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Show New York, Chicago, Minneapolis, and St. Loui8 have completed gome effective jobs of house-cleaning in the way of clearing out corruption in their police departments. Seattle has also just started some good. work along this line and now Kansas City comes to the front with a police scandal which promises to take .rank with the corruption unearthed un-earthed in the larger cities. While so far the developments devel-opments in the Missouri city are of the petty larceny lar-ceny caliber the public is promised sensational disclosures dis-closures by the investigators. Judging by the evidence evi-dence already obtained police rottenness of the Gotham class will be uncovered. City Jailer Tod-hunter Tod-hunter in his testimony declared that the Kansas City jailers have made a practice of taking money from prisoners who ha ve any service rendered them, and also have regularly taken money from a lawyer for throwing cases his way. Other charges made during the investigation are to the effect that a sergeant and other officers at the central station have stolen from drunken prisoners. Another case testified to was that of a prisoner who was released without trial upon payment of $125 to a lawyer, who was, it was asserted, escorted to the man's celf by city detectives. These detectives later, it was . stated, went with the prisoner to a pawnbroker's pawn-broker's shop, that he might pawn his diamonds to secure the money. This opens a fine field for investigation in-vestigation and in the interest of good government it is to be hoped the charges will be probed to the core. It is a matter of congratulation that while every big city in the West has developed and in-yestigated in-yestigated police scandals during the past six months Salt Lake has been remarkably free from this class of corruption. The local police force has been charged with incompetency but never with dishonesty. Now that we have a capable Police Chief to direct the detectives and policemen Salt Lake may reasonably expect a well organized and well-directed force. A level-headed, shrewd Chief will work wonders with the Salt Lake Foxy Quillers. There is fine material in their ranks. It simply needs development. . , |