“Bum,” the station house mascot, was out of place in the lower East Side. Up in the Tenderloin, or on Fifth Avenue, Bum would have been a well-behaved fellow, but he didn’t like men with whiskers. When Bum didn’t like you, he showed it.
His best friends were Pete Lehr, Eddie Sullivan and myself. Whenever any one of us was going on patrol duty, he came along. Bum would start out in good-humored curiosity, frisking around the pushcarts and losing himself in the sidewalk crowd. Then a high-pitched yelp, a wail or a curse in Yiddish. Another whiskered man bitten.
There was nothing to be done about it, and complaints poured in at the station house. Pete, Eddie and myself soothed most of the victims, but one of them went to court. Pete was summoned to appear before Judge House and was ordered to produce the dog. Bum was hauled before the bar, his sins were recounted, and he was formally condemned to death.
The complainant intended to see that the court order was obeyed. There wasn’t much time, but we found an old stray dog that looked enough like Bum to fool the complainant, and we shot him as the court had ordered. Then Bum’s ghost turned up in the precinct, snapping at men with long beards, and there was more trouble. Bum finally was transferred for the good of the service.
Don’t ever tell policemen that Rin Tin Tin or shepherd dogs of his breed are “police dogs.” So far as the policeman is concerned — and I mean myself — the only dogs that have the right to the title are the mongrel mutts that hang around the police station, learn their tricks from the policemen on the beat and wear the collar and buttons of a police station mascot. They may not look dignified or aristocratic, and they haven’t any pedigree, but they know their stuff.
Bum was a water rat. He was born in a stable at the Brooklyn Bridge river front. He was supposed to be pure Irish terrier, but I guess his mother must have done a little wandering from home. He was half Irish, and the rest was in doubt.
The men in the stable threw Bum out to fend for himself. They didn’t like his ears, one sticking up and the other down. Bum had a grand memory, and when he became a full-fledged police mascot he never would go near the stable or have anything to do with the men who hung out there. He never forgave bad treatment.
A rat-killer second to none, Bum was just as good against a two-footed wrongdoer. Many a thief, fleeing from a policeman, was pulled down when Bum joined the chase. On a fire line or a police line, Bum was better than a squad of men. He would run up and down inside the line, barking constantly. If a man got over the line, Bum would jump for him, landing with his forepaws on the man’s stomach. Then Bum would jump back and growl a warning, but never bite.
He liked children, and would escort them over crossings near the school-houses. A real police dog, all the way through.
The finest dog of this type I ever knew, though, was “Browney,” a mongrel I met later on at the Twenty-First Precinct, East Twenty-Second Street. Browney would help you in a fight and chase and grab any man you pointed out to him. If Bum was intelligent, Browney was wise. He knew just where to get the good things of life. I guess he figured his police collar made him a privileged character. He made regular calls at the leading restaurants and enjoyed steaks, chops and such fare.
Browney liked his beer, and could carry his load like a gentleman. He knew every saloon in which a pail was used to catch the drip from the beer taps. Whenever he wanted a drink, Browney would walk under the swinging doors of the saloons and lap up everything in the drip pail.
He always protected the men. If Browney was with a policeman who stepped into a restaurant or a saloon for a rest, a bite or a drink, he’d never stick around outside the door so as to give the man away to a passing sergeant. Instead, he’d beat it for the station stable and go to sleep with one of his friends among the horses.
Browney had a rival in the station house, a big female St. Bernard, who answered to the name of “Bess.” She went out on patrol for years with the men, but when she got old, found a job for herself caring for the lost children in the back room. Many a tearful child went peacefully to sleep after Bess put a big paw over him.
An automobile did for Browney, and his funeral was something to remember. Browney was buried in Gramercy Park, the most exclusive bit of ground in all New York. The children of some of the city’s richest families were chief mourners with the policemen, for Browney had been a playmate of the rich when he wasn’t on duty. The world is shut out from Gramercy Park, only the families of its property holders being permitted to enter there, but this never stopped Browney. He made free use of the park whenever he chose, and when he died the children insisted that he be buried there. Flowers were placed on his grave daily for a long time afterward. The grave is there still.
Chapter XXX
“Happy” Houlihan
I had no dull nights in the Seventh Precinct. The water front always has a big quota of thugs. Sailors, immigrants and drunks were prey for the tough bands of the district, and the man on the beat had to be alert. If everything else failed, I could always make excitement for myself at the old Catharine Street Market.
Not many New Yorkers know — or want to know — that market. It’s the trading place of the East Side’s poorest. Every Sunday morning peddlers turn up with vegetables and produce that they couldn’t sell Saturday night and which will spoil if they keep it.
When it gets late on any day at the market, the peddlers give away whatever they have left in the way of fish, vegetables and other perishable foods. It is pitiful to see women scrambling around the carts, looking for bargains or hoping for any kind of a hand-out. Many of them with babies at home, too.
The district consisted mostly of old, dirty warehouses and at night it swarmed with rats. I offered to help reduce the rodent population, and persuaded one of the market owners to buy me a twenty-two caliber Winchester rifle. Every late tour was a big game hunt. I would hang a piece of ham skin on a string under a drop light and then start shooting from the darkness when the rats came for the bait. I killed thousands, lots of them big fellows of the kind that attack children and even adults in the cheaper tenement houses.
You never could tell what would happen on Catharine Street, particularly in the late night hours. It was the dividing line between Madison Street and the Oak Street precincts. The south side was patrolled by the Fifth Precinct officers and the north side by our men. I was on my own side of the street at two o’clock one morning when I heard shooting. I saw a man sprinting along the sidewalk toward me with a cop chasing him. It was a running gun fight. Both were jumping into doorways and out again, firing with each jump and running about fifty feet after each shot. The fleeing man was on my side of the street, but the cop was on the south side and I stood directly in his line of fire.
It was my move and I took it on the hop. I waited for my chance in a dark doorway and sprang out just as the man got up to me. I hit him on his head with my night stick and knocked him into the gutter, following this by jumping on him with both feet.
The other officer rushed up and I learned that the man was an Italian who had shot a woman. I surrendered the prisoner and left. The man seemed unconscious. The next day I met the same officer in a restaurant and he spoke.
“You know how to hit them,” he remarked. “That man’s out yet.”
I don’t know whether the capture had any effect, but a break came for me not long after this. Commissioner Bingham had been going over the facts against the men transferred out of the Sixteenth Precinct, on the graft-taking charges, and had concluded that an injustice had been done. I was asked if I wanted to return to the Sixteenth, but was told I could be sent anywhere I wanted to go. I requested an assignment to the Bronx, near my home, and was transferred to the Thirty-Fifth Precinct.