NEVER THINK AGAIN
POLICEMEN DON'T WORK.
One of Them Walks Nearly 8,000
Miles a Year -- Board Orders
Call Boxes Rearranged.
Mayor Thomas T. Crittenden, Jr., at the meeting of the police board yesterday, caused an order to be issued which will make many a tired policeman rise and call him blessed. It came about in this way:
While Chief Ahern was talking to the board an idea seemed to strike the mayor. "Chief," he asked, "from where I sit on my front porch I see a policeman come and pull a box every half hour. Is there any use in walking these poor fellows to death away out there? I understand that there is only half an hour between calls. Has the officer got time to stop even for a minute to investigate anything that may seem suspicious to him, or to listen to a complaint?"
"He has very little time in that district," answered the chief, "or in any of the residence districts, in fact."
The board was then told that Patrolman Reuben Webster, walking beat 17 in No. 6 district, known to all as "Penitentiary beat," traveled just twenty-one and two-thirds each day. The boxes are so far apart that it keeps an officer on the trot almost to make them on time. At that rate he would cover 7,908 1/3 miles each year and, in a little over three years, could girdle the globe When the board was told that, and that there are beats even longer, it created a distinct shock.
Chief Ahern was ordered to revise the time on all the call boxes in the city and, if necessary, to order them moved to different places for the patrolmen's convenience.
