citizen of New-York perceive without alarm that at
least one out of every eleven of its entire population is annually
dragged by its police officers as a criminal into the lowest courts
—into such police courts as we have? I believe that search
would be made in vain for so great a proportion of criminality
in any other city of modern times.
COURT OF SESSIONS.
The relation which the police justices sustain to the Court
of Special Sessions is highly important. Certain of them may
hold that court, and there they finally determine the cases of
such minor offenders as before the committing police justices
have elected to be tried before the police justices holding
special sessions without a jury; for, in the Special Sessions
there is no jury. No one will fail to perceive the great im-
portance of legal learning, independence of tenure, and high
character in justices who hold such a court. There is no other
protection against partisan and personal favoritism. According
to the statements of a pamphlet printed in the interests of the
present justices last year, and which I presume has not over-
stated the facts, it appears that 5,117 criminals were finally tried
before the single Court of Special Sessions in 1871, or more
than fifteen trials and sentences for every secular day of the
year. It may be taken for granted, I think, that no police
justice holds any criminal who elects to be tried at Special
Sessions, since, if the prisoner disliked the justices he would not
so elect, unless he regards the evidence as at least very decisive;
and yet, out of this number 614were acquitted on the evidence,
and 1,414 were discharged for want of evidence—that is, almost
one-half of the whole number were set free.
It is not part of my purpose to speculate on these facts, or
to explain, since I do not know how police justices can find it
for their interest, year after year, to send the most expensive
counsel here to argue in their behalf, and I therefore leave any
one free to infer that it is only by reason of their regard for the
general welfare.31
THE POLICE JUSTICES AND THE CHARITY COMMISSIONERS.
But there are some further statistics. The Commissioners
of Charities and Correction make annual reports, and therein
they give returns of the prisoners they receive from the several
Police Courts. Like all our criminal statistics, these are too
meager and confused to be satisfactory, if indeed tiiey are ex-
pected to make the reader any wiser. I could not satisfy myself
that anybody understood them. A few facts, however, are pretty
clear. At the prison (Tombs) attached to the Police Court of
the First District, there were received in 1870, 30,271 prisoners,
of which 2 were executed, 10,591 were discharged, (that is,
about 30 each day of the year,) 14,776 were sent to Blackwells
Island, and 482 were sent to the State’s Prison. As against
8,578 discharged from the Second District Prison, only 814 are
reported as sent to Blackwell’s Island, and none as sent to the
State’s Prison. As against 6,292 discharged from the Third
District Prison, only six appear to have been sent to Blackwell’s
Island and none to the State’s Prison, while as against 2,649
discharged from the Fourth District Prison, 120 were sent to
Blackwell’s Island, and none to the State’s Prison.. If these
reports are unreliable or deceptive, it is certainly high time they
are required to be made full and accurate; and if they are cor-
rect, they show the most disgraceful and suspicious disparity in
the rules which govern the punishment and discharge of crim-
inals in the different Police Courts. A corresponding irregularity
appears in the reports of 1871. It is discouraging, not to say
utterly humiliating, to go over the records of confusion, haste,
and irregularity in dealing with our criminal classes, which these
reports suggest. And inquiries, beyond the reports themselves,
do not result more satisfactory. For example, I was assured by
the highest authority that whole platoons of criminals are daily
turned over, say from fifty to sixty a day, by the Police Justices,
on a sort of general consignment from their courts to the Board
of Charities and Correction. No trial or sentence takes place,
not even the form of them; but whatever judgment is ever ren-
dered, is rendered by an agent of that board, who goes among
a miscellaneous crowd of prisoners, marking and labelling them
for from three, five, ten days up to six months, for any of “the
institutions,” much as a shepherd would mark a flock of sheepfor his pastures. The Police Justice only acts as an intermedi-
ary—a sort of broker in selections—between the police officers
and the sentencing agent of the Charity and Correction Board.
