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Practical Instruction for Detectives

<h2 class="pnc mf">CHAPTER VII</h2> GRAFTERS A class of criminals who are, in my opinion, the most obnoxious of any the detective may have to deal with, and of which class only a small percentage are detected and convicted are the grafters. I will venture to state that not more than one such criminal in every hundred finds his way behind prison bars, where all thieves of this class rightly belong. The general public cannot perceive how prevalent this form of stealing has become. The reason probably is because the grafter of today usually moves in the best society and often holds a position of trust, which facts tend to divert suspicion from him and from his crooked dealings. I am sure that a successful career awaits any ambitious young detective who will devote his time and energy to hunting down grafters. One or two successful cases will start the detective on the road to success. The field for detectives for this class of work is unlimited, remuneration is the best, and better still, the grafter is by far the easiest of all criminals to catch. It is as easy to catch grafters as it is to catch fish, the process being simply a matter of baiting a hook; the grafter, in his greed for money, will do the rest. In both large and small cities, and in country districts as well, grafters are daily gathering in ill[58] gotten money in many different ways. Criminal records of most of our states show that men, while holding important positions of trust in our state departments, have been detected and found guilty of various forms of grafting. The same records, in a good many of our large cities, will show the same. I believe that one of the best things that could possibly be done by the governors of our states, by the mayors of our cities, and by our prosecuting attorneys, would be to employ annually a first-class, reliable detective to investigate thoroughly into the various interests of the public which they control to ascertain if grafting exists. Grafting has usually been found where such investigations have been made. The various ways by which men who have held official positions in state, county and city governments have been known to profit by grafting would be a long story to relate. Regarding grafting by public officials, there is one thing in particular that the detective should always keep in mind, that being that political records show that thousands of men throughout the country have had themselves elected to public office, the full term of which netted them in salary often only half the amount expended by them in having themselves elected to office. When such persons are elected to public office it very often is the beginning of grafting by them in some form. We will grant that some of these men were public spirited citizens, and while in office may have served the public at their own expense. Nevertheless, when we know that a man has actually bought his way, and paid dearly to have himself elected to office, that man will at least bear watching. I have in mind the case of a certain county official in a western state, who, some years ago, succeeded in having himself elected[59] to office, which office, for its entire term of three years, carried a salary amounting to $2,400.00. This man was known to have expended close to $5,000.00 to become elected. Within a year after taking office he was ousted by the people of the county, who demanded his resignation, it having been found that his campaign for election was financed by a certain manufacturing company, and that after taking office he had accepted certain additional sums of money to protect the interests of the same concern. Right here we have another kind of grafter. The man just mentioned was known to have purchased outright with money, at so much per vote, hundreds of votes that were cast for his election. Voters accepting such money are of course guilty of a crime worse than grafting. In most of our states we now have laws which make it a misdemeanor for anyone to pay or promise to pay, or to give or promise to give anything for any person’s vote. Grafting of the worst kind has been found to exist in the law making bodies of some of our states. Many state legislators have been convicted through having accepted money to vote for or against certain measures, when by so doing they virtually sold out, for considerations of money, the people by whom they were elected to faithfully represent. The methods employed by most grafters, I believe, are too common and too well known to need mention. In connection with grafting in county and city governments, it has been found very often that officials whose duties were to protect society, and to endeavor to stamp out and to prevent certain violations of the law, were grafters of the worst type. For considerations of money they guaranteed protection to persons known to be violating the law. Such pro[60]tection has been guaranteed in many of our large cities by police officials to keepers of houses of ill repute, to keepers of gambling dens, or blind tigers, etc. The extent to which such grafting is done can easily be ascertained by the detective if he will cultivate the acquaintance of the keepers of such places. And now a few words as to how the detective may set about catching some of these various kinds of grafters. One good way for the detective to secure evidence against a grafter is to first form his acquaintance, then lead him to believe, and make it plain to him that he also is a grafter, or at least willing to be one. After such confidence is established, an arrangement should be made for making any payments of money to the grafter at such a place and in such a manner that it can be substantially corroborated. So as to make this point more clear, I will illustrate how I once, as a result of one day’s work, secured confessions from some forty grafters in connection with vote buying in one county just previous to an election. It was suspected that a certain candidate for office was spending large sums of money for votes and I was called in to obtain positive proof of it. After being supplied with a list of names of persons believed to be the distributors of the candidate’s money, I purposely selected from the list a man said to be the smartest of the lot. A few hours later, accompanied by an assistant, I called upon the man at his home. I advised him that while we were strangers to him we were old friends of the candidate’s and that we had been called upon to assist in his campaign. After discussing local conditions with the man, and the prospect of our friend’s election to office, I took from my pocket two hundred dollars in bills which[61] had previously been marked, and handed them to the man saying that our friend the candidate sent the money to give to him for distribution. Needless to state, the man did not refuse to take the money. The bold and confident manner in which it was handed to him laid at rest any fears or suspicions he may have had. He no doubt felt satisfied that we were grafters of his own type, and immediately began to talk very freely with us. We conversed with him for probably an hour, during which time he advised us of various sums of money given him by the candidate for distribution, also gave us the names of a dozen or more men who were distributing funds for the candidate. Before the day was over we had this man arrested