5. With well-trained men in the detective bureau, under competent leadership, constant attention would have to be given to the administrative problem. After all, running a detective bureau is like running any complicated business: it requires an intimacy with detail and continual follow-up, so that every individual feels the stimulus of the leadership. In this respect the Cleveland detective bureau is conspicuously lacking at the present time. What is needed is a man in charge who will live constantly with his cases and whose guiding principle will be that no case is settled until it is solved.

6. Members of the detective bureau should do only detective work. They should not be detailed as clerks, telephone operators, or to guard the person of the mayor. They should be technical men, well paid for their abilities, and not job-holders who can be assigned to any task.

T

CHAPTER IX

SPECIAL SERVICE DIVISION

HE third major function of police work, crime prevention, is poorly developed in the Cleveland department. Of course, some measure of crime prevention work is aimed at by the uniformed force and detective bureau as well, but we are here considering the distinctly constructive efforts to prevent crime-efforts that cannot be employed by the uniformed force, the members of which must necessarily devote most of their attention to patrolling streets in the capacity of watchmen. Detectives are kept busy for the most part with solving crimes that have not been prevented, although they do some preventive work. The development of a special unit engaged in preventive work need not relieve the members of either the uniformed force or the detective bureau of any feeling of responsibility for taking action looking toward crime. prevention. The members of a special service division, however, should be freed from the duties of watchmen, and should not have their time fully occupied with the apprehension of criminals and solution of crimes already committed. Such a division should investigate conditions that are known to lead to the commission of crime and should become an expert agency in handling persons who show themselves disposed to delinquency.

Inasmuch as there are practically no special facilities in the Cleveland department for undertaking constructive action in preventive work, our survey was confined to the need for such a service. The vice squad or bureau, as now organized, is the nearest approach to a specialized crime prevention unit in the department. This squad is organized as an independent unit under the direct supervision of the chief of police. Two lieutenants of police are assigned by the chief to command the bureau. Members of the squad are patrolmen who are detailed by the chief in the same way that patrolmen are detailed as detectives. No provision is made for recruiting directly from civil life. Members of the squad devote considerable time to the investigation of complaints referred to the vice bureau by the chief. Some of these complaints come from citizens and others originate with the uniformed force. These

complaints often relate to suspicious conditions which lead the complainants to believe that certain premises are being used for prostitution, gambling, sale of liquor, or illegal traffic in narcotics. Sometimes complaints are made against individuals, but in either case members of the vice squad must get new and additional evidence of a specific violation of law repeated some time after the violation referred to in the complaint. Thus, the vice bureau operatives are chiefly engaged in the investigation of general conditions. In their effort to develop specific charges of violation against individuals, much of their best work is done by way of anticipating the occurrence of new violations. The very investigations made by them often lead to an abandonment of activity on the part of the promoters of vice. In this respect the work of the vice squad takes on more of the aspect of crime prevention than does the work of other divisions. The vice bureau, therefore, may serve as a nucleus for building up a unit devoted to investigations of conditions and individuals with a view to forestalling criminal acts.

The attitude of police heads toward the vice bureau at present seems to be one of suspicion. The chief of police keeps in his office a complete record system, which provides a check on all complaints assigned to members of the vice bureau for investigation. Daily reports of the vice bureau's operations are submitted to the chief and the director. No other division of the police service submits such a report to the director. It was not disclosed what use, if any, the director makes of these reports. It is necessary to maintain a close check on the operatives who are subjected to such unusual temptations as are met with in combating prostitution, gambling, and traffic in liquor and drugs. But the chief should not be burdened with the details of checking 30 men in the vice bureau. Rather, he should depend on an officer of higher rank than now detailed to the vice bureau to do the checking and hold him responsible for general results as in other divisions of the service.

