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Interviews with Global Leaders in Policing, Courts, and Prisons Series
International Police Executive Symposium Co-Publications
Dilip K. Das, Founding President-IPES
PUBLISHED
Trends in Policing: Interviews with Police Leaders Across the Globe, Volume Five By Bruce F. Baker and Dilip K. Das, ISBN: 978-1-4822-2449-8
Trends in Legal Advocacy: Interviews with Leading Criminal Defense Lawyers and Prosecutors Around the World
By Jane Goodman-Delahunty and Dilip K. Das, ISBN: 978-1-4987-3312-0
Trends in the Judiciary: Interviews with Judges Across the Globe, Volume One By Dilip K. Das and Cliff Roberson with Michael Berlin, ISBN: 978-1-4200-9978-2
Trends in Policing: Interviews with Police Leaders Across the Globe, Volume Four By Bruce F. Baker and Dilip K. Das, ISBN: 978-1-4398-8073-9
Trends in Policing: Interviews with Police Leaders Across the Globe, Volume Three By Otwin Marenin and Dilip K. Das, ISBN: 978-1-4398-1924-1
Trends in Policing: Interviews with Police Leaders Across the Globe By Dilip K. Das and Otwin Marenin, ISBN: 978-1-4200-7520-5
Trends in Corrections: Interviews with Corrections Leaders Around the World By Jennie K. Singer, Dilip K. Das, and Eileen Ahlin, ISBN: 978-1-4398-3578-4
Trends in Corrections: Interviews with Corrections Leaders Around the World, Volume Two By Martha Henderson Hurley and Dilip K. Das, ISBN: 978-1-4665-9156-1
Trends in the Judiciary: Interviews with Judges Across the Globe, Volume Two By David Lowe and Dilip K. Das, ISBN: 978-1-4822-1916-6
VOLUME FIVE
TRENDS IN POLICING
Interviews with Police Leaders Across the Globe
Edited by BRUCE F. BAKER AND DILIP K. DAS
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Version Date: 20161013
International Standard Book Number-13: 978-1-4822-2449-8 (Hardback)
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Baker, Bruce F., editor. | Das, Dilip K., 1941-editor.
Title: Trends in policing : interviews with police leaders across the globe/ [edited by] Bruce F. Baker, Dilip K. Das.
Description: 1 Edition. | New York : Routledge, [2017] | Series: Interviews with global leaders in policing, courts, and prison ; Volume 5
Identifiers: LCCN 2016025678| ISBN 9781482224498 (hardback) | ISBN 1482224496 (hardback) | ISBN 9781315390543 (ebk) | ISBN 9781315390536 (web pdf) | ISBN 1315390531 (web pdf)
Classification: LCC HV7921 .T74 2017 | DDC 363.2/3--dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016025678
Visit the Taylor & Francis Web site at http://www.taylorandfrancis.com
and the CRC Press Web site at http://www.crcpress.com
Series Editor’s Preface
The International Police Executive Symposium, in collaboration with CRC Press of the Taylor & Francis Group Publishing, publishes a series titled Interviews with Global Leaders in Policing, Courts, and Prisons. The objective is to produce high-quality books aimed at bringing the voice of the leading criminal justice practitioners to the forefront of scholarship and research. These books, based on interviews with leaders in criminal justice, are intended to present the perspectives of high-ranking officials throughout the world by examining their careers, insights, vision, experiences, challenges, perceived future of the field, and related issues of interest.
True, the literature is replete with scholarship and research that provides the academic interpretation of the field, its practices and future. However, these publications are often in difficult to access journals and are written from the perspective of the academic, with little interpretation or feasible action items for those professionals working in the field. A comprehensive literature discussing the on-the-ground, day-to-day understanding of how police, courts and prison systems work, do not work, and need to be improved is lacking. This series provides “inside” information about the systems as told to respected scholars and researchers by seasoned professionals. In this series, the dialogue between scholar/researcher and practitioner is opened as a guided, yet candid, discussion between the two professionals and provides the opportunity for academics to learn from practitioners, while practitioners also learn from the expression of their experiences, challenges, skills, and knowledge.
Throughout the world the criminal justice field is at cross roads and the time is ripe for change and improvements. Many countries throughout the world have long-standing policies that have been successful for their culture and political climate, or are in need of serious revamping due to budgetary concerns or corruption. Other countries are at a precipice and are beginning to establish new systems. In all of these situations, the international criminal justice field stands to benefit from an accessible, engaging and enlightening series of frank discussions of the leaders’ personal views and experiences in the field.
Many volumes are written by academics about criminal justice practitioners, but this series captures the voice of the practitioners themselves. Based on interviews with leading national figures in policing, the judiciary, and
corrections, each volume presents their perspectives on their vision, experiences, lessons learned, and future challenges. We are privileged to hear the inside story that is normally hidden from the public and researchers. And being global in scope, the series escapes the silos of our national or Western view of things and exposes the reader to different challenges and approaches within the criminal justice fields. This broader perspective is a matter of serious concern when international crime requires increasing co-operation between jurisdictions, and when international missions require an understanding of local context if their prescriptions are to be appropriate.
This 5th volume in the series of Trends in Policing: Interviews with Police Leaders Across the Globe, has no less than 13 police leaders from 5 continents interviewed by some of the leading academics in the field. It is clear that new trends of crime and responses are emerging that were never anticipated when the series began and that the world in which we live is increasingly interconnected with both criminal and policing networks. This volume enables the reader to sit alongside these leaders and hear how they respond to these challenges of our modern world.
It is anticipated that this addition to the series will facilitate discussions within and between countries’ police systems to add value to their current operations and future directions. It is hoped that this series will also bridge the gap of knowledge that exists between scholars and researchers in academia and practitioners in the field. It is the intention of the series editor to continue with this series and I invite police scholars, researchers, and practitioners across the world to join in this venture and welcome correspondence on any issues raised by the interviews or regarding future avenues for engagement in this debate.
Dilip K. Das, PhD
Founding President, International Police Executive
Symposium www.ipes.info
Book Series Editor for Advances in Police Theory and Practice—CRC Press, Taylor & Francis Group
Book Series Editor for Interviews with Global Leaders in Policing, Courts, and Prisons—CRC Press, Taylor & Francis Group
Book Series Editor, PPR Special Issues as Books—Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group
Founding Editor-in-Chief, Police Practice and Research: An International Journal, PPR http://www.tandfonline.com/GPPR
Foreword
The interviews that make up this book provide an extraordinary opportunity to peer into the world of police and their policing from the vantage point of senior policing officers from around the globe. The landscapes within which these leaders operate are extraordinarily different socially, politically, and geographically.
Given these different realities one might have expected that these police leaders would have provided very different accounts about assessments of policing. Of course, there are very significant differences, but these are overshadowed by the similarities in the accounts they tell in the pages of this revealing book.
At the heart of these interviews are tensions and contradictions that make the accounts of policing provided here profoundly bittersweet. Sometimes these contradictions are very explicit. At other times they are more implicit. But even then these tensions lurk close to the surface and are not hard to find.
On the “sweet” side one finds leaders who are courageous, persistent, determined, insightful, well-intentioned, knowledgeable, optimistic, hardworking, and committed to high and demanding ideals. On the “bitter” side these accounts recount tale after tale of environments full of very difficult challenges that these officers and their police organizations have been required to confront. Challenges that at times appear almost insurmountable.
The accounts of these “bitter” challenges record policing organizations that are under siege. The sources of this siege are both external and internal. In the accounts, these officers describe the way in which they personally, and through their organizations, have been buffeted by countless waves of change—political, social, and institutional.
