RECORDS PROVE
MEN WERE MOVED.
AFTER BEING THREATENED BY
MEN WITH A "PULL."
ONE ARRESTED
WRONG WOMAN.
SHE HAD BEEN FINED 106 TIMES,
BUT WAS EXEMPT.
"Ain't You Next?" Said O'Hearn's
Friend; "You're to Let Her
Alone." -- More of the Pow-
er of Mickey O'Hearn.
After the order of the board of police commissioners Wednesday a reporter for The Journal had no trouble in seeing the books at No. 4 police station yesterday. And a view of these books proved the charges that every man since the first of the year, who has been active in arresting women "night hawks" has been taken out of plain clothes and removed from the district. One man was left in the district but he was taken from that special duty and put back into uniform.
The records showed that officers had been taken from that duty even before January 1 -- in fact, any man who has been too active since the reorganized police department took charge of affairs after Governor Joseph W. Folk's "rigid investigation" has been shifted. This is not only true of No. 4 district by even in No. 1 district, headquarters. This does not pertain alone to the arresting of dissolute women but to interference with certain saloons which were selling liquor on Sunday. That charge is made in regard to No. 1 district more than any other. Of course, some saloons have been caught; but they are not the influential ones; those run by "our political friends."
While the records at No. 4 station practically prove all the assertions made in regard to that district it is said that no blame can be laid at the door of Captain Thomas P. Flahive. It is not he who has had the men taken out of citizens clothes and transferred Those who know say he has been handicapped by having only a few men to do the work in his district and by an unseen power which has been able to have men removed when they did their full duty.
ARRESTED MANY WOMEN.
The records show that Daniel Doran, who worked there for years, arrested thirty-five women just before January 1. He was threatened by well dressed vagrants and told that he would be moved. And by the grace of the unseen power he was moved January 1, last, going in uniform to No. 9 -- the "sage brush" district.
The commanding officers and sergeants under whom Edward Prewett worked in No. 4 precinct speak well of him. He was there nearly eight years, and it was never said that Prewett did not do his full duty. In fat, it has been said that "Prewett would bring in his grandmother if ordered to do so."
In December, Prewett was detailed alone to bring in women of the streets. In eighteen days he brought in thirty-five of them. But from all sides, even from the women and especially the dude vagrants, he heard, "You won't last beyond January 1." One night Prewett arrested a woman named Kate Kingston. Last year this woman was fined $500 by Police Judge Harry G. Kyle, and at that time the records showed that she had been fined 106 times in police court.
"YOU AIN'T NEXT, ARE YOU?"
As he started away with the woman, "Ted" Noland appeared on the scene. "Turn that woman loose," he said; "you ain't next are you? She's to be let alone." Prewett was not "next," for he was also arrested Noland, and that was his undoing. Noland threatened the officer and told him he would personally see to it that he was moved. And Prewett was moved January 1, going in uniform to No. 6. Noland was fined $50 in police court the day following his arrest.
Noland is well known to the police, and in January, 1907, was fined $500 on a charge of vagrancy. That same Kate Kingston, over whom he threatened the officer, testified then that he and a man named Deerwester had beaten her at Thirteenth and Main streets. Deerwester got a similar fine. Their cases were appealed and the men were soon out out on bond.
Noland is a friend of Alderman "Mickey" O'Hearn, and, until recently, could be seen almost any day about his saloon at 1205 Walnut street; also about the saloon of Dan Leary at Fourteenth and Walnut streets. The records show that Leary has gone the bonds of scores of street women. At one time Judge Kyle objected to the n umber of personal bonds that Leary was signing and required that they be made in cash.
JUST SEE MICKEY.
The influence of Alderman "Mickey" O'Hearn may be better understood when it is known how he is reverenced by many members of the police department. When the Folk "investigation" was begun in May last year the commissions of probably half the department were held up. This conversation was overheard one day between two of the officers out of commissions.
"I'll tell you these are ticklish times," one said. "I have all my friends to work and am assured that I am all right."
"I'm up a tree," the other replied. "I don't know what to do. I have always tried to do my duty and can't imagine why I am held up."
"Why don't you see 'Mickey'?" his friend said with astonishment. "I thought you were wise. You know 'Mickey,' don't you You do; then go and see him and the whole things squared. That's what I did."
From that day to this the word has gone out through the whole department, "See 'Mickey' if you are in bad. He'll fix it."
