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Title: Police Methods Author: Stephen T. Byington Date: October 1907 Language: en Topics: crime, Émile Armand, police Source: Retrieved on December 22, 2011 from http://libertarian-labyrinth.org/archive/Police_Methods Notes: From Mother Earth 2, no. 8 (October 1907): 333–335.
E. Armand, the editor of L’etre Nouvelle, writes to me from a Paris
jail. He has been arrested on the charge of uttering counterfeit money.
The evidence against him, aside from a probably malicious denunciation,
is said to consist of one counterfeit coin, found by searching his room
in his absence. What he feels worst over, however, is that all his books
and papers have been seized. Apparently, he thinks it will be harder to
get these back than to get acquitted on the charge of counterfeiting. I
think so, too.
It reminds me of the time when Alexander Horr was arrested in New York.
Not being a habitual criminal, he did not know that the police would
hold as evidence whatever they found in his pockets; so the police got
everything that was in his pockets in the ordinary course of things, his
keys, (part of which were not his own property, but belonged to the
landlord, on whose premises the Freeland Central Association did its
printing), his proof-sheets, and I don’t know what else. The Freeland
concern had been doing a little typefounding, and Horr had in his pocket
six or seven proofs of type sold — merely AAAAA and so on, BBBBB and so
on, as type is sold, half a dozen wide galleys. I, as the firm’s
business agent, in Horr’s absence, wanted to get hold of those proofs
and measure the number of inches, so that I could make out a bill and
collect the money. The police sergeant, to whom I applied in Fifth
Street, was very willing to tell me that I couldn’t see those proofs,
that I couldn’t even measure the number of inches, and that he and the
police force did not desire to be told my opinion as to whether this was
reasonable or not; but he was not gracious enough to tell me that I had
come to the wrong office and that he had properly nothing to say about
it, the goods being in Mulberry Street. I made up my mind later, that
when next time a police sergeant used such recklessly over-bearing
language to me across his desk, I would infer that he was irresponsible
in the matter, and would ask him to direct me to the man who had really
something to do with the business. When Horr was finally tried and
sentenced, I heard that I could now get the goods; but his lawyers told
me it would be more trouble than was worth while, unless there was
something that I specially cared about. But I did want those proofs, and
the key that belonged to the other man, and I went at the job. It took
me half a day, for the Mulberry Street man had his red tape tied up good
and tight; he would not give me the goods on the strength of my
signature as Horr’s attorney. Backed by the exhibition of a power of
attorney whose validity he acknowledged, — though he was legally bound
to give them to me on those terms, or else I know less about a power of
attorney than I think I do, — but insisted that either he must have my
power of attorney to keep, or else I must bring an order for the
delivery of the goods, signed by Horr’s own hand. I had to get into the
Tombs — and out again — twice, outside of regular hours, before I could
get the papers. One key I failed to get. It was one of the most
elaborately designed keys I ever saw, the bit having narrow side-pieces
that turned and ran back. The elaborateness and delicacy of the pattern
struck the eye of the policeman in charge, and he declared it to be a
“regular pick” that would open almost any door. He got another policeman
by his side to agree with him that the thing was a skeleton key, and on
this ground he refused to give it up. As I suppose most of my readers
are no more familiar with skeleton keys than I was at that time, let me
explain that a skeleton key is necessarily simple in pattern. When a key
is elaborately designed, or has any bars of metal running in a way in
which the metal of ordinary keys does not go, it proves that that key
was made to fit a particular lock, and not for the work of a skeleton
key. But these two policemen, speaking as experts in burglars’ tools,
decided that this chamber-key of Horr’s was a skeleton key, and I had to
leave it there. By the way, Horr was not imprisoned for burglary or
theft, or for anything in which a skeleton key could be useful; and
nothing in the evidence or the allegations had tended to cast upon him
any suspicion of being dishonest to pick anybody’s lock. I wonder if it
is the ordinary custom in France to seize a man’s library when you
arrest him for counterfeiting. I strongly suspect that if Armand had
kept clear of the Anarchist and anti-militarist agitation, he would
never have been arrested as a counterfeiter; or, at the very least, that
his library would have been spared.