The external sources that have buffeted police include difficult fiscal environments, citizens who are disillusioned and sometimes angry and hostile, and institutional contexts that are unsupportive and sometimes crumbling. Internally these sources include concerns about whether the established police vision is appropriate to the new realities of the twenty-first century, problems with morale, frustration that arises when sound programs fail to find traction, and so on.
What makes this book so encouraging, notwithstanding sometimes very dark clouds, is that accounts of crises are balanced with accounts of hope and pride in what is being, and has been, accomplished. This pride, and the
countless developments that justify it, is both encouraging and uplifting. In some cases this pride has as its back drop scenes of beleaguered organizations and leaders. Yet even in these trying situations there are senior officers who strive to achieve a quality service of which they and their fellow police officers can be proud.
What is clear from the accounts this volume records is that police and policing across the world is at a turning point. What the officers profiled repeat in interview after interview is that the old vision of policing that police have held to so firmly for so many decades across the globe, and the old organizational forms developed to realize it, is progressively giving way to new visions as Hegel’s Owl of Minerva takes flight as “the shades of night are gathering.”
What this book makes so abundantly clear is that there are many, many fine leaders at the helm of police organizations around the world who are responding with vigor, insight, and considerable wisdom to the challenges of re-positioning police within the twenty-first century. These leaders are constantly scrutinizing policing as they seek ways to improve what police do.
Realizing an emerging ambition of a renewed vision for police and policing that many of these leaders strive to achieve will not be easy. However, if those at the helm of tomorrow’s police organizations globally are anywhere near as good as the best of the leaders profiled here we have every reason to be confident that the flight of the police Owl will be strong and high.
Clifford Shearing Professor, Universities
of Brisbane Cape Town, South, Africa, and Montreal, Canada
Preface
The International Police Executive Symposium (IPES) was founded in 1994 to address one major challenge, i.e., the two worlds of research and practice remain disconnected even though cooperation between the two is growing. A major reason is that the two groups speak in different languages. The research is published in hard to access journals and presented in a manner that is difficult for some to comprehend. On the other hand, police practitioners tend not to mix with researchers and remain secretive about their work. Consequently there is little dialogue between the two and almost no attempt to learn from one another. The global dialogue among police researchers and practitioners is limited. True, the literature on the police is growing exponentially. But its impact upon day-to-day policing, however, is negligible.
The aims and objectives of the IPES are to provide a forum to foster closer relationships among police researchers and practitioners on a global scale, to facilitate cross-cultural, international, and interdisciplinary exchanges for the enrichment of this law enforcement, to encourage discussion, and to publish research on challenging and contemporary problems facing the policing profession. One of the most important activities of the IPES is the organization of an annual meeting under the auspices of a police agency or an educational institution. Now in its 17th year, the annual meeting, a fiveday initiative on specific issues relevant to the policing profession, brings together ministers of interior and justice, police commissioners and chiefs, members of academia representing world-renown institutions, and many more criminal justice elite from over 60 countries. It facilitates interaction and the exchange of ideas and opinions on all aspects of policing. The agenda is structured to encourage dialogue in both formal and informal settings. Another important aspect of the meeting is the publication of the best papers presented by well-known criminal justice scholars and police administrators who attend the meetings. The best papers are selected, thoroughly revised, fully updated, meticulously edited, and published as books based upon the theme of each meeting. This repository of knowledge under the co-publication imprint of IPES and CRC Press, Taylor & Francis Group chronicles the important contributions of the International Police Executive Symposium over the last two decades. As a result, in 2011 the United Nations awarded IPES a Special Consultative Status for the Economic and Social Council (ECSOC) honoring its importance in the global security community.
In addition to this book series, the IPES also has a research journal, Police Practices and Research: An International Journal (PPR). The PPR contains research articles on police issues. It is an international journal and is distributed worldwide. For more information on the PPR visit http://www. tandf.co.uk/journals/GPPR.
This unique volume, titled, Strategic Responses to Crime: Thinking Locally, Acting Globally, includes selected articles that were originally presented by police executives and scholars from several countries who attended the 13th Annual Meeting of the International Police Executive Symposium held in Ayvalik, Turkey, in 2006. However, the articles have been updated and several papers outside of the conference have been added to capture the theme of the book. The volume is divided into four sections, each of which includes perspectives of police administrators and members of the academia from different countries. These chapters encompass topics in law enforcement from operations to organizations including pervading issues that the police confront both locally and globally. The chapters provide a comprehensive survey of police practices across police jurisdictions. This book is a useful reference for practitioners and researchers.
IPES advocates, promotes, and propagates that policing is one of the most basic and essential avenues for improving the quality of life in all nations; rich and poor; modern and traditional; large and small; as well as peaceful and strife-ridden. IPES actively works to drive home to all its office bearers, supporters, and admirers that, in order to reach its full potential as an instrument of service to humanity, policing must be fully and enthusiastically open to collaboration between research and practice, global exchange of information between police and academics in every country, universal disseminations and sharing of best practices, generating thinking police leaders and followers, and reflecting and writing on the issues challenging to the profession.
Through its annual meetings, hosts, institutional supporters, and publications, IPES reaffirms that policing is a moral profession with unflinching adherence to the rule of law and human rights as the embodiment of humane values.
Dilip K. Das, PhD Founding President, International Police Executive Symposium www.ipes.info
Book Series Editor for:
Advances in Police Theory and Practice
CRC Press, Taylor & Francis Group
Interviews with Global Leaders in Policing, Courts, and Prisons
CRC Press, Taylor & Francis Group
PPR Special Issues as Books Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group
Founding Editor-in-Chief, Police Practice and Research: An International Journal, http://www.tandf.co.uk/ journals/GPPR
Editors
Bruce F. Baker is a professor of African security at Coventry University in the United Kingdom. His research and publications cover African policing (http://www.africanpolicing.org), security and justice reform, and local justice and governance. His book, Security in Post-Conflict Africa: The Role of Non-State Policing (CRC Press, 2009), won the American Society of Criminology’s prize for best book in comparative and international criminology in 2010. He has undertaken research and consultancies in Zimbabwe, Mozambique, South Africa, Rwanda, Uganda, The Gambia, Sierra Leone, Cape Verde, Seychelles, Liberia, South Sudan, Comoros, Madagascar, Ethiopia, Nigeria, and Afghanistan.
Dilip K. Das is the founding president of the International Police Executive Symposium (IPES, http://www.ipes.info) and founding editor-in-chief of Police Practice and Research: An International Journal. After 14 years as a police executive, including time spent as chief of police in India, Dr. Das moved to the United States, where he earned a master and doctorate in criminal justice. Dr. Das has authored, edited, and co-edited more than 30 books and numerous articles. He has traveled extensively throughout the world while engaged in comparative police research, and as a visiting professor at various universities to organize annual conferences of the IPES, and as a human rights consultant for the United Nations. He is editor-in-chief of two book series published by CRC Press/Taylor & Francis Group: Advances in Police Theory and Practice and Interviews with Global Leaders in Policing, Courts, and Prisons
Contributors
David Baker is a n associate professor and head of Criminal Justice, Federation University Australia. Previously, he worked for two decades in Police Studies, Criminal Justice and Criminology at Monash University. His main research interest is public order policing, especially the policing of industrial, social, and political protests. He is the author of Batons and Blockades: Policing Industrial Disputes in Australasia (2005). The monograph examines and analyses changes in the way police services in Australia and New Zealand control industrial conflict. He is currently completing a book titled, Police, Picket-lines and Fatalities: Lessons from the Past. Baker has written interdisciplinary articles and chapters in relation to police history and reform, police use of force, policing dissent, policing in the South Pacific, the Australian Federal Police, criminal justice institutions and processes, labor history, and workplace relations. He was a member of the International Policing Resort Consortium on the Police Use of Force and is an associate investigator for the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence in Policing and Security. Baker teaches in the areas of police studies, criminological theory and practice, criminal justice institutions and processes, comparative and international criminal justice, and security.
