World Film and Television Progress (1938)

4The Police Reporter Drinks . . .' (continued) their editors to take the role of public stool pigeons. During prohibition many editors had the habit of sending the police reporter around to buy drinks at bootlegging dives and then publish his story including the addresses of the dives. Fortunately I was never called upon by my editors to go to such an extreme. I bought the drinks in the dives all right, but my editors never published the addresses. I might say further 1 bought drinks in many dives of which my editors had no knowledge. I do not know what I would have done if 1 had been assigned to stool-pigeon work. One must consider a job is a job, still it is a scurvy trick and I would have been between the devil and the deep blue sea. I think now I would have resigned first. Maybe I wouldn't. I do not know. I never had to face the problem. . . . The police reporter is also called upon to run down hot tips on automobile accidents immediately they come into his office. Of course, all automobile accidents which make a story come into police headquarters direct, but the reporter must show speed. 1 suppose some city editors expect the story before the accident occurs. Some printer or office boy would inform the city editor there had been a bad automobile accident at Tulare and A Streets. Promptly my telephone would ring. "Dash out and see what it is", the city editor would demand. He always said, "dash out", never "go out". Well, I would go, not dash, and when 1 got to the intersection find exactly nothing. I would call the city editor back whereupon he would inform me there must have been an accident, the printer had seen broken glass on the pavement. Broken glass on the pavement, therefore there must have been a couple of people killed. He knew just as well as I did that if anyone had been hurt the accident would have been reported to the police and I would have picked up the story in the routine of chasing the news. He just did not think that way. There were times while I was out on such wild-goose chases something really did break, and I missed it by an hour or so, perhaps missed the chance to swipe a good picture, perhaps missed the chance for a personal interview with the parties concerned. That didn't bother him much ; there was broken glass on the pavement. One often hears in news offices that police reporting is a lazy man's job. Maybe it is and maybe it isn't. A casual glance into the pressroom in police headquarters may show you a poker game in progress, or, on the other hand, it may show you a group of men huddled over their telephones, all dictating at once. At another time you will find the pressroom deserted. It all depends. Perhaps for hours at a time the police reporters do practically nothing. But a call comes in, hell breaks loose and the work starts right nowfast, nerve-wracking work, work that carries on through lunch, through dinner, with never a single moment's let-down, morbid work, the seeing and talking to persons under the stress of the strongest emotions, emotions which strip them down to their primitive selves; wounded, mangled persons, persons suddenly bereft of their dear ones, persons who in a moment of madness killed the thing they loved the most, ordinary persons like yourself with a vision of the rope or the electric chair coming before them like some dread thing out of the darkness. Ever the rush to telephones, ever the hurry to get the story in for the next edition, ever the hunt for new leads, a frantic, high-strung, wild chase for news. In his search for news the police reporter often comes across what is commonly known as the third degree. The thwack of the rubber hose coming through the closed door of a private room in police headquarters does not mean much to the police reporter. However, he jots it down in his memory so that when the door opens he can get a story on the confession from one of the thwacking officers. I wanted to get a picture of a man arrested for murder the night before. The captain told me I had better lay off, but I insisted on getting in to talk with him anyhow. You should have seen him. His face looked like the whole squad had walked on it. The squad probably had. Now that picture would have been a nice expose of police brutality, but I had no proof the man's face was the result of police brutality. The "questioning" officers, no doubt, would have sworn he had fallen against the table, or had tripped and slid on his face on the concrete floor. Furthermore, as a police reporter I would have been through. I would no longer have been the recipient of confidential information which I could not publish, but which would give me the background so necessary to the story I could publish. I did not call the photographer. As a matter of fact, the man told the officers where he had hidden the electric motor he was stealing from a pumphouse when the watchman caught him. He killed the watchman. Police brutality in this instance sent this man to his just doom. Police, however, are rarely so indiscreet as to work on any man's face. One of their pleasant habits is the tightening of handcuffs around the prisoner's wrists. Statutes have ruled out twisters and other instruments of a torturous nature, but they cannot rule out handcuffs. Handcuffs are a necessary part of any police officer's equipment, but at the same time they can be the cruellest instruments of torture devised by modern man. The handcuffs now used by police officers work on a ratchet device. To lighten the cuifs on a man's wrists, the officer merely presses on the cuffs. One click and they are tightened another notch. As a third degree instrument they are most effective. A few clicks and blood circulation stops. A few more and the cuffs begin to bite into the flesh. The wrists meanwhile swell. I have seen wrists which no more resembled human parts than a piece of hamburger. It is all done in the name of justice. Is it any wonder the police reporter has bad dreams at night? Honest or crooked, hardened or sentimental, the average police reporter leads a tough life at his work. It is not grand, it is not romantic, neither can it be called adventurous. The police reporter is lucky if he can train his mind to consider it all in a day's work and nothing more. Do not offer him your last drink of liquor when he comes off duty. He will grab it so quick you will think you dropped the bottle. Liquor gets him away from the things he saw, wrote about and did during the day ; it offers him a flight from reality. Yes, the police reporter drinks. (Copyright 1938 by Esquire-Coronet Ine.) ' The same characteristics all City Editors have . . .' (Exclusive. Paramount) 71