The Omaha Sunday Bee
PART TWO
EDITOEIAL
PAGES ONE TO TWELVE
PART TWO
SOCIETY
PAGES ONE TO TWELVE.
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VOL. XLTI1 XO. 49.
OMAHA, SUNDAY MOKNING, MAY 24, 1014.
SINGLE COPY FIVE CENTS.
Contrast in Old Time and Present Day Police Methods
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WAV A JBW - " i tM a M 7
Will. WUillJXUUlilnijJl 11.(11 If r5t1ffS'L' AVL V, J.lllV5f; f
EING a burglar is a business that can-
B not be said to have over conduced
I in any considerable t-egree to health,
1 ! i I a i . lit.
uayjjiuuDb turn BjjixJiuai tranquility.
Neither has murder, robbery, bat
tery or assault been attended by
wholly safe and satisfactory circumstances. The
grinning specter of the law lives always in the
vision of those, who prey, and plunder, depriving
them of repose and the comforts of homo. Time
was, in the days of yore, that the safety of society
rested to a largo extent upon the degree of pun
ishment meted out to transgressors. Hence the
minor offenses, such as swiping an embroidered
handkerchief, and things like that, wore punish
able by death.
Came a day, of course, when capital punishment
v.'aa limited to the more Bcrlous crimes; and then
, thieves and their brethren of less clever brain
smiled broadly and plied their trade with great
industry. They were swift of foot and cunning
of brain and the match , of the sturdy bluocoat,
ho walked his beat with club in hand. Life was
letting up on them a little when a man in France
mooned over a piece of machinery and made a
dream come true; the dream of an engine eating
gasoline and traveling on four whoels at a terrify
ing pace. The birth of the automobile and its
coming Into use all over the world may hot havo
pleased criminals but fat policemen in every town
have called down copious blessings on the little
Frenchman's head.
"A revolution has come about In police methods
in the last twenty years," Bald Henry W. Dunn,
chief of the Omaha police force. "Police efficiency
has been multiplied a thousand-fold. One man
does the work of six, and does It so much' better
tnan six used to do It that there is no comparison.
If somebody had told me these things would come
about twenty years ago, when I first donned a
uniform and began pacing a beat I would have
probably arrested him on a charge of Insanity.
"It was not an uncommon thing for a police
man to stand in the cold, hanging on to a drunk '
for an hour In the days before the auto patrol '
was put into use. Coppers were congratulated if
they were able to answer tho ordinary call in from
ten minutes to an hour, depending on the length
of the run. The trail was usually cold when they
got to the scene of action. Now we can answer
a call from any square of tho 15,680 acres of
Omaha within a few minutes."
There are those who declaim against the reign
of the great god Speed; sacrifices they say are
made in his name, a few killed, several maimed
and many bruised. Fate seems to have so written
and what fate has written the fools have said shall
be so. However, there are also those who worship
the great god Speed, and of these none are more
devout than Chief Dunn, his captains, Mike Demp
Bey. Henry Hcitfeld and Chief of Detectives Steve
Maloney. Since speed was hamepsed to the Omaha
police department, they say, lives have been saved
by the score, criminals have been caught and their
lcot recovered.
"It used to be a .hardship being a policeman,"
said Chief Maloney. "A copper ordinarily had to
fight his battles alone. He had to lead his cap
tives a long distance through cold, stormB and
rain. Now It's not not exactly a hardship. As
an instance of the speed with which we can work:
About two years ago a call came to the station,
saying a burglar was breaking into a house at
Thirteenth and Castellar streets. I jumped into the
patrol and we rushed out there.
"When we arrived at the house I detailed some
of the policemen to guard the back of the house
while the others entered by the front. We peeped
ir. at the front door and there was the burglar at
work. He made a dash for the back, found he was
trapped and calmly came to the front door, opened
It and let ub in. With a horse patrol we could,
of course, never have done that.
"Then there was the time Red Murray's gang
terrorized the people at Eighteenth and California
streets. Murray, Harry Johnson and Cal Rolfe
were robbing a house. We thundered out there
ir. the police patrol and caught the burglars at
work. A fight followed and Murray was shot and
the others were captured. Without the auto these
men could have robbed a house and escaped be
fore we could have come upon them."
It is now a common occurrence to catch a bur
glar at work, said Chief Dunn. In the old days
It was a case for congratulation, but now unless
the men are caught at work or shortly after they
or.lt and are trying to escape It is cause for regret.
Said Chief Dunn:
"I remember one of the first fast trips we "ever
made, About 2.30 o'clock one morning a fright
ened woman called up from Thirty-second tmd
Francis streets, saying sho. was alone in the house
and burglars were looting the place. Wo hopped
into the patrol and dashed out there. When wo
arrived the woman was still talking to the station.
We searched the house and found nothing more
dangerous than a few rats in the basement, but
the woman felt more at ease, for she realized she
was almost within a minute's reach of the police."