Michael M. Berlin, JD, PhD, is director of the Criminal Justice Graduate Program and an associate professor at Coppin State University in Baltimore, Maryland. His areas of specialization include constitutional law and criminal procedure, community policing, criminal justice leadership, and management and terrorism/homeland security. Prior to his appointment at Coppin State University, he served as a professor of criminal justice at Baltimore City Community College where he directed both on-campus and Baltimore Police Academy Programs for over a decade. He is an attorney with more than 20 years’ experience in private practice and is a former Baltimore Police Officer. Dr. Berlin served as an instructor at the US State Department sponsored International Law Enforcement Academy in Roswell, New Mexico, where he taught thousands of police supervisors from Africa, Asia, Eastern Europe, and Central and South America. He has also served as an instructor for police officers, firefighters, and emergency medical technicians at a US Department of Homeland Security sponsored antiterrorism training in Socorro, New Mexico. He was named Instructor of the Year by the Maryland
Police Training Commission in 2003. His recent publications include Crime Scene Searches and the Fourth Amendment; The Evolution, Decline and Nascent Transformation of Community Policing in the United States: 1980–2010; An Overview of Police Academy Training in the United States; and an Interview of the Honorable Robert M. Bell, Chief Judge of the Court of Appeals of Maryland (State Supreme Court).
Marcellus Boles currently serves as the co-chair of the Criminal Justice and Applied Social and Political Sciences Department in the College of Behavioral and Social Science at Coppin State University. Born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, he graduated from Forest Park High School in Baltimore, Maryland. He has a master of science degree in criminal justice from the University of Baltimore and is a graduate of the 116th Session, FBI, National Academy, Quantico, Virginia. After serving 3 years in the US Marine Corps, and participating in the Dominican Republic and Vietnam conflicts, he joined the Baltimore Police Department (BPD) where he served in various capacities during his career, subsequently retiring as a lieutenant colonel. He served as district commander, deputy chief of the Patrol Division, personnel director, and community policing implementation coordinator. He also served as the director and associate director of Mid-Atlantic Regional Community Policing Institute (a collaborative agreement funded by the Department of Justice, Community Policing Services Office). Johns Hopkins University (JHU) was one of the partners and the grantee for this Institute. While at JHU and BPD, he participated in research projects focusing on domestic violence involving police personnel and identification of characteristics of exemplary first-line supervisors (sergeants).
Alexandre Magno Alves Diniz works as an adjunct professor at the Geography Department of the Pontifical Catholic University of Minas Gerais (PUCMinas), Brazil, where he heads the graduate program in Geography. He earned a PhD in geography from Arizona State University (ASU). He has worked as visiting researcher at the Geography Department of McGill University, Montreal (2009). He specializes in human geography and presently researches the geography of crime and violence, and urban and regional geography.
Curt T. Griffiths is a professor and coordinator of the Police Studies Program in the School of Criminology at Simon Fraser University—Surrey Campus. Among his primary research interests are the organizational and operational dynamics of policing, comparative police studies, police performance measures, and improving the delivery of policing services. He has worked extensively with all levels of government, municipal police services, and the RCMP on a variety of projects focused on police performance, building
organizational and operational capacities, and the effectiveness of police policies and strategies. He has conducted international studies in Egypt, Netherlands, Japan, and the Commonwealth Caribbean. He has published widely in scholarly journals and is the author of several university-level texts, including Canadian Criminal Justice (5th ed., 2015) and Canadian Police Work (3rd ed., 2013), both published by Nelson, Toronto.
Garth den Heyer is a n inspector with the New Zealand Police with more than 32 years’ service. He is also a senior research fellow with the Police Foundation in Washington, DC and a lecturer in Investigation Management and Leadership at the Australian Graduate School of Policing Security, Charles Sturt University, Australia. He is the manager of the National Security for the New Zealand Police, and is responsible for implementing and managing the New Zealand Police’s national operational response to natural and civil disasters and national security/counterterrorism incidents. He has a doctorate in public policy from Charles Sturt University, a master’s in economics from the University of London, and a master’s in security and intelligence from Victoria University, Wellington.
Ann-Claire Larsen is a legal sociologist with a keen research interest in international human rights law. She began her legal studies after completing a PhD in sociology. She now teaches for the School of Law and Justice at Edith Cowan University, Western Australia. Her research is associated with the Centre for Innovative Practice also at Edith Cowan University. Ann-Claire’s research topics include criminal justice concerns involving Australia’s Indigenous people, women, and children.
David Lowe is a principal lecturer at Liverpool John Moores University’s Law School, an academic fellow in one of the UK’s four Inns of Court, The Honourable Society of the Inner Temple, and a member of the Liverpool Law Society where he sits on the Criminal Practice Committee. Lowe is also a contributor to the Westlaw’s online legal encyclopedia, Westlaw UK Insight, on terrorism-related legislation. Prior to becoming an academic, he was a police officer for 27 years with the UK’s Merseyside Police. During his police service, Lowe studied as a part-time student at university where he graduated from Liverpool John Moores University with a BA (Hons) in criminal justice, an LLB, and from Liverpool University with an MPhil where he researched the role of the police in a multiagency approach to crime control. In 2010, Lowe earned his PhD where he researched counterterrorism investigations. His varied police career in uniform and CID posts influenced his research areas. His work in the area of policing, terrorism, and security has been published in a variety of books and journals, with his latest work being in 2013, Examining Political Violence: Studies in Terrorism, Counterterrorism
and Internal War. He has coedited with Dilip Das, Trends in the Judiciary: Interviews with Judges from around the Globe, 2014. Following the Edward Snowden revelations, his recent legal research into terrorism-related surveillance and intelligence exchange and balancing the interests of national security with individual liberties is being published in the journal Terrorism and Political Violence.
Stephen B. Perrott, professor of psychology at Mount Saint Vincent University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, was a police officer for 10 years before pursuing his doctorate in clinical psychology from McGill University. His research focuses primarily on the psychology of policing and secondarily on health promotion. Perrott has been a lecturer and workshop leader to the Halifax Regional Police, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, and the Canadian Police College. He has worked internationally with the Philippine National Police and was project director for the 6-year “Community-Based Policing in The Gambia” initiative. Recent research includes a study investigating the motivational bases of volunteer firefighters, a sexual health research project involving university students across the Canadian Maritime Provinces, and a large-scale survey examining police officer perceptions of reform and of current “hot button” issues. He was a visiting professor at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology during 2014–2015.
Diana Scharff Peterson has nearly 20 years of experience in higher education teaching in the areas of research methods; comparative criminal justice systems; race, gender, class, and crime; statistics; criminology; sociology; and drugs and behavior at seven different institutions of higher education. Dr. Peterson has been the chairperson of three different criminal justice programs over the past 15 years and has published in the areas of criminal justice, social work, higher education, sociology, business, and management. Her research interests include issues in policing (training and education) and community policing, assessment and leadership in higher education, family violence, evaluation research, and program development. She has published over 30 articles in areas of criminal justice, sociology, social work, business, management, and higher education, and is the liaison and representative for the International Police Executive Symposium (consultative status) for quarterly annual meetings at the UN meetings in New York City, Geneva, and Vienna including the Commission on the Status of Women in New York City, New York. Most recently, Dr. Peterson chaired and organized the 25th Annual Meeting of the International Police Executive Symposium entitled, Crime Prevention & Community Resilience: Police Role with Victims, Youth, Ethnic Minorities and Other Partners, in Sophia, Bulgaria, July 27–August 1, 2014 (27 countries and 43 presenters).
