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THE NEW YORK STATE

TROOPERS

SOLDIERS OF LAW AND ORDER

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BY KATHERINE MAYO

AUTHOR OF JUSTICE TO ALL," THE STANDARD AUTHORITY ON STATE POLICE

Three stories by Miss Mayo relating to adventures of the Pennylvania State Police have been published in The Outlook (March 20, March 27, April 3) under the general title "Soldiers of Law and Order." Miss Mayo's narrative "The Murder of Sam Howell" in the The Outlook of April 10 tells of the crime which aroused her interest in the State Police and helped to bring about the establishing of the New York State Troopers.-THE EDITORS.

"A

FTER it was all over-as quick as he'd gone I began to feel queer and sick. My knees shook so they wouldn't hold me. Then, as soon as I could, I grabbed my shawl and ran over here to you. Emma, if ever I saw a bad, dangerous man, he was it. And I know he's not gone far. He's not done with us yet. Oh, what shall we do?"

The other woman looked out across the farm-yard to her visitor's little house on the bleak hillside beyond. Her face was somber.

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We do seem awful alone sometimes-we country folks," she said, "and especially now there's so many foreigners coming up the pike. Sometimes I think I'll have to sell out the old place and move to town." Her eyes filled with tears.

But the visitor's attention had strayed. She was staring at a little placard standing on the mantel-shelf against the clock. "New York State Troopers,'" she read aloud, slowly. "If you need police protection in the rural districts, call up Central. Troopers may be nearer than you think!' What on earth is this?" "Oh, just something the doctor left the other day. He thought it meant that somebody's remembered us at last. He said: 'If you have a horse stolen, or your hay fired, or tramps bother you, or anything wrong, all you have to do now is just to call up Central and say, "I want the State Troopers,' and help 'll come along."

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For the land sake! Do you believe there's anything in it?" "I don't know. No. But we might try. Heaven knows we have need enough of help to-day! Let's test it." And the speaker walked over to the telephone.

"I want the State Troopers," she hazarded. "Central says it's long distance-it'll cost sixty cents." With a dubious face she reported the response. "Ask her if it's worth it."

"Say, Central! D'you think it's worth it?"

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With the curious metallic blare that the instrument sometimes gives, Central's answer shot into the room: "You bet!" "Oh, go ahead! Tell her to go ahead! I'll pay." Only desperation could have inspired the words. Sixty cents meant no light matter there.

For a moment the two women waited, too excited to talk. Then the bell rang.

"You take the wire," urged the hostess. "It's your story." "Here's your party," called Central, rare interest in her tone. The visitor's hand shook as she held the receiver to her ear. "State Troopers !" said a man's clear voice.

"For the land sake!" exclaimed the visitor once Why, where are you?"

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"A Troop headquarters, Batavia."

"Batavia! But that's an awful long way off!"

more.

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Maybe not, ma'am. Are you in trouble?"

In another moment the narrative had swung into full flood. When it finished, the same clear voice asked a question or two, then ceased with the words, " A State trooper will call on you shortly."

"From Batavia, a couple of counties away! Likely story!" scoffed Emma.

But her guest had caught a sort of lift from that confident voice at the other end of the wire.

"Ain't it wonderful? Good-by, Em. I must hurry home to meet him." And she scurried away so fast that she did not hear the other's in credulous laugh.

"Em" stood long at the windows, watching the little shawlwrapped figure speed across the winter fields and strike toward the lonely house on the hill.

"Poor thing! I guess the fright unsettled her," she mur mured. "To run off with that looney idea!"

But suddenly a new phenomenon caught the watcher's eye two men on horseback, in uniform like soldiers, riding toward the high-perched dwelling from its other side. Who could they be? She could not guess. Nothing like them had ever been seen in those parts. They drew steadily nearer, evidently headed for the house. Yes, and now they and the woman were meeting at the door.

The way of the thing in very truth had been this: A Troop headquarters, two counties distant, receiving the tele phoned complaint, had turned to the daily schedule of its farflung mounted patrols. There it had seen that two troopers should reach a point near the complainant's home at about the current hour. Telephoning that point, A Troop actually had the patrol on the wire just four minutes, by the clock, from the moment of the receipt of the complaint. And the patrol, instead of continuing on its intended course, at once switched off across country at a trot, reaching the anxious woman's gate just as she herself attained it.

For the present this story may not be more precisely told. nor its sequel given. Its local features were immediately st right by vigorous action of the patrol. But from that phase it led on into fields of Federal significance not yet laid open the general eye.

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Meantime it has taught the people of all that countryside a welcome lesson. When trouble now shows its ugly head, nobody stops to ask, "Is it worth while to call the State police?" Before the creation of the force some people honestly thought that New York did not need a State police. no crime in the country districts," they said. And even the country folk themselves were so inured to their way of living that many of them saw in it nothing amiss.

