A captain of the Metropolitan Police told us that even honest Washington coppers seldom make arrests any more, because they know what will happen when they get in court. The judge will harass, bullyrag and humiliate them. It is not unusual for a District jurist to castigate the policemen, call them liars and framers, then discharge the prisoners without hearing defense evidence. When the defendant is a Negro, the cops know they are going to get a going-over from the bench.
In 1937, after four years of Democratic administration, 90 percent of all major crimes went unpunished. Since then, largely through the efforts of Flynn’s Washington Criminal Justice Association, and more recently of counsel Fischbach’s revelations, about which more later, judges have been afraid to be too raw, and are giving stiffer sentences and holding prisoners in higher bail.
However, out of 811 of those indicted for major offenses in the last report period who did not enter pleas of guilty, only 281, about one third, were found guilty. Of those found guilty, the largest number received light sentences, far less than the maximum authorized by law. Even among those who pleaded guilty, more than 20 percent were permitted to assume lesser offenses.
An example of the penalties meted out for serious offenses is seen in those convicted of first- and second-degree murder: of 22, only three got sentences of 15 years to life; one drew 80 months to 20 years; all the 18 others got less than 20 years, with terms tapering down to one of three-to-nine on a first-degree murder, and one of one-to-four on a second-degree murder. None got the chair.
Disposition records on cleaning up major crimes are made to look good through an ingenious invention known as “Willie Pye” arrests. Whenever anyone is pinched in Washington and decides to take a plea, the cops induce him to admit every other unsolved crime of the same nature which is still open on the books. If the accused agrees to take the rap for these unsolved felonies, thus getting the police off the hook, they do not present further evidence to the grand jury, and the felon is not tried for the other offenses. Thus many complaints are charged off and police take official credit for solving crimes where no solution has eventuated.
The practice grew to such an extent about a decade ago that a public stench arose. After a conference between law enforcement officials and prosecutors, it was agreed to end it. But it goes right on and the evidence of it appears every year in tabulations of “cleared by other means.” There were 667 so disposed of in 1949.
It is believed the term “Willie Pye arrest” first came into police parlance in Washington when a man so named lived there, about 50 years ago. His business was crime. Willie was indicted on two housebreakings and confessed to many more, which were then written off as closed.
An unnamed desk sergeant immortalized Willie by using his name for the practice of shutting numerous open cases by getting multiple pleas and choosing to proceed on only the last.
The blowup came when Leroy Mason, who was doing a stretch in Occuquan Work House for three robberies, was still being charged for crimes going on on the outside. A nameless Washington newspaperman composed a deathless ditty, as offensive to grammar as the sentiment is to decency:
_Willie Pye was a regular guy, He took the rap for you and I._
Though the F.B.I. reported a six percent drop of crime in Washington this year, the local jail population reached a new high. The courts sent 21,062 to District jail in 1950, an all-time record. Meanwhile, the police had closed less than 60 percent of all cases involving serious felony, which by the way, was an improvement.
Arrests for the more serious crimes by race were as follows:
_Offense_ _Total_ _White_ _Colored_ Arson 34 13 21 Aggravated Assault 2956 342 2614 Embezzlement and Fraud 201 146 55 Forgery and Counterfeiting 100 72 28 Grand Larceny 1099 326 773 Housebreaking 2878 634 2244 Homicides 55 10 45 Incest 5 1 4 Rape and Carnal Knowledge 191 39 152 Receiving Stolen Property 59 31 28 Robbery 1033 230 803 ---- ---- ---- TOTAL 8611 1844 6767
The high incidence of Negro and juvenile crime was dealt with in detail in previous chapters. One reason there are so many colored law-breakers in Washington is that many judges in nearby Southern communities order Negro defendants to get out of town, instead of holding them for trial, and these gravitate to Washington.
Tough guys of both races hang around on the streets and insult passers-by with impunity, snatch purses, stick up pedestrians and mug and yoke.
Most crimes in Washington are committed from Friday through Sunday. Almost everyone has a two-day weekend, and the drinking and celebrating begins Friday night.
The First, Second, Third and Thirteenth Police precincts account for 57 percent of all serious crimes. The First is “downtown,” with tourists, transients and night life. The others are predominantly Negro.
Among the more profitable of the organized crimes are these:
Housebreaking, comparatively easy because of the large number of private homes and two- and three-story detached apartment buildings. The stolen goods are fenced in East Baltimore Street, Baltimore.
Auto thefts, growing more serious.
Bank robberies, not uncommon.
Pickpockets and cold-finger men find easy loot at the countless cocktail parties and other functions constantly given by lobbyists, conventioneers and diplomats. It is a cinch to crash these. Jewel-thieves have rich pastures. Social climbers and ambassadors’ women are loaded with rocks and constantly display them. A big gem haul is sent to Holland for recutting, via reverse channels used by the Mafia to smuggle dope. The reset ice is smuggled back.
Because of the ease with which fixes are maneuvered, the lenient sentences, the failure of local courts to extra-penalize repeaters, Washington is indeed a picnic-pasture for crooks from all over the country. When other places get too hot to hold them, they hop a rattler for the capital.
The pickings are easy. The payoff is high. The risks are minimal. The burg is a pushover.
Sex is a crime, too; a statutory felony. The incidence of such offenses in the Nation’s capital is so great as to be startling. The nature of them nauseated even a couple of hardboiled reporters like us.
The figures are public property, compiled by the F.B.I., the local cops and the Davis committee. Howard Whitman, who has been doing a series of articles based largely on newspaper morgue material, printed the computations in _Collier’s_, later put them into a book on prurient misdemeanors.
Whitman slanted his findings to _Collier’s_ special-pleading formula and found that “crime is a slum-connected characteristic.”
That is a laugh. Washington is freer of depressed living areas than any city in the country.
“And Negroes are ghettoized in these slums,” adds Whitman gratuitously.
Whitman quotes with approval the Committee for Racial Democracy which urged that “training in minority group problems be instituted immediately as a part of the regular in-service training of all policemen,” the non-sequitur supposition being that the colored folk out-rape, out-maim, out-steal and out-mugg whites eight to one because the coppers haven’t been trained in minority group relations.
Nor are sex-criminals, white or colored, permanently taken off the streets after once being caught. Washington is a recidivists’ paradise because of its ridiculous so-called “collateral rule” which takes the place of posting a bond.
A defendant could, and still can, despite a promise of the courts to tighten up, post a $25 collateral instead of a bond with a police captain. Thereupon if he does not appear in a court he is automatically found guilty and the collateral is forfeited as a fine. And that closes the case instead of the judge issuing a bench warrant as in other jurisdictions.
In the case of violent sex cases, the maximum collateral is $500 forfeit in the same way. A new judicial rule says all aggravated sex cases must be taken to court, but they are not.
Abortions are cheap and easy to obtain. Police are able to arrest only a few of the operators, and then only when complications arise. Even then, few are convicted. This racket is highly protected by an interstate ring allied with the Mafia. A ten million a year branch was uncovered in San Francisco, built around a prominent female Chinese physician, not publicly involved because of her high political and social connections. She is a close friend of Virginia Hill, gal friend of the late Bugsy Siegel.