Was there ever a more convenient scheme for allowing the guilty
desperado, the favored party bully and repeater, to escape with
a few weeks of charitable detention. One would think that a
corrupt Justice would not require a long time to make a fortune
out of this business of selecting criminals for such easy punish-
ments, or none at all. Nothing but angelic virtues in a Police
Justice can be safely trusted with such temptations. It is far
too great for ordinary mortals. But strange as it may seem, the
memorable session of 1871 made a law for such wholesale con-
signment. It declares that “it shall be lawful for the commis-
sions of the Department of Public Charities and Correction of
the City of New York, to commit to any of the institutions un-
der their charge, other than penal, for a period not exceeding
six months, any person or persons committed to their charge by
the Police Magistrates of the City of New York !” No more re-
markable and demoralizing law than this was ever enacted in
this State. Without any form of a trial, without the semblance
of justice, without preserving any record or applying any dis-
crimination of guilt or innocence, an arbitrary, uneducated, par-
tisan Police Justice, may, under this law, annually send many
thousands of both sexes, of every age and condition of life—and
yearly tens of thousands whom the policemen had individually
arrested and taken to these courts—are sent in herds to those
commissioners, by whose agent they are sorted, labeled and par-
celed among the institutions under their control! Is it any
wonder the lawless have no fear of the Police Courts ? Should
we be any longer surprised to hear the police officers declare
that month after month they go on arresting and re-arresting
the same hardened, audacious, unpunished thieves, burglars,
gamblers, and rowdies ? There never was such a judicial farce,
such a disgraceful parody of the forms of law and the sanctities
of justice. One of these commissioners assured me that a single
person had been committed to the Island more than one hundred
times! Thousands yearly go through the forms of being sent
there for a few days in order to secure a new suit of clothes in
which they speedily re-enter the ways of violence and the dens
of vice, to be again arrested and “sent up” when their clothesS3
are worn or pawned. If we can contrive and enforce no better
system than this, every man of intelligence and wealth among
us deserves to be sent to prison by an elected Police Justice,
and to have his house occupied by one of these repeaters on the
islands.
DISGRACEFUL TARDINESS IN OPENING THE COURTS.
Of the many abuses attending the low and lamentable admin-
istration in our Police Courts, I select that of tardiness and
irregularity in opening them as a good illustration. No order,
system, or certainty prevails. When a justice will come, and
who will come, no one can tell. The theory of discarding all
laws, rules and principles, and of acting on simple discretion ab-,
solutely prevails. To make sure of doing no injustice, I have
lately visited again several of our Police Courts, Sunday morn-
ing as well as other mornings. They should be open by 7 or 7^
at the latest, but generally are not open before 9, and not unfre-
quently until much later. At this season a patrol of policemen
go on duty at 12 o’clock at night, and remain until 6 of the
morning. Then comes their period of rest after six hours of
cold and exhausting walking and watching. But if they have
any prisoners they must take them before the Police Justice and
remain with them until they are disposed of. This fact alone is
sufficiently unfavorable to arrests. But when, to all unavoidable
delays, there are added two or three hours of sitting on the
benches, and in the vile atmosphere of a police court, waiting
and hoping for the arrival of a Police Justice, we may feel sure
the arrest made is repented of, and the resolution never to make
another that can be avoided k formed. Never have I been more
indignant than when waiting hour after hour, with twenty or
thirty fatigued and sleepy, but stalwart policemen, and, perhaps,
twice as many prisoners—a motley and strange assortment of
degraded humanity—for the arrival of one of these Police Jus-
tices, with a salary of $10,000 a year. And then the work of do-
ing justice begins. Its only consolations are that it is brief.
Fifty men, women, and children, arrested for all sorts of crimes,
wearing every variety of rags and ruffles, fresh victims and hard-
ened victims of misfortune and vice, with faces expressive of all
shades of crime, suffering and despair, are remanded to the gar-
rets and the gutters, are sent to the cells or to the “Institu-
334
tions,” in less than fifty minutes. It may be justice, it may be
according to law, it may be we can live under it some years yet;
but it seems to an inexperienced observer that nothing short of
omniscient wisdom is equal to such dispatch, and that nothing
but a miracle can save a people which consents to submit to it.
If any man or woman wants a sensation that will last for a
month—that will teach a new lesson in human character—I ad-
vise an attendance upon a “discharge of the watch” by certain
police justices, on a Sunday morning. It is enough to make
one resolve to emigrate to Timbuctoo.
THE PINES COLLECTED AND WHERE THEY GO.
When we reflect upon these huge annual armies of crimi-
nals—as numerous as the hosts on either side that contended at
Gettysburg—which pass through the gates of these police courts;
when we consider that nearly all of them may be fined from $1
upward, and believe that a great portion of them are fined;
when we recall the 25,000 arrested for intoxication, all of whom
are liable to be, and ought to be fined, and that they are as well
able to pay a fine as a grog bill, we naturally inquire what be-
comes of the tens of thousands of dollars that are or should be
collected as fines ? We see no evidence that the police clerks or
justices are too modest or too timid to make collections. As we
look over the monthly pay-rolls, rendered to the Controller, from
which we find that these justices and the servants of their courts,
over and above the many police officers paid by the Police Board
always in attendance, demand as salaries and have been paid
each year, the sum of $205,688 56 ; we say, surely, this sum at
least, was collected in fines, from that prodigious number of
84,514 persons who passed the gates of these courts in 1871.
