In the more important cases the accused is usually put through some sort of an inquisitorial process by the captain at the station-house.  If he is not very successful at getting anything out of the prisoner the latter is turned over to the sergeant and a couple of officers who can use methods of a more urgent character.  If the prisoner is arrested by headquarters detectives, various efficient devices to compel him to “give up what he knows” may be used—­such as depriving him of food and sleep, placing him in a cell with a “stool pigeon” who will try to worm a confession out of him, and the usual moral suasion of a heart-to-heart talk in the back room with the inspector.

This is the darker side of the picture of practical government.  It is needless to say that the police do not always suggest the various safeguards and privileges which the law accords to defendants thus arrested, but the writer is free to confess that, save in exceptional cases, he believes the rigors of the so-called third degree to be greatly exaggerated.  Frequently in dealing with rough men rough methods are used, but considering the multitude of offenders, and the thousands of police officers, none of whom have been trained in a school of gentleness, it is surprising that severer treatment is not generally met with on the part of those who run afoul of the criminal law.  The ordinary “cop” tries to do his duty as effectively as he can.  With the average citizen gruffness and roughness go a long way in the assertion of authority.  In the task of policing a big city, the rights of the individual must indubitably suffer to a certain extent if the rights of the multitude are to be properly protected.  We can make too much of small injustices and petty incivilities.  Police business is not gentle business.  The officers are trying to prevent you and me from being knocked on the head some dark night or from being chloroformed in our beds.  Ten thousand men are trying to do a thirty-thousand-man job.  The struggle to keep the peace and put down crime is a hard one anywhere.  It requires a strong arm that cannot show too punctilious a regard for theoretical rights when prompt decisions have to be made and equally prompt action taken.  The thieves and gun men have got to be driven out.  Suspicious characters have got to be locked up.  Somehow or other a record must be kept of professional criminals and persons likely to be active in law-breaking.  These are necessities in every civilized country.  They are necessities here.  Society employs the same methods of self-protection the world over.  No one presumes a person charged with crime to be innocent, either in Delhi, Pekin, Moscow, or New York.  Under proper circumstances we believe him guilty.  When he comes to be tried the jury consider the evidence, and if they are reasonably sure he is guilty they convict him.  The doctrine of reasonable doubt is almost as much of a fiction as that of the presumption