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preachers, clerks and hod-carriers are people. And I know that you -and
your family are people. "
I saw that family picture in the papers you and your wife and your
children and grandchildren. It Was encouraging, because you looked as if
you were proud of them and. they looked as if they were proud of you.
live up to that picture, Herman, and you'll be a great chief of police.
For your real backers, Chief, are in that family photograph. They're
for YOU, no matter what happens. They'd stick to you if every other
friend went back on you. And I want them to' have good reason to be
proud of you, and to live to see the public fill your office with beautiful
flowers on the day you retire with honor from the job.
While we're on your human side, Chief, I'm going to talk about the
human side of policemen. They are human beings. They came into the
world naked like all the rest of us. And what they are depended upon,
what they had a chance to be. Like bankers, lawyers, editors and mer
chants, some of, them are honest, and some are not Their lives have been
influenced by others. Their business kept them In close touch with the
so-called underworld, and quite naturally bred some human sympathy. If
they knew that 4ieutenants, captains and chiefs were grafting, some of
them evidently thought that was the proper thing to do. It may be they
got the notion that graft was the chief end of ward politics. v
- But most of them will be on the level, Chief, if the mayor, the chief
and their other superior officers set the example. And you must know
that for a long time there hasn't been much encouragement on the force
for honest policemen. When men in any business get it inj.0 their heads
that honesty doesn't pay they're apt to yield to temptation.
Anyhow, Chief, YOU know policemen well enough to know that they
will be what the chief wants them to b&. They'll be what the admlnistra-
tion is. '
I think a chief of police ought to be a close studentof humatf nature,
with a big heart as well as a big head. He doesn't need a big fist. He can
be full of the milk of human kindness, yet firm and stern. He can love
little children and be gentle with ALL women if he understands. He can '
sympathize with social outcasts without loving vice and crime. He can
preserve order and enforce the law, and at the Same time feel that there
is some good in the worst of us as well as some evil in the best of us. He
can hate crime without hating the criminal.
K I were chief of police I would try to make every man on the force
believe that a policeman's job is an honorable calling, and that it is just
as easy to make people Ibve policemen as to hate them. The traffic cop
is the man that interests me. He is helpful, a real public guardian. He
directs the flow of traffic with his whistle or his open hand, and not with
vhis club and gun. Women and children feel that they can trust him, and
ask for information or protection. They feel that he is a public guardian,
and that it is safe to speak to him without being introduced.
I like that word guardian as applied to a policeman. When you call
him a public guardian you've said a whole lot
A policeman may be physically powerful, and at the same time kind,
gentle, sympathetic. The greatest men are the simplest and tenderest
Brutality belongs with ignorance.
The smiling, good-natured cop scatters sunshine all day long. The
-grotrch disturbs the thoughts of an who see his forbidding countenance.
1 don't like to see policemen carryiBg'clubs when I know'that a white-
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