Scott W. Phillips is a n associate professor in the Criminal Justice Department at Buffalo State College. He worked as a police officer in Houston, Texas, and for the Office of Community-Oriented Policing Services in the US Department of Justice. He graduated from SUNY—Albany in 2006, and has worked as the Futurist in Residence at the FBI National Academy in Quantico, Virginia. His research interests include police officer decision-making and organizational influences on officers’ behavior. His work has been published in Journal of Criminal Justice, Criminal Justice Policy Review, the International Journal of Police Science and Management, and Police Practice and Research.
Ludmila Mendonça Lopes Ribeiro works as an adjunct professor in the sociology department and as a researcher at the Criminality and Public Security Research Center (CRISP) at the UFMG, Brazil. She earned a doctorate in sociology from the Research University Institute of Rio de Janeiro (IUPERJ). She has also worked as a visiting researcher at the University of Groningen (Holland), as regional representative of Altus—Global Alliance and coordinator of Fundação Getulio Vargas’ (FGV), and at the Research and Documentation Center for the Contemporary History of Brazil in São Paulo (CPDOC-SP). Her main publications are related to themes such as the judicial systems of Brazil, Portugal, United States, and Holland; community policing; the effects of crime victimization upon citizenship; and public security policies.
Sebastián Sal is a professor at the University of Buenos Aires, Business School. He earned his LLM at the University of Pennsylvania Law School, USA (1997), and JD at the University of Buenos Aires, Argentina (1988). He was a former judiciary officer (Secretario) of the National Criminal Court in financial related matters (1994–2000). From 2000 to 2001, he was an associate of Marval, O’Farrell & Mairal, Attorneys at Law. Since 2005, he has been the coordinator for Spanish-speaking countries of the International Association of Anti-Corruption Authorities (IAACA). He has been a governmental expert for the United Nations Convention Against Corruption (UNCAC) review since 2010 (being appointed by the Argentinean Government). He is an advisor in criminal and constitutional law at the National Argentinean Congress. He has taught at the University of Buenos Aires, School of Economics (graduate and MBA) since 1990. He has been a partner since 2004 at Sal & Morchio, attorneys at law.
Susan Sim is a consulting editor of the Home Team Journal, a publication of the Home Team Academy, a multiagency training facility of the Singapore Ministry of Home Affairs. A graduate of Oxford University, she has been a senior police officer, intelligence analyst, and diplomat working for the Singapore Government, and currently serves as chair of the Research
Committee of the National Crime Prevention Council, a volunteer group that works closely with the Singapore Police Force. She is also on the editorial board of Police Practice and Research, an international journal that presents current and innovative police research as well as operational and administrative practices from around the world. Sim is an author of Making Singapore Safe: Thirty Years of the National Crime Prevention Council (Singapore: Marshall Cavendish, 2011). She has also contributed to the Pearls in Policing Singapore 2012 report, Homeland Security and Terrorism (McGraw-Hill, 2013), Trends in Corrections: Interviews with Corrections Leaders Around the World (Taylor & Francis, 2015), and has written on suicide bombing and terrorist rehabilitation for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) Science for Peace and Security Series. A regular speaker at the NATO Centre of Excellence Defence Against Terrorism in Ankara, Turkey, and vice-president for Asia of The Soufan Group, an international strategic consultancy with offices in New York, Doha, London, and Singapore. She also works on issues related to countering violent extremism.
Rosânia Rodrigues de Sousa works as a researcher at the Fundação João Pinheiro, where she also teaches in the school of government. She earned a doctorate in psychology of work and organizations from the University of Brasilia. Her major research themes are psychology with emphasis in human factors related to work, working mostly with public security, labor, organizational culture, subjectivity, and training.
Perry Stanislas has more than 30 years’ experience in policing and security-related matters, with a particular interest in international policing. He was the senior policy advisor for Bedfordshire police in the area of Strategic and Organizational Development and a key leader in the largest development initiative in its history called “Towards 2000.” Perry taught for many years at Bramshill Police Staff College and is a specialist in developing and preparing police leaders for change. He has carried out research and written on a broad range of policing matters in leading journals and presented his work at the United Nations and the International Association of Police Chiefs inter alia. He is currently leading research on police and emergency planning for major sporting events and economic crime prevention in largescale building and construction projects. Stanislas teaches at De Montfort University in Leicester, UK.
Interviewees
Joe Arpaio, 81, has been referred to as “America’s Toughest Sheriff.” He has served the public for 50 years in a unique law enforcement and diplomatic career. It’s a name he certainly has earned as head of the nation’s third largest sheriff’s office (in Maricopa County, Arizona), which employs over 3,800 people. After serving in the US Army from 1950 to 1953, and as a Washington, DC, and Las Vegas, Nevada police officer for almost 5 years, he went on to build a federal law enforcement career with the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA). As a federal narcotics agent, he established a stellar record by infiltrating drug organizations on a global scale. His expertise and success led him to top management positions around the world with the DEA. He concluded his 32-year federal career as head of the DEA for Arizona. In 1992, he successfully campaigned to become Sheriff of Maricopa County, Arizona. Since then, he has been elected to unprecedented five 4-year terms. During his tenure as Sheriff of Maricopa County, he consistently earned extraordinarily high public approval ratings. With more than 50 years in law enforcement, Sheriff Arpaio has established several unique programs. He has approximately 10,000 inmates in his jail system. In August 1993, he started the nation’s largest ‘Tent City’ for convicted inmates. Two thousand convicted men and women serve their sentences in a canvas incarceration compound. To date, he has investigated more than 41,000 illegal immigrants, resulting in thousands of deportations. The author of two books, Sheriff Arpaio’s persona has been epitomized in television shows and in Hollywood films. It is a remarkable success story that has attracted the attention of government officials, presidential candidates, and media worldwide.
Jean-Michel Blais has more than 26 years of policing experience, having served with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), the United Nations, and presently with Halifax Regional Police. He began his policing career in 1988 with the RCMP in the Québec City area working on various criminal organizations. In 1995, he completed his first tour of duty with the United Nations in Haiti as a civilian police officer. Following his return, he worked in Québec City and Montréal on the Hell’s Angels and Colombian drug cartels in Canada, Columbia, and Cuba. He was then transferred to Manitoba as a commissioned officer where he worked in aboriginal, municipal, and provincial policing and was the officer in charge of Major Crimes
Services for the province. In 2004, he was transferred to Adjudications Directorate as a permanent adjudicator and then director of the RCMP’s internal disciplinary tribunal. In early 2008, he was assigned to the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti as the Deputy Police Commissioner in charge of operations. Upon his return from Haiti in 2009, he worked as the chief prosecutor for the RCMP’s internal disciplinary tribunal. In 2010, following the devastating earthquake that hit Haiti, he returned there to personally lead the recovery of two Canadian police officers and the senior management of the UN mission who had perished in the collapse of the UN headquarters, his former worksite. In 2010, he was transferred to Halifax where he became responsible for labor relations for the Atlantic Region of the RCMP. In 2011, he was promoted to the rank of Chief Superintendent in charge of Halifax District RCMP, responsible for municipal policing services in the areas immediately outside of Halifax Metro. In 2012, after 25 years in the RCMP, Blais retired to become the fourth chief of Halifax Regional Police (HRP) where he works presently, in charge of a 700-person municipal policing service. Chief Blais has two degrees, one in political science and economics from McGill University and another in law from Université Laval and has published several works on international and national police-related topics. He has also lectured extensively on leadership and modern police management.
