As was inevitable under our system of law procedure, this meant that the
action of the court was apt to be determined by legal technicalities.
It was possible to dismiss a man from the service for quite insufficient
reasons, and to provide against the reversal of the sentence, if the
technicalities of procedure were observed. But the worst criminals
were apt to be adroit men, against whom it was impossible to get legal
evidence which a court could properly consider in a criminal trial
(and the mood of the court might be to treat the case as if it were a
criminal trial), although it was easy to get evidence which would render
it not merely justifiable but necessary for a man to remove them from
his private employ--and surely the public should be as well treated as
a private employer. Accordingly, most of the worst men put out were
reinstated by the courts; and when the Mayor attempted to remove one of
my colleagues who made it his business to try to nullify the work done
by the rest of us, the Governor sided with the recalcitrant Commissioner
and refused to permit his removal.
Nevertheless, an astounding quantity of work was done in reforming the
force. We had a good deal of power, anyhow; we exercised it to the full;
and we accomplished some things by assuming the appearance of a power
which we did not really possess.
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