Certainly, it must have been easy to get that amount from such
a host, liable to imprisonment. It may have been easy enough,
but it is not easy, it is utterly impossible, to find what became of
the money, if it was collected. The money collected from all the
25,000 or more drunkards, should, by law, be paid the Charity
Commissioners before mentioned, and all the rest of the fines to
the Controller. I have a statement from each, and I no w give the
amounts of such payments. For the year from April 5, 1871, to
April 5,1872, the Commissioners received, as fines, $3,624 25 ;
in the period from 1869 to 1872, inclusive, there was paid to the35
Controller, as fines, the sum of $578, and no more. The mere
salary of the aforesaid police court officials, for those four years,
was $820,753 44; and the number of persons liable to fine,
brought as prisoners before these police courts in those years,
was not less than 300,000 ! It hardly seems useful to further
pursue our statistical inquiries, except to add that when you ask
a police justice how many prisoners are fined, how many released,
how many held for examination and yet never examined, how
many are bailed, what is the proportion of those who get free to
thoso who get punished, what number are held for each of the
several crimes for which they are arrested, and the like questions,
he cannot tell you, but he half supposes, or fears, that the Board
of Police may have some information of that sort. But when
you go to that Board you find it has but poor means of gaining
the facts ; that it is not aided by the police justices, who are op-
posed to statistics, and that it ffe full of doubt and suspicion on
the whole subject.
I have now, gentlemen of the committee, presented to your
consideration, as well as I have been able, the reasons and the
motives which have induced the people of New York to demand
a reform in their police courts. I but declare their opinion and
the simple facts when I tell you that no other single subject of
so much importance to the safety, morality and prosperity of its
people will come before you at this session. Nor will there be
any upon which, among all honest and intelligent citizens, there
is such unanimity of sentiment. The issue is between all such
citizens, on one side, and the justices in office, their personal
friends, and all those whose liberty and prosperity is identified
with the perpetuity of existing abuses, on the other side. Not a
single honest and disinterested human being has come forward to
oppose this bill; not a single argument has been advanced to
show that it is not in the interest of public economy, public mo-
rality, and public safety. No conscientious man dare affirm that.
The result ought not to be doubtful or long delayed. That stern
purpose of reform which struck down judicial pirates from high
places, as sternly demands that the work of purification be ex-
tended upon the lowest planes of the judicial sphere. You have
the power to advise it, and the legislative body to which you be-
long has the power and duty of consummating it. No individ-
ual of honorable ambition can afford to oppose, no party with36
honest aims or anything to lose in the future can afford to de-
feat this great measure of reform, without giving reasons there-
for better than any yet presented, and more honorable than any
the people are likely to surmise.
Hon. J. W. Edmonds and Hon. Henry Smith appeared, on
behalf of the police justices, and spoke in opposition to the bill ,
criticising some of its provisions, objecting to have the terms of
office of the justices cut short, and insisting that they are jus-
tices of the peace, and that therefore they must continue to be
elected under the amended constitution of 1870.
But no case was cited which warrants any such conclusion.
The cases in the 23 and 26 Wend, so cited, and already referred
to by Mr. Eaton, taken together are in favor of the bill.
The case of The People ex rel. Eowler, 46 New York, 57,
which was relied on by these gentlemen has really no bearing on
any question which arises under this bill. It relates to the ex-
tension of an elective term by legislative authority. We fully
agree that cannot be done. We have no desire to do that.
But what is more decisive, that case relates to a district court
justice, and by the express language of the constitution of 1870,
as amended, such justices must be elected. The provision is
already cited.
This bill was thereafter reported with no material amend-
ment.37
AN APPENDIX.—THE OBJECTIONS TO THE THREE
NEW BILLS CONSIDERED.
The three bills relating to the police courts, referred to in
the Preface, now so seriously threaten the success of all reform
at this session as to demand some further comment.
The reasons for their introduction still remain an unex-
plained mystery. Several reasons, some compatible with the
best intentions and others highly censurable, have been sug-
gested. Trusting that only the former have any foundation, we
yet feel bound to allude to the latter as well.