Horacio Alberto Gimenez has, since 2011, been the head of the Metropolitan Police of the City of Buenos Aires. Before that, he worked for 39 years in the Federal Police, where he retired as Commissioner General. In the course of his career, he has been superintendent of Homeland Security and Federal Crimes Warehouses; director of Homeland Security and the Department of National Security; custody division chief of the Vice Presidential Unit; and cabinet advisor and secretary of the State Secretary of Homeland Security. In addition, he was responsible for the safety of several presidential summits and international meetings (UNASUR, MERCOSUR). Among his other interests, he is a police aircraft pilot, a commercial pilot, as well as a helicopter pilot. He is married and has two children.
Ellison Greenslade was appointed in 2010 as the sixth Commissioner of Police of Bahamas since its independence. He holds a postgraduate certificate in police management and criminal justice and earned an MBA with honors. He is presently engaged in PhD studies in organizational management and leadership studies at the University of Phoenix, Arizona, USA. Commissioner Greenslade was elected as the President of the Association of Caribbean Commissioners of Police (ACCP) in 2010 and was re-elected for three consecutive terms. He is a member of a number of international organizations including The International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP),
and currently serves as a member of the Executive Committee of the IACP and is in his third term in this position.
Ng Joo Hee was the Commissioner of the Singapore Police Force for 5 years from 2010 to 2015. A career police officer for almost 30 years, he started out as a criminal investigator before being posted to the Internal Security Department, where he was involved in counterespionage work. In 1992–1993, he served as a police monitor with the UN peacekeeping mission in Cambodia. On his return, he was tasked to establish and then lead the Special Tactics and Rescue (STAR) Unit, the Singapore Police’s elite hostage rescue outfit. He was given his first land division to command in 2001, before moving to the CID as its deputy director. He then took on the job of running the Police Intelligence Department. From 2007 to 2009, he was seconded to the Singapore Prisons Service as its Commissioner, where he was responsible for the effective and efficient operation of all prisons and drug rehabilitation centers in Singapore. Hee joined the Singapore Police Force when he was awarded the Singapore Police Force Overseas Scholarship in 1985. He has an MBA from the Nanyang Technological University in Singapore (1998), and a Masters in Public Administration from the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University (2001). Hee retired from the police in January 2015 and is currently the chief executive of Public Utilities Board (PUB), Singapore’s national water agency. He also holds a concurrent appointment as the deputy secretary (Special Duties) in the Ministry of the Environment and Water Resources.
Doug LePard has been a member of the Vancouver Police Department (VPD) since 1981 and currently commands over 800 frontline police officers in the Operations Division. He previously commanded the Investigation Division. He earned a BA in criminology from Simon Fraser University and certificates from Queen’s University and Harvard. In 1996, he created and led the VPD’s Domestic Violence and Criminal Harassment Unit, partnering investigators with community counsellors for domestic violence investigations. He has written or cowritten several articles and book chapters on assessing risk in stalking cases, preventing wrongful convictions, serial killer investigations, managing change in police organizations and others. In 2010, his comprehensive review of the Pickton serial killing investigation was released, and he subsequently gave evidence at the Missing Women Commission of Inquiry for an extraordinary 14 days. His review was described in the Inquiry report as “unprecedented” and “a rare exemplar of how you can conduct an internal autopsy and try to figure out what went wrong so that it won’t happen again in the future.” The Inquiry report also identified the VPD as a “best practice learning organization” and attributed that in part to the leadership of Deputy Chief LePard. He has received many commendations and awards, including
an Attorney General’s award for service to victims and an award from the Ending the Violence Association of BC “For Outstanding Contributions Toward Ending Violence Against Women in BC.” In 2012, he was invested as an Officer of the Order of Merit for the Police Forces by the Governor General of Canada, and, in 2013, he was awarded the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee Medal.
J. Thomas Manger has been the chief of police in Montgomery County, Maryland, since February 2004. He began his law enforcement career in 1977 with the Fairfax County (Virginia) Police Department. He rose through the ranks to become Chief of Police in 1998. During his tenure in Fairfax County, Chief Manger received numerous awards including the Silver Medal of Valor. He is credited with reorganizing and expanding the Police Department’s Community Policing efforts. His commitment to the highest ethical standards for policing and his enactment of new policies to increase departmental accountability earned significant recognition from the community, including the Fairfax County Human Rights Commission Award for outstanding contributions, and the NAACP’s Community Service Leadership Award. In 2012, Chief Manger was inducted into the Montgomery County Human Rights Hall of Fame. He is a graduate of the FBI National Academy, the National Executive Institute, the Police Executive Leadership School at the University of Richmond, and the Senior Executive Institute at the University of Virginia, and he has also completed Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School’s Program for State and Local government.
Peter Marshall has been New Zealand Commissioner since April 2011. He was previously commissioner of the Royal Solomon Islands Police Force from March 2009 to February 2011. Commissioner Marshall is a career police officer who joined the New Zealand Police in 1972, and has worked both in uniform and as a detective with the Criminal Investigation Branch. Within New Zealand, he has served as head of the Hawkes Bay Armed Offenders Squad, and area commander in Hastings and Aukland City. Internationally he has been posted to the New Zealand diplomatic missions in Canberra, Australia from 1998 to 2002, and Washington, DC from 2002 to 2004, where he established a New Zealand Police liaison office for counterterrorism. He was then assistant commissioner at the Police National Headquarters in Wellington, before being seconded to the Solomon Islands in February 2007. In May 2008, he became acting commissioner of police in the Solomons, and was officially appointed to the position in March 2009. Commissioner Marshall has diplomas in business studies and New Zealand Policing, and is a graduate of the FBI Academy.
Alberto Melis began his career in law enforcement in Delray Beach, Florida. He spent 24 years there, reaching the rank of captain and working in every
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before they break in the door!” I dressed hurriedly, inserted the massive iron key in the lock, gave it a turn only to have the door thrust open wide by Old Torvey, who cried excitedly, as he waved a letter in the air, “It’s from Hammerica, from him!”
My aunt ran down at that, partly dressed, and screamed in her excitement. With fluttering, nervous fingers she tore open the envelope, and examined the contents in a breathless minute.
“Stanwood sent it,” she laughed, “there’s tickets for America and a money order for five pounds!” and then she gave in to a hysterical relapse which required the calling in of the green-grocer’s wife. It was a Merry Christmas!
Chapter III. My Schoolmates Teach me American
Chapter III. My Schoolmates Teach me
American
IT was an extraordinary excuse that Uncle Stanwood gave for his neglect of us. He disposed of the matter by saying, in his Christmas letter, “I was so busy and so hard put to that I had no heart to write till I had gathered enough money to send for you. I know it must have worried you.”
His steamship tickets, however, had suddenly put us in the limelight in the town. “The Brindins are going over!” was the word that passed around. I can imagine no more perfect fame than the United States had gained in the minds of the men and women of our little town. America was conceived as the center of human desire, the pivot of worldly wealth, the mirror of a blissful paradise. If we had fallen heirs to peerages or had been called to Victoria’s court, it is doubtful if more out-and-out respect would have been showered on us than was ours when it was known that we were going to the “States.”
