A POLICE ADMINISTRATION CHAPTER I THE PROBLEM CURSORY examination of the problem of crime in Cleveland produces some startling facts. For the year 1920 Cleveland, with approximately 800,000 population, had six times as many murders as London, with 8,000,000 population. For every robbery or assault with intent to rob committed during this same period in London there were 17 such crimes committed in Cleveland. Cleveland had as many murders during the first three months of the present year as London had during all of 1920. Liverpool is about one and one-half times larger than Cleveland, and yet in 1919 Cleveland reported 31 robberies for each one reported in Liverpool, and three times the number of murders and manslaughters. Practically the same ratio holds between Cleveland and Glasgow. There are more robberies and assaults to rob in Cleveland every year than in all England, Scotland, and Wales put together. In 1919 there were 2,327 automobiles stolen in Cleveland; in London there were 290; in Liverpool, 10. Comparisons of this kind between Cleveland, on the one hand, and European cities, on the other, could be almost indefinitely extended. There is no gainsaying the fact that crime in Cleveland far exceeds, in point of volume, the crime of European cities of equal or larger size. And yet, compared with other American cities, Cleveland's record does not o show to any special disadvantage. For the first quarter of 1921 there were four more murders committed in Detroit than in Cleveland, and nearly twice as many automobiles stolen in Detroit. During the first three months of 1921 St. Louis had 481 robberies, while Cleveland had 272; for the same period complaints of burglary and housebreaking in St. Louis numbered 1,106, as compared to 565 such complaints in Cleveland. For this same period the number of murders in Buffalo, a much smaller city, equaled those in Cleveland, and burglaries, housebreakings, and larcenies were almost as numerous. In 1919 Chicago, more than three times the size of Cleveland, had 293 murders and manslaughters, compared with Cleveland's 55, so that the ratio was easily two to one in Cleveland's favor; the 1920 statistics of the two cities show an even better proportion for Cleveland. On the other side of the scale, for the first three months of the present year Cleveland had more than twice the number of robberies and assaults to rob that Detroit had, and a similar large proportion of burglaries and housebreakings. During this period there were 296 automobiles stolen in St. Louis, as against 446 in Cleveland. Cleveland is approximately three times larger than Toledo, and yet in 1920 Cleveland had 87 murders, while Toledo had only 11. Another basis of comparison is between the crime statistics of Cleveland in 1921 and Cleveland in former years. For the first six months of 1921, the period in which this survey was carried on, the number of murders committed in Cleveland was 15. For the same period in 1920 the number of murders was 30. Similarly, during this same period, there was a decrease of burglaries and larcenies from 573 in 1920 to 541 in 1921. On the other hand, robberies and assaults to rob increased, as between the two periods, from 454 to 534, and the number of automobiles stolen increased from 1,156 to 1,238. The following figures show the average number of complaints for the first quarter of each of the four years from 1917 to 1920 inclusive, classified according to four outstanding crimes: The following figures give the number of complaints of the same crimes for the first quarter of 1921: Obviously, there has been some improvement within the last four years. All in all, crime conditions are no more vicious in Cleveland than they are in other American cities. In point of volume of crime in relation to size of population Cleveland is neither much better nor much worse than the other municipalities of the United States. It is when we compare Cleveland with cities like London, Glasgow, Liverpool, or almost any other European municipality that ominous contrasts are obtained. In this respect, therefore, Cleveland's problem is the problem of America, for the same causes that are maintaining the high crime rate of Chicago, St. Louis, New York, Detroit, and San Francisco are operating here. What are these causes? Here we can only hint at some of the deeper social and economic causes. The lack of homogeneity in our population and its increasing instability, the absence of settled habits and traditions of order, the breakdown of the administration of criminal law in the United States, and the many avenues by which offenders can escape punishment, our easy habit of passing laws which do not represent community standards or desires, our lack of cohesive industrial organization, our distrust of experts in the management of governmental enterprises— all these are undoubtedly contributing factors. But there is another factor, still more potent: police machinery in the United States has not kept pace with modern demands. It has developed no effective technique to master the burden which modern social and industrial conditions impose. Clinging to old traditions, bound by old practices which business and industry long ago discarded, employing a personnel poorly adapted to its purposes, it grinds away on its perfunctory task without self-criticism, without imagination, and with little initiative. From this general indictment the Cleveland police department cannot be excepted. |