Many an inspector has earned unstinted praise (even from the New York Evening Post) by "clearing New York of crooks" or having a sort of "round-up" of suspicious characters whom, after proper identification, he has ejected from the city by the shortest and quickest possible route.

Yet in the case of every person thus arrested and driven out of the town he has undoubtedly violated constitutional rights and taken the law into his own hands.
What redress can a penniless tramp secure against a stout inspector of police able and willing to spend a considerable sum of money in his own defence, and with the entire force ready and eager to get at the tramp and put him out of business?
He swallows his pride, if he has any, and ruefully slinks out of town for a period of enforced abstinence from the joys of metropolitan existence.

Yet who shall say that, in spite of the fact that it is a theoretic outrage upon liberty, this cleaning out of the city is not highly desirable?
One or two comparatively innocent men may be caught in the ruck, but they generally manage to intimate to the police that the latter have "got them wrong" and duly make their escape.

The others resume their tramp from city to city, clothed in the presumption of their innocence.
Since the days of the Doges or of the Spanish Inquisition there has never been anything like the morning inspection or "line up" of arrested suspects at the New York police head-quarters.* (*Now abolished.) One by one the unfortunate persons arrested during the previous night (although not charged with any crime) are pointed out to the assembled detective force, who scan them from beneath black velvet masks in order that they themselves may not be recognized when they meet again on Broadway or the darker side streets of the city.

Each prisoner is described and his character and past performances are rehearsed by the inspector or head of the bureau.