"There is little or

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Those people would be interested to see the records of the Department now. In the daily reports of the patrols of the four troops, in the records of the various troop and sub-station telephone calls, in the complaints and information lodged day and night at Departmental Headquarters in Albany, they would find such a mass of evidence of rural need as would fairly stagger them. The people did not complain, before, simply because there was no one to complain to.

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"Two years ago," said an up-State farmer just the other day, a 'blind tiger' opened just outside our village. Our constable is a good man, and he started in to close it up. Next night his barn was burned, with all his stock, crops, and implements. Everybody knew who did it. Nobody dared testify. The blind tiger' went on. It has been the curse of the place. About a month ago two young fellows in gray uniform came riding through this way. They stopped at the judge's, the postmaster's, the minister's, and the doctor's, introduced themselves as State Troopers, and asked if there was anything they could do for us. Then they called on me.

"One of my best farm-hands had just gone on a drunk and lamed my mare. I certainly was mad, and I told those two young fellows about that blamed 'blind tiger,' where all such deviltries started. Would you believe it?-I don't know how they managed it--but in three days' time the place was shut up. And now these parts are as dry as bone."

It is usually the patrol, stopping at the door for a friendly chat, who elicits timorous, hesitating confidences about matters heretofore thought too delicate to handle or else beyond redress.

"I don't know as it's any business of mine," one such began, "but I do wish something could be done about the way Jake Peters mistreats his stock. Bloody sides and rack-a-bones is all they are, and his barns are something scandalous.”

Again: "I know for a fact that Jim Boggs, over in the valley, sells cocaine to those weedy loafers in the village, and I'll tell it in court, too, if only you'll handle Jim and the case. I never would speak before because nothing would have come of it but Jim poisoning my cattle."

And yet again: "There's a condition over in yonder red house beyond that maybe you'd look into. There's a poor old woman living there with her brother that's a miser and half the time drunk. We hear her screaming sometimes. I think he beats her, and we're sure he has her shut up and starved. It ain't, of course, our affair, but couldn't you just investigate?"

The patrol did investigate. The patrol took the cattle abuser before the judge, saw him sentenced, fined, and warned, and thereafter dropped down on his home at strange and irregular times to see that the medicine worked. The patrol gathered in the cocaine smuggler who was turning the village" sports" into criminals. The patrol has done hundreds of other good things that most desperately needed doing, but that never got done before.

The patrol has no barn to be burned. He has no cattle to be poisoned. He has no local friends or enemies to consider, no vote to win, no office to gain. He is here to-day, gone to-morrow. His duty is to enforce the laws of the State, to catch criminals, to preserve peace, to prevent and discourage crime. Unlike local and county officers, constables, and sheriffs, he is hampered by no local boundaries. He may pursue a criminal, operate a case, make an arrest, exercise the full authority of a State peace officer in any section whatsoever, rural or urban, of the entire commonwealth. He cares no more for politics than the wind cares for dry reeds. No political influence, whether in friendship or in vengeance, can touch him. His future is in his own hands, and is solely a matter of personal devotion, courage, energy, and intelligence expended to the limit in the pure service of the State.

If you have in very truth a body of men imbued with enthusiasm, with esprit de corps, with a loyal respect for their uniform and with a leaping ambition to make it the most honored of its kind in the world, if you have a body of men so vitally inspired, you may look for its source of inspiration in just one place-in its leader. Be sure of that.

There is not one man to-day in the ranks of the New York State Police who does not look up with loyal and affectionate devotion to Major George Fletcher Chandler, Superintendent of the force; not one who does not feel as he rides his daily

patrol that "the Major" rides at his shoulder. To please the Major is his heart's desire. Which means all this: To walk upright, to be gentle, courteous, bravé, just to know the law and enforce it, to honor the peace and maintain it, to be the friend and helper of all good people in their various needs; to use all your brains all the time; to cultivate both brains and discretion; to fight if you must, and when you fight, fight to win. And all the time to bear yourself with the sober dignity of a State officer, knowing that no act or word of yours, even in your time off duty, will pass unnoticed; and knowing that the precious uniform, with all that it stands for to State and Nation, is glorified or traitorously stabbed and stained according as you, individually, bear yourself every minute in all the year.

Not one man in five hundred measures up to that? No. Not one man in a thousand, maybe. But by long, stern testing, sifting, winnowing, and by trial under fire, two hundred and thirty-five such men will surely at last be found to wear the gray and purple of the State. Their little company will be famous. Membership in it will mean a true distinction the Union over. And the men themselves, will be the most jealous, the most relentless judges, the most merciless discarders, of him who fails. If you want a man to do his poorest, tell him he is only human, excuse his lapses, set him a lenient rule. If you want him to reach the stars, hold him to break-neck climbing on a path as steep and straight and narrow as an edge of Damascus steel and show him that only the best men win.