Naturally, there are times when the auto sticks
in the mud or something and there are naturally
places where the flying squadron, as the motor
cycle officers are known, -cannot get, but tho times
are few and the places far between. Also, there
are instances where only foot-work counted. Chief
Dunn does not take an unpardonable pride in his
speed on foot He believes life Is too short to
endanger it by hard running, but once In his life
he ran on high as long as his breath lasted,
' J. J Donahue and I were working togother,"
said Chief Dunn, "when wo heard that Fred Smith
, TTv t , -
had beaten up a man at Jimmy Adams' saloon 'and
left the victim in a serioifa condition. We were
ordered to catch Smith at all costs. We hit his
trail and soon sighted him. Then began the most
trying race in which I ever ran. We chased all
over the downtown section of the city. Finally
we began to close In on the fellow when he turned
in at a gate on Capitol avenue. We followod as
fast as our legs would carry us. Donahue was In
the lead and Just as he entered tho gate the biggest
bulldog I ever saw lunged at hint with a ferocious
'wow.' I was hard behind Donahue and could not
stop, so I pushed him right into the dog. We took
some time to Bettle with the bulldog and then con
tinued the search for Smith. We found ho had
been unable to get out of the back yard, which
was surrounded by a high fence, and so we took
htm In." ,
Sam Rlegeltnan and Eddie Morgan, the first
motorcycle officers, smashed all speed records to
Rmithoroons, but they rode the old Btyle single
tyllndor machines, and George J. Emery and L. O.
Wheoler, who uro tho present veterans of the fly
ing squadron, abldo by no speed standards at all.
'lhoy havo boon known to nppoar at neighbor
hood rows, free-for-all fights, In homes whore, wife
beatnm warn cnminlttlnc thrflr clterin nf vlntanea
ndjjat houses whero robbers wore working with
irNjuickncsa almost miraculous. And they havo
few such storlos as Patsoy Havey tells of the first
patrol put Into uso, and of Its first long, fast
jcurno)5.
"A call cunie In that chicken thieves were rob
bing a roost on Crownpolnt avenue," sad Havey.
"The old patrol was cranked up and wont puffing:
nway.prHh Andy Fahey and Dan Lahey urging th
driver to greater spoed. Around Twenty-sevonth
,nnd Fort street, then unpaved, tho machine stuck
in the mud. The coppers got out and pushed and
pullod and slipped and foil in tho mud, but to no
purpose.
"Finally they called the station and asked for
aavlce. I told them to get Officer Sullivan's cow
to pull them out. It was early in the morning and
this seemed all right until Fahey called a halt
hour later and cmphnslzod his opinion that it was
a poor time for fooling. Shortly after that Sulli-'
vun wanted to know 'phwat the hell was meant by
tlirying to rob him of his cow.' Finally the street
car company was called and a car was sent' out,
the patrol hitched on and safely yanked out of the.
mud."
For all the speed of the automobiles and motor
cjcloe there are policemen who maintain that some
records wero made by the old horse patrol. One
of these Is Jim Donahoe, now an Inside man, who
claims to havo driven thirty-one miles In two hours
and twenty minutes In order to get possession of
the horao on which Pat Crowe escaped to Platts
mouth after ho had secured his kidnapping money.
Captain Heltfeld and Donahoe hitched up a horse
that had never been driven single before. They
raced to Manaway to meet the rider of the horse,
foarlng Council DIufrs authorities would replevin
it. It was a cold day and the home driven at full
speed nil the way on a roundabout trip.
Mlko Whelan became the guardian angel of this
pony recovered from the Pat Crowe chase.
That hoss sure had a checkered career," re
marked Patsoy Havey. "And he was the most
obstreperous beast I ever saw. He uBed to get
his tall over (he lines and then raise old caln.
There was no controlling hlra once he got his tall
over the HnoB. Ho was the bug-bear of every
conservative copper for he had the habit of switch
ing the lines under his tail at a critical stage of
n drive, clamping down on the lines and taking
the bit in his teeth and going as fast as he pleased
and lu any direction his fancy dictated. Whelan
nt last invented a safety device. He would tie the
pony's tall to tho singletree with baling wire when
ever he started on a trip."
The mounted patrol were also capable of bursts
of speed., A mounted copper, who is no longer
on the forco, sent in his call one night and was
ordered to dash up to Twenty-ninth and Farnam
and stop a fight He was a Farnam patrolman
and was supposed to be within two or three blocks
of tho scene of the battle, but he had wandered
over to Twenty-fourth and Clark streets on busi
ness of his own and the next day his horse was
out of commission, for he had gone to Farnam on
a dead run.
There are times when even a polceman will be
ruoro than satisfied with the speed a police chauf
feur can develop. On the night of the Overland
Limited robbery the patrol went browsing around
Sarpy Mills. It was early morning wv H ma
chine hit Farnam street, with Jim Donahoe In the
seat with the driver. All night the police crew
had complained of the slowness with which "tho
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