One of the things that we did while in office was to train the men in the use of the pistol.  A school of pistol practice was established, and the marksmanship of the force was wonderfully improved.  The man in charge of the school was a roundsman, Petty, whom we promoted to sergeant.  He was one of the champion revolver shots of the country, and could hit just about where he aimed.  Twice he was forced to fire at criminals who resisted arrest, and in each case he hit his man in the arm or leg, simply stopping him without danger to his life.

In May, 1896, a number of burglaries occurred far uptown, in the neighborhood of One Hundred and Fifty-sixth Street and Union Avenue.  Two officers were sent out each night to patrol the streets in plain clothes.  About two o’clock on the morning of May 8 they caught a glimpse of two men loitering about a large corner house, and determined to make them explain their actions.  In order to cut off their escape, one officer went down one street and one the other.  The first officer, whose name was Ryan, found the two men at the gateway of the side entrance of the house, and hailed to know what they were doing.  Without answering, they turned and ran toward Prospect Avenue, with Ryan in close pursuit.  After running about one hundred feet, one of them turned and fired three shots at Ryan, but failed to hit him.  The two then separated, and the man who had done the shooting escaped.  The other man, whose name proved to be O’Connor, again took to his heels, with Ryan still after him; they turned the corner and met the other officer, whose name was Reid, running as hard as he could toward the shooting.  When O’Connor saw himself cut off by Reid, he fired at his new foe, the bullet cutting Reid’s overcoat on the left shoulder.  Reid promptly fired in return, his bullet going into O’Connor’s neck and causing him to turn a complete somersault.  The two officers then cared for their prisoner until the ambulance arrived, when he was taken to the hospital and pronounced mortally wounded.  His companion was afterward caught, and they turned out to be the very burglars for whom Reid and Ryan had been on the lookout.

In December, 1896, one of our officers was shot.  A row occurred in a restaurant, which ended in two young toughs drawing their revolvers and literally running amuck, shooting two or three men.  A policeman, attracted by the noise, ran up and seized one of them, whereupon the other shot him in the mouth, wounding him badly.  Nevertheless, the officer kept his prisoner and carried him to the station-house.  The tough who had done the shooting ran out and was seized by another officer.  The tough fired at him, the bullet passing through the officer’s overcoat, but he was promptly knocked down, disarmed, and brought to the station-house.  In this case neither policeman used his revolver, and each brought in his man, although the latter was armed and resisted arrest, one of the officers taking in his prisoner after having been himself severely wounded.  A lamentable feature of the case was that this same officer was a man who, though capable of great gallantry, was also given to shirking his work, and we were finally obliged to dismiss him from the force, after passing over two or three glaring misdeeds in view of his record for courage.