and searched, when all of the marked money was found on his person. Realizing that he had been trapped, he lost no time making a confession, in which he implicated others, with the result that some forty confessions were secured. I have found grafters of this kind very prevalent practically all over the country, and, as a rule, a good detective will experience little trouble finding some honest, public-spirited citizen willing to defray the cost of detective hire to run down such persons. Regarding another kind of grafter, I once was called upon to secure evidence in a certain small town against a county official who was believed to be guaranteeing protection to persons selling liquor in violation of the law, the chief violators being several local druggists. Shortly after arriving in the town I began to negotiate in a business like way for the purchase of one of the drug stores. I found the proprietor of one of the stores willing to sell out provided he secured his price. After remaining in town about ten days, I[62] took an option for thirty days on one of the stores, for which option I paid a hundred dollars. I then left town temporarily, telling the druggist I was returning to my home town to consult with my partner in business. Within a week I returned with my partner (another detective) and who expressed himself as being satisfied with the place I had negotiated for. We told the druggist we were ready to buy, but before closing the deal had decided we would like to be assured against interference by the authorities in case we saw fit to sell liquor in our store. I suppose because he believed he was getting his own price for his property and business, the druggist responded quite easily. As we expected he would do, he volunteered to take us and introduce us to the very county official we were after, and which he did that evening. The druggist explained to the county official that we were to purchase his property and business the next day, and that we were naturally anxious to know if we could be assured of protection in case we decided to sell liquor. Everything appearing to be regular to the official, he told us very bluntly what it would cost us per year to be protected and requested a first payment of $50.00. I advised him we did not have so much cash with us, and finally arranged that he call upon us the next day at 10 a. m. at my room at the local hotel, when we would make the payment. Early the next morning at the hotel we secreted two responsible persons in a closet in my room, then awaited the arrival of our grafter. He came at the appointed hour and we again discussed the matter of our protection and paid him $50.00. Immediately[63] afterwards our witnesses stepped out of the closet, and finding himself caught with four witnesses against him, the man readily agreed to give us a written and signed confession. He was told he would have to resign his position forthwith or be prosecuted. He chose the former, which ended the case. The dictagraph has played an important part in the detection and conviction of grafters. When it is suspected that state, county or city officials are grafting, in order to detect them, we will take for example one or more city officials whose duty it is to let for their city, contracts for paving. When a municipality gets ready to pave three or four streets, or to let contracts for machinery, buildings or other public improvements, specifications are drawn and the same advertised. Perhaps twenty contractors will submit bids and one can imagine the rivalry that may exist among the contractors, especially since the municipality usually reserves the right to reject any or all bids and are not bound to let any given contract to the lowest bidder. Then naturally and very often the question arises as to who shall be favored. My experience in many cases has been that when the city officials are open to taking graft, a contract will go to the contractor who will pay the most for being favored. Three city officials once were trapped when a detective spent six months in their city posing as a contractor, and finally when his company was favored with a street paving contract upon the payment of $500.00 cash, he arranged to talk over the transaction and later paid over the money in a room in a hotel in which a dictagraph was secretly installed, and which made it possible to substantiate the transaction from start to finish. [64] Grafting is prevalent in many lines of business, especially where one man is entrusted with the letting of contracts, or with the purchase of supplies for a city, corporation, factory or individual. The following will illustrate just how prevalent petty grafting has become and which came to my notice through a case I had occasion to investigate for a certain well-to-do gentleman. This man owned two automobiles and entrusted to his colored chauffeur the purchase of gasoline and supplies for the machines. From various dealers this chauffeur obtained a “rake-off” on every gallon of gasoline used, and on the purchase of new tires, etc. The more gasoline he used the more money this chauffeur would make, and the same with tires and other supplies. During the investigation this chauffeur’s purchases of gasoline from the dealer were compared with the mileage of the automobiles, and when it was estimated that the owner was paying for two or three gallons of gasoline per week for a long time that could not possibly have been used. It was then believed that the chauffeur was selling the surplus gasoline, but this could not be proven. Finally, when taken to task and shown the amount of his purchases, he confessed to having poured the gasoline into the sewer of the garage. I was once called upon to look into a case where grafting was suspected in a small town, and where the president of the town council, who was a prominent physician, was under suspicion. I arrived in town two days before a certain measure was to be acted upon in council, the measure being in relation to a heating contract. I called upon the physician at his office and told him in plain words that I represented one of the competing firms and that I had[65] been authorized to offer him two hundred dollars for his vote and influence in favor of my company. He accepted from me the two hundred dollars cash consisting of marked five dollar bills, and endeavored to convince me that he was not a grafter by saying that he had intended favoring my company anyway and was not accepting the money for changing his decision on the measure in council. After leaving him I went promptly to the persons who had retained me, when it was quickly arranged to have a certain person who owed the physician a small bill go there to pay it with a twenty dollar bill. This party returned with three of the marked five dollar bills, which the physician unsuspectingly made the change with. In addition, I had had the physician prescribe for me for a pretended ailment, and by which I was enabled to substantiate my call upon him, in spite of the fact that I went to him alone. It was only desired to have this man resign from council, which, it may be imagined, he was glad to do when confronted with the evidence of having accepted a bribe. This entire case was closed successfully in less than four hours after active work was started. <hr class="chap" /> [66] <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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