The impression prevailed that in America the shabbiest pauper gets a coat of gold. During the packing, when the neighbors dropped in while Mrs. Girion made a hot brew of porter and passed it around to the visitors and the workers, an America was constructed for us rivaling the most extravagant fairy-tale ever told by Grimm.
“Yis,” chattered Old Scroggs, “they’s wunnerful likely things over theer in Hammerica, I’m told. I heer’s ’at they spends all ther coppers for toffy and such like morsels, havin’ goold a plenty—real goold! Loads o’ it, they saay!”
“That’s so,” put in Maggie, our next-door neighbor. “Everybody has a chance, too. Double wages for very little work. All sorts of apples and good things to eat. Fine roads, too, and everybody on cycles; they’re so cheap out there. They say the sun is always out, too, and not much rain!”
In somebody’s memory there lingered traditions brought from America by a visitor from that country. Besides these traditions, which had to do with “gold,” “paradise,” and “easy work,” there were
a half a dozen Yankee words which we dearly loved to prate, as if by so doing we had at least a little fellowship with the wonderful country. In the school-yard my fellows drilled me on these words, Billy Hurd saying, “Now, Al, them Yankees allus talk through the nose, like this,” and he illustrated by a tinpanish, nasal tone that resembled the twang of a tight piano wire. “Now, if you’re going to be American, talk like that, it’s real Yankee. Now let’s see you try the word, ‘Candy,’ which is what they call toffy over there. Only don’t forget to talk through the nose like I did.”
So I dug my hands deep in my pockets, “cocked my jib,” as we called looking pert, and drawled out in most exaggerated form, “Saay, Ha’nt, want tew buy teow cents wuth of kaandy?”
“That’s just like Yankee,” complimented Billy. So I went home, called my aunt’s attention to what I was going to do, and repeated the sentence, much to her delight.
“That’s right, Al,” she said, “learn all the American you can, it will help out when we get there!”
Filled with incidents like these, the days of our English lingering rapidly drew to an end, and every thought in my mind had an ocean steamship at the end of it. The neighbors made it a “time of tender gloom,” for it could be nothing else to a mature person, this taking up of the Brindin family history by the root for transplantation, this breaking off of intimate relationships which, through blood, reached back into misty centuries. Then, too, there was the element of adventure, of risk, for we little knew what prospects were in store for us in that strange land: what would be the measure of our reward for going there. The neighbors were very solemn, but the strange thing about it lay in the fact that there was not one, insular as the British are heralded, who thought that the proposed trip should not be taken!
Finally we came to the farewells and I made mine very concrete. As it was clearly understood that everybody who went to America attained great wealth, I told Clara Chidwick that I would send her a fine gold watch, and when her sister Eline cried with envy, I vowed to send her a diamond brooch. Harry Lomick went off with the promise
of five new American dollars, Jimmy Hedding was consoled with the promise of two cases of American “candy,” while Chaddy Ashworth vowed eternal friendship when I promised him a barrel of American apples, and, on the strength of that, as my dearest friend, we mutually promised to marry sisters, to keep house next door to one another when we grew up, and to share whatever good fortune might come to us in the shape of money!
Quite a body-guard of friends saw us off at the station. “Good luck to you!” was the prevailing cry, as we sat in our compartment waiting for the train to start for Liverpool. Then the guard shouted, “All aboard!” and we were in the first, exciting stage of our great adventure.
A
W B
I settled myself back against the leather back of the seat wondering why my aunt was crying so, and then I began to count the pennies with which I planned to purchase some oranges in Liverpool.
Our night in Liverpool, our last night on English soil, is summed up in a memory of a cheap hotel, a stuffy room, and a breakfast on an uncountable number of hard-boiled eggs. In the morning, early, we left that place and were taken on a tram-car to the dock. There I did purchase some oranges from an old witch of an orange woman, big football oranges, which when peeled were small enough, for they had been boiled to thicken the peel, so Aunt said.
On the steerage deck we were jostled by Jews with their bedding and food supplies. At ten o’clock, after we had stood in the vaccination line, the ship sailed from the dock, and I leaned over the side watching the fluttering handkerchiefs fade, as a snow flurry fades. Then the tugs left us alone on the great, bottle-green deep. There was a band in my heart playing, “I’m going to the land of the free and the home of the brave!”
When one makes a blend of bilge-water, new paint, the odor of raw onions, by confining them in an unventilated space under deck, and adds to that blend the cries of ill-cared-for babies, the swearing of vulgar women, and the complaining whine of sickly children, one knows what the steerage on the old “Alaska” was to me. The Jews owned the warm, windswept deck, where they sat all day on the tins which covered the steam-pipes, and munched their raw fish, black bread, and flavored the salt air with the doubtful odor of juicy onions.
I heard the English forswear the bearded tribe, denounce them for unbelievers, sniff at the mention of the food they ate; but after all, the English had the wrong end of the stick; they had to stay below deck most of the time, and sicken themselves with the poor, unwholesome fare provided by the ship.
My aunt said to me, one day, “Al, I’d give the world for one of them raw onions that the Jews eat. They’re Spanish onions, too, that makes it all the more aggravating.”
“Why don’t you ask them for a piece of one?” I inquired innocently “What,” she sniffed, “ask a Jew? Never!” But when I begged one from a Jew boy, she ate it eagerly enough.
The height of romance for me, however, was in the person of Joe, a real stowaway. He was found on the second day out, and was given the task of peeling the steerage potatoes, a task that kept him busy enough throughout the day. My mouth went open to its full extent, when, after helping him with his potatoes, he would reward me by paring off thick slices of callouse from his palms. Joe said to me, “Never mind, lad, if I work hard they’ll sure land me in Boston when we arrive. I’m going to wark hard so they’ll like me. I do want to go to the States!”
In the women’s cabins, where I had my berth, they held evening concerts of a very decided pathetic kind. Like minor tunes, they always ended in a mournful wailing; for many of the women knew tragedies at first hand, and were in the midst of tragedy, so that their songs and humors were bound to be colored by despair. Carrie Bess, a stout woman whose white neck was crumpled in folds like a washboard, had wit enough to change the somberness of a morgue. She was usually the presiding officer in charge of the concerts. She was on her way to rejoin her husband, though she did not know where he was, but she said, “I’ll get on the train and have it stop in Texas where Jek (Jack) is.” And with this indefinite optimism she threw care to the winds and frolicked. She would throw herself astride a chair, wink at us all, open her mouth like a colored minstrel, and sing lustily,
“It’s very hard to see a girl Sitting on a young man’s knee. If I only had the man I love, What a ’apy girl I’d be!”
Then, when the program had been gone through, with the oftrepeated favorites, like Carrie Bess’ “It’s Very Hard,” the concert would always close with an old sea song that somebody had introduced, a song which, as I lay in my berth and sleepily heard it sung under those miserable swinging lamps, amid the vitiated
atmosphere of the cabin, and with the sea sounds, wind, splash of waves, and hissing steam, summed up all the miserable spirit of isolation on a great ocean:
“Jack was the best in the band, Wrecked while in sight of the land, If he ever comes back, my sailor boy, Jack, I’ll give him a welcome home!”
When the numbered sails of pilots hove in sight, and the lightships, guarding hidden shoals with their beacon masts, were passed, the steerage began to get ready for its entrance in the land of dreams. The song went up, every throat joining in:
“Oh, we’re going to the land where they pave the streets with money, la, di, da, la, di, da!”
