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Show T13E KANSAS CITY COPS They Are Men of Nerve and Wide Ex-perience-Chief Specrs' Career. A RATHER VARIED EXPERIENCE. The Rapid 'Growth of the Kansas City Eorce During the Past Few Years. SOMK .lays ajt" a darkv tumbled his last hodful of luoitar-covoivd bricks inlo a wagon :it Fourth ami Mai,, streets, and Kansas Citv's historic his-toric police station was no more. The bricks which hail sheltered the brave of-beers of-beers through many trying ervice requiring (Trent muwuiar enarjr?, he ia Man every day oa the strm wand-"r-in into all unsavory plaoa and frequently giving the younjrer "rlii" Kiini r. He knows the face of erery criminal who bas ever worked in Kaiuuui eity. In the days when huahwliaukani itifented the town he had .several duals with them, and though he made several "angels'" he never received wrious injnry himself. From t he early days Kansas City was t he happy hunting grounds fur pnifoswonul gamblers. Soon after' Chief Speers Uwk charge o the crook rt-heni he ordered a I gene-al warfare on all the j.'iming houses, and detailed John Branham. D. C. Snyder, Charlie Ieitsch and Jack Fisher to make the raids. On several occasions in the fall of 18T7, assisted by one or tw other patrolmen, patrol-men, they have run in two hundred gamblers gam-blers of a night. The old jail was often filled with prisoners, and those the colls could not accommodate were tuken into tho court room and guarded all night by officers. Tho old jail held some celebrated and desperate characters ia its day. (In a nuil in the cabinet back of Chief .Vpecrg' desk hangs a big powder and hall pMol, with a ball lodged in the barrel ami a load still in ono of the chambers. A neatly printed lalxil tells that the weapon wae used by .lesse James at Independence aud hurst while in his hands. This cabinet contains many interesting relics. There is a splintered billiard rue with a dark red stain and a lock of light brown hair on its end. It tells of a barroom tight on "Battle Row" four years ago, when Billy Panders brained his eompatiion. Above it is a bright new but blood stained ax with which a demented salesman broke the skull of a friend in Hichcws & Con-over's Con-over's hardware storu. Over this and to the right is a brown handled 4-t-ea) liter Colt's, used by Orth Stein, a newspaper man, to kill Manager Fredericks, of the Walnut Street theatre, because of a woman wo-man quarrel. Stein is now at large, A black British bulldog is shown which was used by Jack McBride, alias Jack IVmpsey, to shoot Offlir Steve Register. On the evening of June.14, 1887, the men on watch at the elevated station heard shots in the eastern pe.rtof tha eity, and almost al-most immediately a call for the patrol wagon was rung in. The wagon went, east to Ciherry street, and on the way passed Officers George Silvers and Steve Register who had been following two auspicious looking men. 1 Tho waKon went out to Cherry street, but finding all quiet returned. ' When the two officers reached Third and Locust streets they met a citizen who told them that tho parties they wanted had just entered a small house on the bluff forty feet above their heads. The street had lieen graded down so that tho shanty could only be reached in front by a rickety pair of stair. It was a small frame building, frequented by women of ill repute, Oltioer Register went to the rsar to climb up the sloping bank, while Silvers mounted the steps. Register was discovered fey the desperadoes, who opened fire ami shot him in the shoulder. ' , ' .. When Silvers reached the top of the stairs he was confronted by one of the CHIKF THOMAS M. 8PEERS. sceues and had kept from liberty many a desperate man were carried acroBs the Missouri Mis-souri river to Harlem and there used in the erection of little two room homes for work-jugmen. work-jugmen. On the spot where the old building build-ing stood for years before the war is to bo erected a massive blue stone city hall and police station. The history of man's efforts to protect himself and to bring law and order to a new city in a new country, on the spot where two political factions were wont to meet and settle their differences of opinion with the knife and pistol, cannot be anything any-thing hut lurid in detail, and the events that transpired during the border warfare and soon after the civil strife had ended have given Kausas City a sensational name and mado it the goal for all small readers of yellow backs in the more eastern states. In the early forties a bridle path led from the river south for threo miles, to the little town of Westport, through whose streets passed all the northerners who went to the prairies, and there likewise gathered the men who sought tho territory to get their escaped blacks and take them back to the Missouri cotton fields. men, who com- ..