Governor Whitman signed the enactment creating the Department of State Police on April 11, 1917. On the 2d of May he commissioned Major Chandler as Superintendent thereof. By the 16th of July Major Chandler had examined 2,670 applicants, and from them had chosen his original, tentative two hundred and thirty-five; had procured his full quota of mounts-young, unbroken Western stock of excellent quality; and had got men and mounts into training.

On September 6 the entire squadron, wearing the uniform for the first time, rode out of training camp to undertake its virgin tour of service that of policing the State Fair at Syracuse. The Fair over, the local press, in frank surprise, united with Fair officials to assert that the great annual meet had never before been quite so well handled.

In the meantime Major Chandler had chosen barracks for each of the four troops. Here, in the matter of location, two leading considerations guided him: First, strategic position, calculated on the State's chief needs; and, second, railway facilities to insure mobility.

Batavia, the neighborhood of Syracuse, the neighborhood of Albany, and White Plains were accordingly selected as troop headquarters; and each troop went straight from its Fair duty to its new home.

The patrol system was now organized-the groundwork on which the main scheme of operations must always rest. By this system each barracks and each dependent sub-station becomes the center of a network of patrol routes covering the region assigned to its care. These routes, by a carefully worked out plan, are frequently and easily accessible by telephone from headquarters, so that troopers riding patrol can readily be deflected in any direction as need arises. The route of the patrol may bring him back to his starting-point at night or it may run into an eighteen days' journey. But, whatever its length, its line is constantly changing, and no one but the commanding officer knows to-morrow's trail.

The men ride in pairs, readily recognizable in their gray cavalry uniforms and dark-purple ties. Each carries a loaded crop and is armed with a heavy revolver, conspicuous at his belt Each carries a First Aid kit on his saddle, and many a time already have those kits and their bearers' knowledge of their use come to the rescue of victims of wayside accident.

As has been said, the Department is in daily receipt of large and ever-increasing numbers of requests for service from citizens of every lot and calling, and of every part of the State. And no cranny is too remote for the troopers to reach promptly.

"You know, Major Chandler is a queer sort of man," said a prominent Agricultural Department official recently. "We are always bringing him our troubles, and never one yet that he didn't jump to tackle and cut us clear of. No conundrum seems to phase him. He always invents the answer and he always

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"HE RAN OVER INTO THOSE WOODS"-THE STATE TROOPERS PROTECT WOMEN AND CHILDREN IN RURAL DISTRICTS

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PROTECTING THE STATE'S PROPERTY-TROOPERS WARNING A PARTY OF HIKERS NOT TO BUILD A FIRE IN A PLACE WHERE IT MIGHT SPREAD

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"TWO MEN ON HORSEBACK, IN UNIFORM LIKE SOLDIERS, RIDING TOWARD THE HIGH-PERCHED DWELLING FROM ITS OTHER SIDE" (SEE PAGE 622)

delivers the goods. All this Department wants is to see more power to his elbow. Give him more men. It's the biggest economy I know."

The Attorney-General, through Mr. Edward G. Griffin, Deputy, cited a special case.

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"From this new Department of State Police," said Mr. Griffin, our own Department gets service never before attainable. As a little example, there was a man near Schenectady last summer who offered his check in payment for automobile plates. The check was accepted, but proved worthless. For a couple of months we wasted time and paper writing to him without effect.

"Then the troopers became available. We asked Major Chandler to act. He simply ordered a patrol to find the man, take his plates off his car, and tell him that if ever he drove again till he'd paid his bill in good money he'd get a jail sentence. "The thing was done the same day. It produced a surprised and chastened citizen.

"The

"Another instance was this," Mr. Griffin went on. Highway Department reported that a valuable piece of machinery, property of the State, was being removed from its site by a contractor, who flatly defied the Highway Department men to prevent him. The plant was located on a mountain. This contractor was coolly dismantling it and carrying it down into the valley for his own use.

"We had two courses open to us here. The first was the old way-till last October the only way we possessed. It meant two lawsuits one an injunction to stop the further removal of the goods; the other a replevin to secure the return of the goods already taken. And it meant delay, expense, bother to the State, and interruption of the State's business.

"The second way meant appeal to our new right arm, the Department of State Police. You can guess which way we took-the old or the new.

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Major Chandler pressed the button. That very noon the contractor, who probably didn't suppose there was a State policeman within eighty miles of him, saw a couple of troopers trot into his camp.

"Next day all that machinery was back up on the mountain in place and reassembled with care. They must have worked all night to do it! Of course there's been no such trouble since."

An interesting evidence of the vigorous reciprocative support of the Attorney-General was afforded in January last, when he ruled that a town constable forfeited his job by interfering with State Troopers in the performance of their duty.

