A frequent matter of injustice in our police courts is the treatment accorded the Italian, Greek and Jewish peddlers and push cart men. Although they are licensed by the city and compelled to carry a badge, hardly a day goes by without a score of them being hauled to court on the most flimsy charge. Indeed, every obstacle is put in their way to prevent them from earning an honest dollar. The city ordinance prevents them from standing more than ten minutes in one place. Often they are arrested before they are five minutes in a place. If you stand around Park Row you can see a dozen of these men picked up daily, while the notorious pool rooms and gambling hells of the city are in full blast.
Intoxication and disorderly conduct cases receive the least consideration. And then everything depends on what the policeman says against the defendant, but the presumption is that he is guilty. What we object to is that the magistrate allows the officer to whisper something into his ear, that the defendant knows nothing whatever about and is not related to the case, but that thing is usually the basis of the sentence. I hope that the day will come when the officer that makes the arrest will place the rum-seller at the bar with the “drunk” and make him responsible for the “output” of his own saloon. Indeed, whenever a policeman finds a “drunk” within a hundred feet of a saloon, it should be his duty to arrest the saloon-keeper who sold the liquor. Why not? As the officer on post gets all his “drinks” free at the saloon, which is only bribery in a mild form, it would be manifestly improper for him to give any other testimony in the proceedings other than favorable to the rum-seller, and this makes his relation to the case nothing short of a scandal! Almost every day some persons are robbed and flim-flammed in scores of city saloons. If they offer any protest or even ask for the return of their money they are forthwith “fired” to the street. Sometimes the victim is beaten into insensibility and left bleeding on the sidewalk. Soon a policeman comes along. He arrests the victim and makes a charge of intoxication or disorderly conduct against him. But, strange to say, nothing is done to the saloon-keeper and his assassins. The bloated gin-mill keeper is allowed to continue his business unmolested, and he waits for more victims. Good hearted people, and even ministers of the gospel, waste a lot of “gush” on the poor, persecuted saloon keeper, all of which is entirely uncalled for.