The Palatka Daily News

POLICE AND THE MOB.

A DANGEROUS CROWD WHETHER AT PLAY OR IN EARNEST.

A London Mob and the Anxiety it Always Occasions—In the Talons of a Policeman—I Wild, Ungoverned Surge—An Exciting Incident.

London, whose smile is fortune, and whose frown is death. I do not recollect at the moment who was the writer of that terse and truthful sentence. I won't be sure even that the quotation is literal. Perhaps it was said of Chatterton. Perhaps it was written by Chatterton himself. But of the London mob it may be said that death lurks in either its smiles or its frowns. A London mob is like a man-eating tiger; it is dangerous whether in play or in earnest.

A London mob, when it is known that it will gather for peaceful and legitimate purposes on a certain day, is always a source of anxiety and preparation with the police. On Lord Mayor's day, or on any occasion when the queen appears in the metropolis, or when a big meeting is called for in Hyde Park, a large number of special policemen are sworn in. Sometimes as many as 5000 are added to the already large force.

IN READINESS FOR ANY CALL.

I remember being impressed with the completeness of the arrangements during the last Lord Mayor's day I was in London. Down Norfolk street and Savoy street and others of the small streets that lead from the bustling Strand to the comparative quietness of the Thames embankment stood double rows of stalwart, silent policemen in readiness for any call. Mounted policemen were stationed along Fleet street and the Strand; every few feet on the crowded pavements were officers on foot, and the roadway was kept clear by the line of uniformed men on each side of the way standing almost shoulder to shoulder. A mob of this kind is always a good-natured one. It is full of horseplay and likes to worry and bullyrag the patient policemen, whose lot at these times, as the peppery Gilbert remarks, "is not a happy one."

When a portion of the mob becomes too obstreperous the policemen make a charge at it and endeavor to scatter its component parts among the more peaceable throngs of the multitude. The tactics of the police are always to scatter or divide the mob into sections. They do not endeavor to make an arrest unless all other methods of pacifying the boisterous individual idiot who is the nucleus of that particular rowdy part of the crowd fail. But once the talons of the policeman fasten on an unruly man he is gone. The officer generally makes a sudden spring at him, grasps him firmly by the arms or by the coat collar, gives him one tremendous jerk toward him that lifts him off his feet, then he turns him around, shoves him on to the next policeman and thus the captive is whirled around and around and passed from policeman to policeman with a celerity that utterly bewilders him, and the first thing he knows he is down one of the silent streets with handcuffs on him, and is marched off to the station to await the inevitable interview with the magistrate in the morning.

A WILD, UNGOVERNED SURGE.

All this is done so quickly that the man is gone before his companions have time to collect their scattered senses. When they do rally they generally make a wild, ungoverned surge at the police, who open ranks before them, close in behind them, charge in turn upon them, scatter them through the crowd, catch two or three of the ringleaders and pass them into the irresistible eddy that whirls them off to the prison cells and then the police re-form in line again. All this is done with a persistent patience that is admirable to behold. I never saw a man clubbed in London, but then perhaps the policeman's bone-cracking tactics are even a worse for the victim than would be a good sound whack with a club.

When a man is utterly untamable, two policemen grab an arm, and bend them suddenly back till the bones touch. Every bone in the wretch's body seems to crack. It is like an interview with the rack of olden times. The instant this is done he is as limp and nerveless as a clam.

It is a curious thing that the London mob employs the same tactics with the police as policemen use with the people. They try in every way to divide the solid phalanx of the officers who endeavor to resist by linking arms with each other, and in that condition stand an enormous strain. However, when the mob succeeds the individual member of the force is roughly handled. They whirl him round and round, crack his bones, and if he once loses his feet and goes down, it means several months in the hospital or all eternity in his coffin. In the Strand, I once saw a mounted policeman swallowed up, horse and all, by the mob. He didn't lose his feet, but he lost his head. He got angry, which is a thing the mob can never abide. He tried to charge them back with his horse. The mob literally rose at him and swept his horse and himself for about twenty yards, the horse staggering along sideways, plunging and rearing in the dense crowd. Then striking the pavement the terrified animal went down sideways, and the next instant the surging mob seemed to have flowed over horse and man.

Between getting into a frenzied London mob or taking a swim in the whirlpool rapids below Niagara I think there is very little choice. The wise man will give preference, if anything, to the whirlpool.—Luke Sharp in Detroit Free Press.