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Show i -; v 2x; WHO'S NEWS THIS WEEK By LEMUEL F. PARTON NEW YORK. Policemen seem to have more social security than almost anybody else, if they behave themselves, and yet about 70 of them have com-Seek com-Seek Cause mltted suicide in For Cops' New York In the r- J last few years. Despondency why a pQ. liceman's life is not a happy one" was not made clear by Gilbert and Sullivan, but members of the New York force are out to find out and do something about it. Their new and unique "trouble clinic" has been investigating and prescribing. It lists eight reasons why policemen get in distress, and the list includes just eight brands of money trouble. The news today is that the department clinic has official sanction and is opening headquarters in the old World building. build-ing. Patrolman Joseph J. Burkard of the traffic squad, an energetic, energet-ic, resourceful self-starter, In the department 20 years, pioneers pio-neers the new clinic, with the aid of a young patrolman who is a student of psychology at Columbia Co-lumbia university. They brought in Dr. Menas S. Gregory, famous psychiatrist, and Dr. Carmyn J. Lombardo, also widely known as a specialist in mental men-tal disturbance. The clinic already has handled 150 cases, some of them of extremely serious nature. The clinic was established under the Patrolmen's Benevolent association, associa-tion, of which Mr. Idea First Burkard was Tried Out elected president n w last year. It is By Legion tQ have been his original idea, suggested by similar sim-ilar work by the American Legion, of which Mr. Burkard is a former New York county commander. He has been a genial mixer in the department for many years, vice president of the glee club and long active in the affairs of the P. B. A. A friend of this writer, gathering material for a book on New York, quoted to a young police lieutenant Inspector Williams' remark that "There is more law on the end of a policeman's night-stick than there is in a decision of the Supreme court." "That's bunk, and it always was," said the lieutenant. "College "Col-lege men are joining both the police and fire departments. J. Edgar Hoover, and others, are helping to bring about a new conception of a policeman. The 'flat-foot' era Is ending." And then, said my friend, the lieutenant disclosed that he was a college graduate and engaged in an informal discussion of psychiatric training and methods in connection with police work. Would tlie cops have made their own psychological clinic in Inspector Williams' day? '"PHE late Texas Guinan gave George Raft a pair of gold-plated garters. They brought him luck and he still wears them. The sleek, . slow-eyed young lex Uuinan Italian aiumnus Gave George of New York's Gold Garters Hell's Kitchen, has taken success in his easy dancing stride he's an ex-hoofer but, like other moving picture stars, he's beginning to look a gift-horse in the mouth. He doesn't like his role in Para-mount's Para-mount's "St. Louis Blues," and the company suspends him. It is one more instance of increasing esthetic es-thetic sensitivity in movieland. In and around Hell's Kitchen, he was a professional lightweight light-weight boxer, winning 25 fights, kayocd seven times. Ho was an outfielder for the Springfield (Mass.) minor league team for two seasons. Ho did well enough, but it was a sideline of impromptu hoofing and spooling which paced him into the night clubs and tho big Broadway shows. Ha achieved a sinister, reptilian suggestion in his dancing which made him known fraternally up and down Broadway as "The Old Black-snake." Black-snake." He was just looking on at the Brown Derby in Hollywood when a prowling director seized him as a "type" and ruthlessly sloughed him into fame and fortune. His 1937 earnings report was $202,GC0, topped only by Cooper and Baxter, among tha male stars. Ho owns 45 suits of clothes and a piece of Henry Armstrong. 3 Coisollit:iti-(1 Nvs Fcuturci. WNU Service. |