1.	It is said that party leaders desire that the appointment
of these police justices should be under their control, and should
be made strictly in the interest of the dominant party, and that
hence these bills appear just when the opportunity of giving
patronage is promising. No reply can be effective to such an
argument, except the stern voice of an outraged and indignant
public opinion, which shall make it,plain that something more
statesman-like than mere cunning, and something more manly
and just than mere contrivances for party aggrandizement, must
control the method of dealing with this great subject of public
justice. Those who, in such a spirit, attempt to dictate, must be
taught that the Republican party will not consent to be thus
blindly and needlessly led down to shame and ruin.
2.	It has been said that certain persons in or out of the
Legislature are anxious to be made police justices, and therefore
desire that the new law should be so framed as to suit their per-
sonal pattern and their selfish interests. We cannot believe that
such a theory of political prostitution to mean personal gain can
find supporters. Men governed by such motives'are, of course,
beneath all argument. The only course is to watch and expose
them pitilessly whoever they may be. While we are disposed to
take it for granted that the framers of the new bills had no
such design, it is unfortunate that these bills reject the clause
in the original which requires that the new justices shall have
that legal learning which shall enable them to know how to dis-
charge their duties. It is plain, therefore, that if the real inten-38
tion was to appoint some party hack, some personal favorite,
some political blockhead, destitute of every moral and intellec-
tual qualification for doing justice wisely, these new bills would
be a natural and necessary step in that direction. It is far bet-
ter that no bill should be passed than that the dominant party
should be scandalized, and the people for ten years be cursed
by such appointments. The reasons why police justices should
be lawyers are set forth in the second speech of Mr. Eaton, and
we need not repeat them here.
3. It is charged that these bills are brought forward on pur-
pose to defeat all reform. This we utterly disbelieve ; but it is
yet true that the enemies of all reform could not have devised a
scheme better contrived to serve such ends. These bills are well
adapted both to divide the party in power and to give their op-
ponents plausible arguments and renewed hopes. Under the
cover of these new bills, and the constitutional doubts they seem
to suggest, the dishonest and the mercenary will find ready shel-
ter and dangerous security. The delight with which their intro -
duction has been hailed by the police justices themselves, and
by all their followers and dependents in and out of the Legisla-
ture, is the most significant comment upon their introduction.
II. The other class of reasons suggested for these bills appear
to turn on constitutional questions, as follows :
1. It has been said that they are safer, by reason of the fact
of their removing the old justices by one law and appointing new
justices under another law; thus avoiding having the two things
done in the same law. There appears to be no weight in these
reasons, first, because the change is neither more nor less con-
stitutional whether affected under one or two laws ; second, be-
cause the police justices themselves are in office under the act of
1848, cited by Mr. Eaton, which both removed former justices, and
gave their powers specifically to the new police justices, precisely
in principle as does the bill introduced by Mr. Opdyke; and
hence the reasoning that would defeat the justices to be ap-
pointed would leave the old ones without legal existence ; third,
because these new bills palpably commit the very illegality
which it is so pretended they avoid. One of their strange titles
contains, among other, the following language : “ An act to es-
tablish in the city of New York an inferior local court, etc., and
*	* to abolish the Court of Special Sessions/5 etc.39
.	2. It is claimed that some greater safety was attained in
the new appointing power. Yet the district attorney, whom the
new bills first named as an appointing power, was abandoned
when the danger of his retention was pointed out at our sug-
gestion ; and as the bills now read no one can tell who is to
appoint. The fact is that no right or power of appointment in
any authority whatever is created by the bills as they are printed
and they could not be carried into effect if enacted.
3.	It is said that these bills create a new inferior local court
under the § 19 of the amendment of 1870, and hence rest in
part on a different basis from the original bill. To a certain
extent this is true. But have their authors looked carefully to
their new foundation ? Let us see : the courts which may be
thus created are inferior, local courts. Inferior to what ? Of
course, to those of justices of the peace. But in that event
police courts are so inferior ; and on that theory every conceiv-
able objection to the original bill is out of the way.
(2) The only courts which can be thus created are “ Courts
of Civil and criminal jurisdiction ; ” not civil or criminal juris-
diction ; not courts of civil jurisdiction and courts of criminal
jurisdiction. But the court created by the authors of the three
bills has only criminal jurisdiction ; and it has a larger jurisdic-
tion even than a present police court. It does not appear there-
fore to be authorized.
