Island of Vice: Theodore Roosevelt’s Doomed Quest to Clean Up Sin-Loving New York by Richard Zacks

Author:Richard Zacks [Zacks, Richard]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Random House Digital Inc.
Published: 2012-03-13T00:00:00+00:00

The battle began over promotions. Stickler Parker, rereading the records from Albany, had discovered that the method the board had chosen—in its first months—of assigning and promoting officers technically violated the New York state legislature’s mandates.

Back in July 1895, Roosevelt, boyishly cherishing derring-do, had pushed a system that stressed rewarding heroics by creating a merit list of “men who have done special service at the risk of their lives in saving life, in protecting life and property, in putting down disorder and in arresting dangerous criminals.”

The board would recommend heroic officers for promotion, and they would then take a pass–fail exam. Parker found the police civil service law required a competitive exam to rank the men. Parker also discovered the board had no right to promote patrolmen to roundsmen since that technically was not a separate rank (such as captain or sergeant) but a duty assignment controlled by the chief.

This change in method might seem obscure, but reforming the police department hinged on placing strong honorable men at the highest positions—breaking from the old patronage days. And the force at New Year’s had openings for sixteen captains (i.e., half the precincts), for two dozen sergeants, and, most importantly, for the district inspectors and deputy chief, directly in line for the top job.

At first, Parker’s discovery about promotions hadn’t seemed too disruptive. (It was a tad ironic, though, that Parker was correcting former civil service commissioner Roosevelt over a civil service law.) The board—with Andrews taking the lead—created a new method that would respect “seniority, merit and [include a] competitive exam.” Each of the four board members would rate a candidate on a scale of 1 to 65 points based on a long list of qualities: integrity, efficiency, zeal, personal character, gallantry, courage, detection of criminals. (In practice, the long list would allow a commissioner to justify almost any rating.) A competitive written exam on laws, police rules, and tactics would determine the other 35 points.

Each applicant would receive a numerical rating from 1 to 100; the board would vote on promoting anyone scoring above 75. Seniority would break numerical ties.

The law stated that this bipartisan board needed a unanimous vote to promote an officer or a three-to-one vote if the applicant was endorsed by the chief of police. Here’s where the mischief began. One commissioner could gum up the works and there were bound to be disagreements among four men over several dozen promotions.

Parker began expressing “reservations” about three veteran officers with stellar reputations, all darlings of reform: Moses Cortwright for deputy chief, and Nicholas Brooks and John McCullagh from acting inspectors to full inspectors. All three were Republicans and would be in line for the job of Chief Conlin, who had health issues, including failing eyesight. Parker—the nominal Democrat—also demanded that several other captains be allowed into the running for these plum inspector posts. Roosevelt, Andrews, and Grant opposed him.

The feud escalated quickly from Parker’s muffled qualms to an outright battle.

Citing a shortage of detectives for his pet project

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