World Film and Television Progress (1938)

'The Police Reporter Drinks . . .' (continued) Not only is John Q. Citizen the victim of the police reporter. Sometimes even the chief of police falls in that category through complaints to the mayor or through literary chicanery in the handling of news stories. In one city where I worked a new chief of police had just been appointed. The police reporters gathered in the assembly room at police headquarters to hear his premier address to the police organisation as a whole. The new chief of police threw all of the police reporters out without even giving a thought to their protests. He told them what he had to say to the department was none of their business, nor the business of the press or public. He had the peculiar idea police business should have some semblance of secrecy at least. Throwing the police reporters out on such an occasion had much the same effect on the press "God Save the King" would have at a convention of Irish Republicans. The boys promptly set out to get him, and get him they did, within the next three months. It was during the noble experiment and the new chief desired to see that the prohibition laws were enforced. He made his error in taking time from his office to personally see that bootleggers were arrested. He liked to head raiding squads. The boys in the pressroom learned this, and it was a weapon in their hands, proving later a very effective weapon. At last the time came. Out heading one of his raiding squads the chief was absent from his office when a bank was stuck up for $40,000. The police reporters went to town on this. They variously started their stories something like this: "While Chief of Police Doakes was heading a raiding squad in a raid at 222a Street today, bandits held up the First National Bank and escaped with $40,000." This didn't make much of a hit with anyone, particularly the bankers. A few more stories of this sort and delegations began to call on the mayor. There was a conference between the mayor and the chief. The police reporters were not allowed in on this conference either. They did not have to be. They knew what it was all about. The chief resigned . Some police reporters are far from loath to earn a little extra dough on the side. Now do not misunderstand. You could not pay one for keeping a story out of the paper, but you might be able to pay him to get a story in the paper. Suppose you are a restaurant proprietor, operating Green's Cafe. Officers take a criminal who is in the headlines to your restaurant. Grease the police reporter's palm and you will read that night the criminal ate at Green's Cafe. No grease, no cafe. It will simply read that Detective-Lieutenant Brown took the killer to a local restaurant. That is called publicity and some newspapers allow it, generally the poorer class which expects publicity money to make up for the shortage in salary paid the police reporter. Others, I am glad to say, will fire a reporter in a minute for this sort of stuff. Still other police reporters make extra money in more questionable pursuits. They perform as cappers for ambulance chasing attorneys, bail bond brokers, even members of the medical profession. These tradesmen, 70 by the way, frequently see that the police reporter is recompensed for the use of their names in the sensational story of the day. Professional ethics of these gentry forbid open advertising. The capping business is slightly against the law, but minor law does not mean much to a good police reporter. A capper is one who notifies an attorney, a bail bond broker or a physician about a prospective customer. It is easy for the police reporter to get the names and addresses of these potential customers from emergency hospital and police records. There is an automobile accident for instance. A patient or two are brought into the hospital, both drivers report at police headquarters. The police reporter copies down the names of the injured, the names of the drivers and then telephones the attorney giving him the details. The attorney gets in touch with the injured persons right away and talks them into bringing a damage suit against someone. In the case of an ambu Joel McCrea in "Manhattan Madness'' lance chasing physician the police reporter gives him the names of the injured. As only emergency treatment is given in emergency hospitals there is a good opportunity for the physician to pick up a little business in the form of further treatment. His fees like the attorney's are split with the reporter. Bail bond brokers are notified by the police reporter of persons booked at the jail. The bail bond broker will also give the reporter a split on the fee. Now just because some police reporters are crooked, this is no implication that all of them are tarred with the same feathers any more than because some police officers have the itching palm, all police officers are crooked. But there are crooks among them just as there are in every walk of life. In a large city on the West Coast there was a police reporter working in cahoots with a police judge in respect to state liquor law violations. The judge usually fined this type o\~ violator the maximum, five hundred dollars. But if the police reporter got to the bootlegger first, things were much easier going. The violator paid the police reporter two hundred dollars, then went into court and escaped with a hundred dollar fine. The police reporter kept one hundred dollars for himself, gave one hundred dollars to the police judge. The bootlegger saved two hundred dollars as it had cost him three hundred dollars instead of the usual five hundred dollar fine. Again everyone was happy — except the taxpayer, and he didn't know anything about it. The judge, with his five hundred dollar fines in a large number of liquor cases, was in strong with the churches and prohibitionists who were responsible time after time for his re-election. In this sort of business, however, one flirts with large but somewhat confining grey walls. Needless to say the reporter would have been reading the want ads. if his office so much as suspected anything of this nature. The average police reporter, however, is honest, if not by nature then by preference. He has seen the inside of jails and penitentiaries. He knows what these institutions are like and has not much use for them as habitations. But it is different when it comes to getting the news. Then the most honest police reporter is capable of practising all the guiles of the game. The law means nothing in the continuous pursuit of the news, either to the reporter, his paper, or to the guardians of the law themselves. The police reporter can almost get away with murder if he is after the news. And God help the police officer whose stern sense of duty compels him to admonish the newsgatherer about breaking the law in the chase. He will probably be shifted "out in the sticks" the next day. A shift "out in the sticks" means the officer has been moved from his pleasant beat to some district where the work is arduous, or monotonous, at any rate unpleasant. On the other hand the police reporter ofttimes helps the police officer in the latter's work. Everyone has heard the time-worn joke of the police officer who had to move the dead horse from University to Second Avenue because he could not spell University. He does not have to move the horse if the police reporter is with him. The reporter will spell University for him. The police reporter, adept at the typewriter, makes out his reports for him at times, does lots of things for the police officer even to putting in a plug for him with the chief. . . . A police reporter cannot hang around police headquarters all day, day after day, without picking up a few bits of information which he never publishes but which he keeps in the file of his memory. When the time comes he hauls it out and hangs it like the sword of Damocles over the head of some officer from whom he is trying to pry information. It works. If someone other than a reporter attempted to bull-doze the officer in this manner he would get a punch in the nose. Even the members of the underworld respect the powers of the police reporter. There are a few exceptions, of course, notably the Chicago incident when Jake Lingle died in the dust from a gangster's bullet. But on the whole the police reporter is more or less immune from reprisals. Often police reporters are called upon by