4.	The fact is the whole constitutional question affecting all
the bills turns on the question whether a police justice is a justice
of the peace in the sense of the Constitution. If he is such a jus-
tice of the peace, then both under the Constitution of 1846 and
1870, he is in the most positive language made an elective of-
ficer and cannot be appointed. And in that event also his term
of office, perhaps, could not be terminated by any law. Now it
is almost too plain for argument that if a present police justice
is a justice of the peace, in the constitutional sense, each of the
“sessions magistrates” which the three hills create, will also be jus-
tices of the peace, for the same and still stronger reasons, and hence
they too must be elected; for while they have all the authority and
jurisdiction of a police justice, they are also given some additional
powers which bring them still nearer to justices of the peace.
5.	This reasoning then shows that while the new bills have40
avoided no legal objections, they have created several peculiar
to themselves. The fact is, it was only trifling with great con-
stitutional principles to attempt to avoid them, by putting some
of the first sections of Mr. Opdyke’s bill into a separate bill, and
by attempting to change the legal character of a police justice
by calling him a “Sessions Magistrate.” We look in vain in-
to the unsigned “Notes” accompanying these bills,—for any
reason justifying their pecular theories. They do not cite a
single decided case or a single constitutional provision ; and
why indeed is any law or constitution needed for a system of
criminal administration under which no well instructed lawyers,
but coopers, tailors, bootblacks, barbers, junk shop keepers and
bar room loafers may be appointed sessions magistrates. The
“Notes” are by no means common place, for they assure us that
they “ compact the debris of the machinerythey tell us of the
“ constitution apparently antipodal; ” and they say they “ scoop
up all the special laws. ” And it is indeed unjust to say they
do not once quote the constitution, for the “Notes” make this
quotation, viz: “No local bill shall embrace more than one
subject and that shall be expressed in its title.” And this quo-
tation is made to sustain three bills with titles more clumsy and
reciting subjects more numerous than we have ever before seen
at the head of any bill ever presented to the legislature 1
6. In conclusion, we wish to repeat that the promoters of
the original bill are ready for any sacrifices, co-operation and
efforts by which the great reform they seek may be secured.
But unless other reasons than they have heard are presented,
they must remain of the opinion that the only chances of suc-
cess and the only possibilities of escaping a disgraceful defeat*
are with the original bill. It has the emphatic endorsement of
the Union League Club, of the Committee of Seventy, of the
public press, generally, and of the highest public opinion of
the city and the state. And it alone is in that stage of progress
which makes it practicable to carry it through. Putting aside
every selfish and mean consideration, let the friends of reform
unite on some measure which shall be an honor to the legis-
lature and a relief to the people.18
such personal questions are to appear here, which X should
regret, they must be introduced by others.
The facts are indisputable that the public has lost con-
fidence in the primary criminal administration of the City of
New York. So deep seated and general is the want of con-
fidence that the evils resulting from it are almost as great as if
the justices were proved to be as ignorant, mercenary, faithless,
unjust, and incompetent as they are generally believed to be.
Good men despair of securing the conviction of the guilty, and
therefore fail to make the effort ; guilty men have little fear of
punishment, and crime multiplies all along the line of guilt,
from vagrancy and intoxication up to theft and murder.
These police courts are the gates of criminal justice, and
the personal safety, the morality, the property, and the general
welfare of the people are felt to depend largely, not alone upon
the character and ability of those who preside over them, but
upon the relation those justices sustain to the criminal classes.
The conviction is general both that if we can have no better
method of selecting these justices our position is one of great
peril, but also that we can have, and ought at once to adopt,
a better system ; and that we should at once abandon the
method of electing these justices.
We claim that this bill wisely embodies that better method
of appointment, and that it will elevate the character of the
Police Courts.
CONSTITUTIONAL PROVISIONS.
The framers of the Constitution of 1846 placed supreme
confidence in small judicial Districts, short terms of office,
elected judges, and frequent elections. No other enlightened
people ever gave that theory so extreme a trial. That it worked
much better among the moral, intelligent, and sparse people of
the country than in large cities, is well known. Yet, even in
the State at large, many of the authors of that instrument
have lived to see their eight Judicial Districts reduced to four,
their eight years’ term of office extended to fourteen in the
higher courts, and their ever-changing Court of Appeals made
a fixed body; while in the larger cities, the general opinion
has been developed that small districts and elective officers for
the lower courts forebodes utter demoralization and general
lawlessness