- -sits. meuced shoot- ing. The officer JlSi made a jump , , arZ from the top of the stairs, mis- Jw fjf -calculated the JC distance, and fell fifes?t down tho em- siMsr',rv hankment to t he j x Sar , ' street. The men V, V were captured $' thniw DRIVER GODMtr AND PATKOI, WAGON. sort, on the state line, in Toad-a Ixiup, a notorious district near the southwest, part of the city limits. Toad-a-Ioup ia a narrow nar-row bit of land, with a high bluff in front and a deep creek in the rear. It waa long tho hangout of bad men and worse women, wo-men, but has now been somewhat purified. The patrol wagon system haa been iu u so some years. There are two hoodlum wagons and an ambulance. Tha most skillful driver in tho west is Scott Godley, a young Hercules, who handles the reins for No. 1. Ho haa been in the service two years. One of the most notable rides in police history was made two years ago by Oflicer Baldwin, who chased John Brooks into Kansas and captured him thirty miles southwest of the city, near Olathe. Baldwin Bald-win never once left the saddle in tha long rido which took him five hours. Brooks has been a horse thief since childhood, and ia now 8t years old. When brought before be-fore Judge White for sentence be slowly arose, his whole body trembling with age, and said: "Make it a long one, judge, for my next arraignment will be liefore God Almighty, and I guess tho only charge he'll make agin old man Brooks is hosa stealing." Wiu.it J. Abbot. DETECTIVE O'HABE AKD OFFICER SILVERS. Nobody took a thought for the handful of shanties on the levee near tho mouth of tho Kaw, where an occasional boat loaded a few bales of cotton or leaf tobacco. Nobody No-body dreamed of a city with 200,000 people. But the shanties began to grow in numbers. Indian traders and hunters settled near tho two rivers, and bad men from the Mississippi Missis-sippi and from the central part of the state drifted there, so that when the war broke out a town of several thousand inhabitants inhab-itants stood on the site of the present city, and a marshal and two deputies assisted Judge Lynch in controlling tho unruly element, which at times broke out in open revolt. During the war the little town was made a Federal post and placed under military discipline. .After peace was deolared tho refuse of both armies formed into gangs which tet rori7-ed the farmers and made the life of the citizens far from monotonous, for pistol pis-tol practice at passing pedestrians was the only recreation of the "bad men" whoocca-sionally whoocca-sionally rode into town. The better minded people felt the need of a more perfect police force, so in 1868 Col. Dick Nelson organized a volunteer service. A big bell was mounted on a hook on the northeast corner of the jail, and on the sign of an outbreak an alarm was rung, and tho members of the force left their places of business and, each slipping a Colts' 41 into his pocket, went to the old building. "While Col. Nelson's Nel-son's boys were doing their best work a man appeared in Kansas City who was destined des-tined to become the terror of all thugs for years to come. Thomas M. Speers is under the medium height but thick set and muscular. When he arrived at Kansas City he was not much over thirty and had the reputation of carrying car-rying two men's nerve in one small body. He was almost immediately chosen town marshal and, re-elected for a second term. OU) MAN BROOKS AND BU.L LEttiS. In the spring of 1874, after a hard struggle strug-gle at the polls, the better class secured the adoption of a charter and the town be-I be-I came organized as a city of the second class. April 15 the governor appointed a board of police commissioners, who at once organised a metropolitan police force. Mr. Speers was named as chief and at each annual an-nual meeting since then has been re-elected. The fuvt force numbered twenty-foar men and two detectives, Con O'Hare and James McKnight. . Con O'Hare is one of the most interesting interest-ing men in tha city. During the war he seared as a private the full four years in the Uaion army in Missouri. After receiving re-ceiving his houorable discharge he was appointed ap-pointed a pel" deputy under Marshal Jeremiah Dowd. and they, with one other man, comprised theforce. ForHrenty-five years O'Hare haa been in active service. He is of Irish parentage, and a man of j peculiar insight into character. Lie the chief be is of small stature, but during , hia career he has made over 10,000 arrests. Con was never known to wear an overcoat, but ( always carries a heavy one t brown ov hi ; shoulders. He is called the father ot the j prnt for., but, tingh uow unahir to no j |