Finally we sighted a golden band in the distance, a true promise of what we expected America to be. It was Nantasket Beach. That made us put on our Sunday clothes, tie up our goods, and assemble at the rail to catch a further glimpse of the great paradise. An American woman gave me a cent, the first bit of American money my fingers ever touched.
Then the black sheds, the harbor craft, and the white handkerchiefs came into view. I strained an eager, flushing face in an effort to place Uncle Stanwood, but I could not find him.
Nearly all the passengers had left in company with friends, but my aunt and I had to stay on board in instant fear of having to return to England, for uncle was not there to meet us. I saw poor Joe, the stowaway, in chains, waiting to be examined by the authorities for his “crime.” I felt fully as miserable as he, when I whispered to him, “poor Joe!”
After many hours uncle did arrive, and we had permission to land in America. I confess that I looked eagerly for the gold-paved streets, but the Assay Office could not have extracted the merest pin-head from the muddy back street we rode through in a jolting team of some sort. I saw a black-faced man, and cried for fear. I had a view of a Chinaman, with a pigtail, and I drew back from him until uncle
said, “You’ll see lots of them here, Al, so get used to it.” When I sat in the station, waiting for the train, I spent my first American money in America. I purchased a delectable, somewhat black, banana!
Chapter IV. I pick up a handful of America, make an American cap, whip a Yankee, and march home whistling “Yankee Doodle”
Chapter IV. I pick up a handful of America, make an American cap, whip a Yankee, and march home whistling, “Yankee Doodle”
THE full revealing of the America of my dreams did not come until the following morning. Docks, back streets, stations, and the smoky, dusty interiors of cars, were all I had seen the previous night. When we had arrived in New Bedford, I heard the noise of a great city, but I had been so stupid with excitement and weariness that no heed had been paid to passing scenes. I had gone to bed in a semi-conscious state in the boarding-house where Uncle Stanwood made his home. But in the morning, after I realized that I was in America, that it was an American bed on which I slept, that the wall-paper was American, and that the window-blind, much crumpled and cracked, over the window, was the great drop-curtain which, drawn to its full height, would show me a stage, set with a glitter of things wondrous to the sight, I exclaimed aloud, “Chaddy, oh, Chaddy, I’m in America!”
Just as one hesitates with esthetic dreaming over a jewel hidden in a leaden casket, getting as much joy from anticipation as possible, so I speculated in that dingy room before I pulled up the curtain. What should I see? Trees with trunks of chrysolites, with all the jewels of Aladdin’s cave dripping from their boughs, streets paved with gold, people dressed like lords? All, all outside, with only that crumpled blind between me and them? Thus, with an inflamed anticipation and a magnified dream fancy, I hurried across the room, and let the window-blind snap out of my nervous clutch clear to the top. I pressed my eyes close to the glass, and there—Oh, the breakingdown of dreams, the disillusionment of the deluded! There was a glaring sun staring down on a duck-yard: a magnified duck-yard, bare of grass, of shrubs, criss-crossed with clotheslines, littered with ashes, refuse, and papers, with flapping mill clothes, and great duck-
house; drab tenements, all alike, and back of them the bleak brick walls of a cotton-mill!
But never mind, I was in America! Chaddy was not. The scene I had looked upon was disheartening, somewhat like a sudden blow in the face, for those box-like, wooden duck-houses were not to be compared with the ivy-covered, romantic rows of Hadfield with their flower-gardens, arches, and slate roofs! But I was in America, anyway!
We had the breakfast-table to ourselves, uncle, aunt, and myself, for the boarders had gone to work long ago, and this was our holiday, our first American day! What are those round golden things with holes in? Doughnuts? They don’t grow on trees, do they? Baked? Isn’t it funny they call them “nuts?” I don’t taste any nut flavor to them. But I could not linger too long at the table with all America waiting to be explored.
“Don’t gulp down things like that,” warned aunt, “you’ll be sick, proper sick. Chew your food!”
“I want to go out and see America, aunt!”
“All right,” she assented. “Go on out, but mind the American lads, now!”
So I left the house, and the first act done when I reached the gate had in it, crystallized, the deep reverence an alien feels for America. I bent down and picked up a handful of dirt. I wanted to feel America.
Then I walked down the street of tenements, looking for an outlet from them, and hoping to get away from the shadow of the mill. At last the tenements were passed, and I saw some vacant building lots, with huge, gaudy sign boards staring from them. It was here that I heard a voice from across the road, shouting in broad derision, “Strike him!” A group of school boys were pointing at me. In the hasty survey I gave them, I noted that they all wore round caps. Mine had a shining visor on it. I hurried along behind one of those huge signs, took out my pocket knife, and slashed off the visor. Immediately I felt Americanized. I went forth with some show of a
swagger, for I thought that now, wearing a round cap, everybody would take me for a full-fledged American!
But it was not so. Under a railway viaduct, where the shadows were thick and cool, I was met by a lad of my own age, but with twenty times more swagger and pertness showing on him. When he saw me, he frowned at first, then, grinning insultingly, he came to within two inches of me, planted himself belligerently, and mocked, “’Ello, Green’orn! Just come acrost, ’ast?” Whereat, knowing full well that he was heaping slander on my mother speech, I threw caution to the winds, hurled myself at him, and was soon engaged in tense battle. The fight did not last long, for, keeping up the English schoolboy tradition, I not only pounded with clenched fists, but freely used my feet—a combination that put to nought whatever pugilistic skill my antagonist possessed.
“No fair, usin’ feet,” he complained, as he nursed a bruised shin and hobbled off, “Green’orn!”
That word, “Greenhorn,” startled me. I cautiously felt of my head, for it flashed into my mind that it was very possible, in this magic land, that English people grew green horns immediately upon arrival; but I was consoled to find that none had sprouted overnight.
I continued my exploration, and found myself surrounded on every hand by mills, tenements, and shops. The streets were very dirty: the whole scene was as squalid as could be. Yet, the thought kept comforting me, I was in America. I returned home, covered with burdock burrs, arranged in the form of epaulets, stripes, and soldier buttons, whistling with gusto a shrill rendition of “Yankee Doodle.” So ended my first morning as an American.
Chapter V. I cannot become a President, but I can go to the Dumping Grounds
Chapter V.
I cannot become a President, but I can go to the
Dumping Grounds
UNCLE and aunt went out that afternoon. “We’re going looking for a tenement,” said uncle. “We’ll be back by supper time, Al. Mind now, and not get into mischief.” They were gone until past the regular supper hour, and I waited for them in my room. When they did arrive, uncle seemed very much excited, and in greeting me he put five cents in my hand, and then extracted from his pocket a handful of crisp, baked pieces which he said were “salted crackers.” The only crackers with which I was acquainted were Chinese crackers, which we exploded on Guy Fawkes day in England.
“Will they shoot off?” I asked him.
“No, they’re to eat,” he answered. “There’s salt on them to make you eat more, too.”
“Where do you get them?” was my next question.
“At saloons,” he replied. “When you get a drink of beer, they have these near to make you drink more.” I looked up startled, and sniffed the breath of my aunt, who stood near, nodding her head rapidly, as if answering the questions of a Gatling gun.
“Why,” I gasped, “you’ve both been drinking! Both of you!” Aunt Millie made a stroke at my head, then lurched in doing it, and almost sprawled to the floor.
“What if we have, Impudence?” she snapped. “When did you sit in judgment o’er us, eh?”
