Show r I Brains or Torture I MICHAEL FIASCHETTI used to be in charge of the Italian squad of the New NewYork NewYork NewYork York City police force Now he is at the tile head of a private detective bureau and he believes that any American city cily can quickly clean up its underworld problem if it will only let its police use the stool pigeon and the third degree in unlimited quantities The stool pigeon as you know is an underworld informer informer-a a member of the criminal criminal crim crim- inal class who secretly passes out information I tion lion to the police An And the third degree of course is the business of taking a prisoner and hammering the living daylights out of him hini until he conf con con- f esses Fiaschetti defends both of these systems J He lie Ie has found he says that they work and he cant can't see any sense in handling gangster with kid gloves Several years ears ago he lie says a little boy was and murdered in New York The police for a lon long time tune got nowhere in their investigation Finally 1 got a stool pigeon who told him hini who lio the tile murderers murderers mur mur- were There were five of them Fiaschetti Fiaschetti Fias Fias- chetti arrested them but he didn't have enough evidence to take them to court They ref refused to talk Then says l I 1 went to work ork 1 I put the five men in a room and walked jn in il several minutes later Liter armed with witha a sawed off baseball bat hat When 1 I came out there was blood spattered on n the walls and I ceiling ceiling and and I 1 had five signed confessions All the men neu went vent to the electric chair The end cud is usually justified by the means and the murderers of a small boy hardly deerve dc de- dc- dc serve erve much munch sympathy no matter malter what happens hap hap- pens to them But Out just suppose that in some similar case the stool pigeon mi might ht make a mistake or lodge a false accusation to work off a personal grudge so that the lh police should hould become convinced that five utterly innocent men were vere guilty Is there anything very agreeable about abou the thought of a hurly burly cop COIl wa wading ing in wit wita with witha a a. off baseball ba bat using it until there ther was blood spattered on the tue walls and ceilings when when all aJI o of his Ills victims were innocent That's the sort of thin tiling thing that can and do docs doc's s happen when third degree methods are used Men have confessed to crimes they never dreamed of committing just to escape from Hom being bea beaten Len to death tho Besides if we are arc going to make human torture a part parL of our police methods why use baseball bats and fists The police of the tile middle ages had better beUer ideas Why not go goback hack back to them If we must torture prisoners to get confessions why not install the rack and the thumb screws and the other devices of the inquisition The Ilic third degree after all is only a substitute substitute substitute sub sub- for brains The police of London do donot donot not ha have vc to use lIse it yet it-yet yet they manage to convict convict con COIl vict a far higher percentage of criminals than our American police do They arc are able to tol gel et l heir their evidence in le legal al ways Are Arc the tile police police po- po lice forces in ill most American cities too loo dumb to o do likewise |