The troopers had been working in a central Mohawk Valley village securing evidence for the conviction of gamblers. They had almost completed their case when this Canajoharie constable appeared and revealed to the gamblers the troopers' identity. The troopers immediately arrested the constable and took him before a justice, who convicted him and fined him $10.

And then came the ruling of the Attorney-General, promptly transmitted to the Town Board of Canajoharie, to the effect that, in that their constable had been convicted of violating his oath of office, that constable's place was thereby automatically vacated; furthermore, that it could not be filled by reappointment of late incumbent.

This incident faintly hints at the deep underlying necessity that every trooper shall be well and firmly grounded in criminal law and procedure. It suggests, too, the increasing assistance that district attorneys and sheriffs may expect to receive, and the increasing value that the force, as a whole, must attain, in proportion as hard, systematic, and skillfully directed legal study develops its reach, accuracy, and intelligence.

Returning to the subject of co-operation with other State Departments, we find Dr. Biggs, State Commissioner of Health, reporting, among other matters, a tour of quarantine service against smallpox on the Cattaraugus Indian Reservation. Here, says the Commissioner, a State Police detail of eight men completely stopped the spread of the plague, satisfactorily accomplishing what a large local guard was failing to do; and, further more, saving the townships affected a charge of at least $100 a day for a minimum period of three weeks.

From the Department of Education, charged with the administration of laws touching the professions, come curious tales hinging on State Troopers' agency. One of these concerns an

alleged dentist believed to be massacring the teeth of the innocent in an Onondaga Valley town. The Department of Education knew that this man had no license to practice, but had thus far been utterly foiled in its attempt to prove his guilt. Hence, at last, an appeal to the State Police.

The trooper detailed to the job was told by his troop officer to get the evidence. How to do so was his own lookout.

He located his man. Meantime, he had decided to sacrifice one of his own good grinders pro bono publico. Last, he went to a girl whom he trusted.

"Do you want to help?" said he. "Do I!" said she.

"Well, then, listen: Call up the number I give you at exactly the minute I tell you. And say that you have heard of the doctor's work from your friends and that you want an appoint ment right away. You won't take no for an answer. Insist that you must speak with the doctor himself, on the telephone, to tell him about it, and don't you give up till, in so many words, he says: I am Dr. So-and-so."

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At the moment appointed the trooper sat in the torture chair, his head tipped back on its little plush rack, the wicked buzz-needle searching out his soul through the firm white enamel.

"Wider," said the "doctor"-"a leetle wider "-and just then the telephone rang.

During the colloquy that ensued the trooper lay back with his eyes on the ceiling and the napkin hanging dank from his lip, carefully feigning an indifference that he did not feel.

Could she work it? At first the "dentist's" responses were non-committal-cautious to a degree.

But the girl persisted; her anxious ally caught the soft, sweet urging of her voice. At last that dropping honey began to tell. And then it came the phrase itself:

"All right, miss, I am Dr. So-and-so, and I'll be pleased to see you this afternoon at three."

Back went the receiver into the catch. "Zip-p-z" went the buzz-needle after the trooper's soul. But scarcely did he feel the hurt, because of the joy that was in him.

"Finished," said the operator at length.

The trooper stood up, the nerves of his head jangling, the bitter taste of amalgam in his mouth.

"How much do I owe you, doctor?" said he. "Five dollars."

The money exchanged hands. The deed was done. It would be easy to multiply stories of good work accom plished by the New York State Troopers. In February, when the force had been in the field only five months, the Committee for State Police published a report showing twenty-two pages of clippings from the country press commending their work by citation of specific services rendered in forty-eight counties. During the period from October 1 to January 31, as the report further showed, the troopers patrolled 99,567 miles, visited 4,477 towns, and made 522 arrests, followed by 423 convictions, with 70 cases still pending. And to their success in a direction far more important than that of making arrests that of the prevention of crime--there was already conclusive testimony.

But the force is in its infancy yet, happily getting its first experience in relatively little things-finding itself, finding its way, making fast friends with the people. The time will surely come, we know not how or how soon, when the people's needs will wear a sterner face. Be it by bitter secret temptations triumphantly withstood, be it by disaster, flood or fire or wreck or plague-be it by enemies within, be it by lonely ordeals that test a man's last ounce of strength, last atom of nerve, and that in the end may take his life itself, the New York State Troopers have their spurs to win.

"You must make the New York State Troopers the finest police body in the world," Major Chandler told them early,

"And that in the face of the Pennsylvania force, and those chaps still on the jump!" exclaimed a sergeant of A Troop, repeating the words. It's some job, boys! Gee! Let's go

to it!"

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“Go to it,” indeed, you lads in the gray and purple! That job will try the marrow of your souls. And the Empire State, looking on with eager, sympathetic eyes, proudly "expects every man to do his duty."

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