Then my uncle, in an apologetic tone, broke in, “There, Al, lad, we only stopped in one place; sort of celebration, lad, after being separated so long. Don’t say anything about it, lad. I’ll give you five cents more.” But Aunt Millie flew into a terrible rage. “Don’t apologize, Stanwood. Give him a clout i’ the head, and let him be careful what he says. Drinkin’, eh? I show him,” and she suddenly swung her fist against my ear, and sent me stumbling to the floor. At
that, Uncle Stanwood rushed at her, although he was lurching, and grasping her wrist, called, “There, Millie, that’s enough.” That brought on an altercation, in the midst of which the landlady came up, and said, “Stop that noise, or I’ll call the police. I’ll give you another day for to get out of this. I keep a respectable house, mind you, and I won’t, I simply won’t have drinking taking place here. The boarders won’t stand for it!”
“Oh, you insultin’ vixin, you!” screamed aunt, brandishing her arms in the air with savage fury, “Don’t you go to sittin’ on the seat of virtue like that! Didn’t I see the beer man call in your kitchen this morning? You hypocrite, you!”
“Oh,” screamed the landlady, leaving the room, “let me hear one more sound and in comes the police. I won’t stand it!”
“There,” cried Aunt Millie, consoled by the landlady’s departure, “I knew that would bring her. Now, Stanwood, let’s finish that little bottle before bedtime. This is our first day in America.” Uncle Stanwood pulled from his pocket a flask of whisky, and I left them sitting on the edge of the bed drinking from it.
The next morning Uncle Stanwood went to the mill where he was working, and told the overseer that he must have another day off in which to get a tenement and get settled. Then he and aunt found a tidy house just outside the blocks of duck-houses, and, after renting it, went to the shopping center, where they chose a complete housekeeping outfit and made the terms of payment,—“One Dollar Down and a Dollar a Week.” That plunged us into debt right off, and I later learned that even our steamship tickets had been purchased from an agency on somewhat the same terms. The landlady had told Aunt Millie that my uncle had been a steady drinker since his stay with her, shortly after his arrival in the United States.
“That accounts for his having so little money, then,” commented my aunt. “I fail to see where he’s making a much better man of himself than he was across the water.”
At last Aunt Millie had the satisfaction of “setting up American housekeeping,” as she termed it. But she did not find much romance
in this new kind of housekeeping.
“See that homely thing,” she complained, indicating the stove, “Give me that old fireplace and the stone kitchen floor! I’ve a good mind to pack my tin box and take the next boat,” she half cried, throughout those first days of Americanization. “I don’t, for the life of me, see whatever brought me over here to this forsaken place!”
I had to share in the blunders that were made. I was heartily laughed at by the produce pedler when I asked him for “two pounds of potatoes.” The yeast-cake man looked at me blankly when I asked for “a penny’s worth of barm.” Aunt Millie did not see how she was ever going to make a family baking from a piece of yeast an inch square, when she had been wont to put in the same amount of flour a handful of brewer’s barm. On Sunday morning the baker’s cart came with hot pots of beans crested with burnt lumps of pork. We had to learn to eat beans and brown bread.
“I’m sure,” said my aunt when I brought home a five-cent loaf, “that they rise the dough with potatoes; its so light and like dried chips!” For the first time in my life I was surfeited with pastry. I bought several square inches of frosted cake from the baker for five cents, and ate it in place of the substantial food I had lived on in England. In place of making meals, when she wanted to visit with the neighbors, my aunt would give me five cents to spend on anything I liked.
The springtime was full on, and I found much pleasure in mixing with the tenement boys and girls, after school hours. While the schools were in session, however, I had a lonely time of it. But it was on those steps that I began to form a conception of what it means to be an American. It meant to me, then, the ability to speak slang, to be impertinent to adults, calling one’s father, “Old Man,” one’s mother, “My Old Woman,” and one’s friend, “that guy.” The whole conception rounded out, however, in the hope of some day becoming the President of The United States, and I was considerably chagrined, and my coming to America seemed a fruitless task, when I learned, from Minnie Helphin, a German girl, that “You got for to be borned into the United States, for to be like us ’Mericans, to be Preser-dent. My brudder, Hermann, him for to be Preser-dent, sometimes.”
I grew tired of being alone while the others went to school, so that one day, in spite of the warning that the “truant officer” might get hold of me, I went to one of the school yards, and, through the iron fence, watched all my friends at play, and immediately I said to myself, “You ought to go, too!” That night I said to my aunt, at the supper table, “I want to go to an American school.” She looked at me with a frown.
“School, is it? Who said so, the government?”
“No,” I answered, trembling in fear of her, “it wasn’t the government. I get lonely while they are at school. That’s why I want to go.”
She laughed, “Oh, we’ll soon find something for you to do more profitable than going to school. Go to school! What are you bothering me about school for? Education’s only for them that are learning to be gentlemen. You’re a poor lad, and must be thinking more about getting to work. Here we are, head and ears in debt! Up to our neck in it, right away! We owe for the furniture. That chair you’re sitting on isn’t ours. That stove isn’t paid for. Nothing’s ours, hardly the clothes on our backs. How we are to pay for it all, gets me. You’ve got to knuckle down with a will, young man, and help us out of the hole we’re in!”
“But the lad’s got to have schooling, Millie!” protested my uncle. She turned upon him with flashing eyes, and, half-crying with sudden anger, shouted at the top of her voice, “Listen to that! I’d like to know what you have to strike in this for It’s you and your drinking’s brought us to this pitch. There you can sit, while we are head and ears in debt, nothing to call our own, and propose that this Impudent go to school. He’s got to go out on the street with the McNulty lads and get wood and coal. That will be something towards helping out. Never mind about school till the government makes him go. That will be plenty of time for SCHOOL!”
“Picking wood and coal?” I asked, with interest in this new scheme to keep me busy.
“Yes,” she explained. “I was in McNulty’s this afternoon, and Mrs. McNulty was telling me that she’s entirely kept in coal and wood by her two lads, Pat and Tim. Seems to me that you might make
yourself useful like that, too, instead of bothering your little brain about getting learning.”
“I don’t like to have him out on the street,” protested Uncle, somewhat feebly.
“It’s not a case of like or dislike, this time,” said Aunt Millie, “it’s a case of got to. You don’t bring in enough to pay up everything, so you shut up! You and your fifteen dollars won’t make creation, not a bit! Get off out of this. Go to the toy store, and get a cart or something for Al to get wood in, instead of sitting there telling me what is right and what is wrong. Go on; I’m going to send him out in the morning.”
Uncle took me with him to the toy store, where I helped select an express wagon, with tin rims, front wheels that turned this way and that, and the name, “Champion,” in red letters on its sides. Uncle rode me home in it, and seemed to enjoy the drag it gave him up hill. “There,” he whispered when we reached our door, “don’t tell your aunt that I rode you. She might not like it, Al, lad!”
The next morning Pat and Tim called at the house for me. They had been generously kept at home that day to show me their “pickings.” I felt a trifle puffed up over the gaudy appearance of my new wagon, for my companions’ was a crude, deep box with odd baby-carriage wheels, and it was named, by a black smudged tar sign, “The Shamrock.” But I did not long exult, for Tim, a little undersized fellow of fourteen, said, manfully, “Now, Priddy, if we shows yer things, yer got to divvy up, see!”
“What?” I asked.
“Got to square up,” he said, and with no more ado he placed himself in my new wagon. When we were out of sight of the house, Pat gave him the handle of “The Shamrock,” and placed himself in the depths of that dilapidated wagon, and I was told to “Drawr us. Yer th’ hoss. See?”
So Pat and Tim took me to the “pickings.” In our excursions we visited buildings that were in the process of reshingling, when we piled our wagons to abnormal heights with the dry, mossy old ones.
