"One Great Big Family"

In Brooklyn last week a earful of thugs who in two years had lifted 100 safes, stolen 25 automobiles and shot two policemen ran the gauntlet of 46 police squad cars, escaped. Three Omaha bandits held up the One Horse Grocery, tied up its two occupants, willfully shot one, fled with a few dollars. Around Boston and in Pawtucket, R. I. four cinema houses were bombed. New York police found no clue to the disappearance of $590,000 worth of treasury notes from a Wall Street bank. The victim of a New Jersey "ride'' was found frozen in a ditch near Matawan. And in Washington, 600 of the nation's leading criminologists, legalites, Government officials, social workers and law enforcement officers met for Attorney General Homer Stille Cummings' four-day conference on crime.

The past has seen many & many a crime conference and the future will probably see many more, but last week's was designed to be different. When President Roosevelt rose to address the opening session he found himself speaking not only to an audience of Democratic prosecutors, police chiefs and social workers, but to such tail-coated Republicans as onetime Secretary of War Patrick J. Hurley and onetime Secretary of State Henry Lewis Stimson. Like other Presidents before him, Mr. Roosevelt cried for national cooperation in a national war against the underworld, declared: "Crime is a symptom of social disorder. Widespread increase in capacity to substitute order for disorder is the remedy."

Attorney General Cummings aggressively repeated this keynote, the theme of the convention. "It is not intended that this conference shall meet, discuss, adjourn and be forgotten," said he.

Despite this original intention by the Attorney General, his crime conference jogged along the well-trodden path of its predecessors with conferees bobbing up & down to make familiar suggestions. Director J. Edgar Hoover of the Department of Justice's Division of Investigation wanted an end to "political pressure" on enforcement agencies. Commissioner H. J. Anslinger of the Treasury's Bureau of Narcotics, whose men over the previous weekend had rounded up 793 dope dealers and addicts, proposed special wards in county sanatoriums to cure criminal and noncriminal drug addicts. Miss Dorothy Frooks of Peekskill, N. Y., denounced the exploitation of ball games and cinemas in penitentiaries lest "the prisons hold out a welcoming hand to the youth of the nation." Republican Hurley: "Such work as the extermination of crime should not be partisan." Republican Stimson: "It is not unnatural for the boys of a country which has recently lost its frontier to be excited and stimulated by tales of danger and thrilling adventure. But it is certainly all wrong for such a spirit to be fanned up artificially by the engines of a sensational Press, by the enterprising photographers who record all the horrid details of crime. . . ." Ferdinand Pecora, like most militant prosecutors, wanted to cut constitutional corners, put crooks expeditiously in jail by denying them immunity from selfincrimination, by convicting them on majority jury verdicts.

Outside the convention hall a group of Negro intellectuals silently picketed for an anti-lynching resolution by standing motionless with ropes around their necks. Despite speeches, despite resolutions, despite picketing, by far and away the most important purpose of the Cummings Conference on Crime was to cement Federal and local police into "one great big family."

It is no secret that the family has not been at all happy of late. Not until the enactment of the "Lindbergh Law" in 1932 did Federal law officers enter importantly into the national crime picture. Only eight months ago were Department of Justice agents authorized to carry guns. Soon these same agents, a small, picked, apparently incorruptible band, were making a strong bid for national attention and admiration. Their swift comings & goings all over the country furnished romantic news stories. They showed themselves mightily effective in rounding up kidnappers, pinking public enemies. Score to date: 74 kidnappers convicted, 20-odd gangsters killed.

The average police officer is an oldtime roundsman. Most D. O. I. men are college graduates. Jealousies and mutual mistrusts sprang up between local and Federal agencies. Local officers felt that they worked up a case only to have the "G men" step in and steal all credit for the catch.

At Washington last week the atmosphere fairly oozed with friendly accord. There were conferences, teas, trips through the 4,500,000 fingerprint library at the Department of Justice, visits to its criminal laboratories. No small part in helping effect an entente cordiale was performed by Hostess Cecilia Waterbury Cummings, a lively brunette with gracious ways and a glib wit.

Under these Federal blandishments, some local antipathy toward the Federal Government may have broken down. Party lines, however, seemed to have held fairly firm. Chortled Democratic Mayor Frank Hague of Jersey City: "Now get this picture. I have a case I want to work up. I have only one or two men I can use. It's a big proposition and it will take six months. I can't tap wires; I can't spend money because it will break up the budget. What is there to do? Why, get in touch with Washington."

In glum contrast was the reaction of New York's Police Commissioner Lewis J. Valentine: "The papers were interesting, but to a practical policeman they didn't mean much."

One product of the conference was a set of eight resolutions. Whether they would be the "sole product" depended largely on Attorney General Cummings and his ability to keep his conference from being forgotten as just another one of those things. Most of the resolutions had an old, familiar ring. They called for:

1) A "national scientific and educational centre [to] be established in Washington for the better training" of police, presumably modeled on the eight-weeks' crime course given D. 0. I. men.

2) Coordination of control by state "Departments of Justice" or similar agencies, and interstate law enforcement agreements.

3) Federal and state co-operation in eliminating youthful delinquency by facilitating educational, vocational, recreational opportunities.

4) Elimination of pardon and parole "abuse."

5) Curtailment of "unduly dramatic stories of crime" in newspapers.

6) Condemnation of improper jail conditions, possession of firearms by criminals, ''lawyer criminals," "political" protection of criminals and "abuse of bail."

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