While complaints which are referred to the vice bureau cannot be thrown out without rendering a report of action taken thereon, it is cases that are supervised rather than the methods employed by operatives in working on the cases. An examination of the records maintained in the vice bureau discloses the fact that supervising officers do not keep adequate check on the cumulative operations of the men under their command. It would seem that too much reliance is placed on the automatic check which the mere submission of supplementary reports is supposed to afford. True, operatives are required to write up a summary of each day's work in books kept in the bureau for that purpose, and this enables the supervising officers to tell what was done by the

men on the day's cases, provided the men are always faithful in recording all cases. It does not, however, afford a means of keeping tab on complaints which are a few days or a week old. As a matter of fact, supervision in the vice bureau, as in the detective bureau, is conducted on the memory basis, which is bound to be wholly inadequate in a large department. It is simply impossible for two commanding officers to remember the multitude of assignments given to some 30 men extending over a period of weeks and months. It would be a laborious task to find out, from the record now kept, how many cases or complaints A or B is working on at any given time, or to learn from their reports what progress has been made on the cases which they have under investigation. As a result, old cases become dead cases, and are readily lost to the view of supervising officers in the shuffle of each day's new business.

OTHER CRIME PREVENTION UNITS NEEDED

As has been pointed out, the vice bureau should comprise but one section of the special service division, although it could well remain a more or less independent section. There is need for the immediate establishment of a woman's bureau, composed of not less than 10 police women. Cleveland is the only city of over a half million population that does not employ police women. The experience of such cities as London, New York, Detroit, St. Louis, Los Angeles, and Indianapolis has proved conclusively that women can perform police work of the highest order, often in a way that cannot be equaled by men. The Police Woman's Section should perform most of the duties now carried on by the Cleveland Woman's Protective Association, an organization privately financed and managed. Police women can do most effective crime prevention work in the inspection of dance halls, parks, movingpicture theaters, and other places of amusement. They can do good work in pre-delinquency cases with incorrigible girls and boys. They can also take under investigation the cases of adults who may possibly contribute to the delinquency of minors. The investigation of complaints of missing persons, which many times disclose runaway cases, ean often be best handled by women. Women selected for this section of the crime prevention division should possess a strong sense of social service, and should have the training and outlook of the type of social worker employed by such private agencies as charity organizations, the Travelers' Aid Society, and the Woman's Protective Association.

At the present time dance halls are being supervised by a special unit known as the Dance Hall Inspection Bureau. This bureau is attached to the office of the director of public safety. The dance hall

inspectors, numbering about 40 deputies or special police, are not members of the police department. They are paid fees by the proprietors of the dance halls which they inspect. A clerk-patrolman detailed to the director's office assigns the inspectors and keeps a record of dance hall permits. The dance hall inspection division should be abolished and the work taken over completely by the police department, for the inspection of public dance halls is a duty which cannot properly be delegated to unofficial observers whose salaries are paid by the people they inspect. Much of this work should naturally fall to the division of women police.

A unit of welfare officers is another much-needed section of the special service division. This unit may be composed of both men and women. It should be the duty of this division to investigate the bad home conditions that make for delinquency and cases of destitution coming to the attention of the police. Another fruitful field of crime prevention service that can be performed by a welfare unit is that of giving counsel and aid to persons who are turned out of hospitals and other institutions, and who are often unwelcome in their former homes. Experience in other cities shows that such persons easily drift into a life of crime. The same field of valuable service is found in dealing with criminals who are released from institutions and prisons and thrown on the community, often without opportunity for making a living in a fair and honest way. A welfare unit should keep in touch with opportunities of employment for these persons. By helpful coöperation a sort of protective supervision may be established looking toward the redemption of many who would otherwise gravitate to vice and crime. It is a fact that parents of wayward children, and many persons who are on the verge of desperate helplessness, will frequently turn for aid to a welfare division of the police service when they would not approach the police through the ordinary channels which carry with them the idea of repression and even hostility toward those in distress.

An excellent precedent of such a unit of welfare officers exists in the system which Commissioner Woods established in New York during his term of office. Carefully chosen officers were assigned to the busier precincts of the city to ferret out conditions which seemed to be leading people astray. This experiment did not have time to prove itself before Commissioner Woods left office, but it illustrates the new technique in police work for diminishing crime.

The fourth section of crime prevention service needed is a unit of juvenile officers. Complaints of juvenile delinquency should be referred to specially selected officers, who may be chosen because of their