Bosses and Workers > The Modern Criminal
“New York is again luxuriating in a ‘crime wave,’” smirked the New Republic in 1922. “To judge from the papers, it is more than a ‘wave’ – it is a deluge of crime.”
Or, maybe it wasn’t.
The Police Commissioner’s statistics implied that the City’s wrongdoers were about as busy – but no busier – than ever. Newspapers and civic groups thought otherwise. Distrustful of the City’s capacity to police itself, members toyed with the idea of going into the law-enforcement business. “It has been our desire to create some sort of co-operative machinery which can be brought to the support of the police administration,” explained the head of the executive committee. After briefly entertaining the idea of an investigation into police practices, however, the Chamber settled on the more-practical plan to fingerprint every resident in the United States.
In the 1950s, crime again became a Chamber interest. In 1958 and again in 1960, the members supported Congressional legislation to remove the restrictions law enforcement faced when attempting to place wiretaps on telephone calls conducted by suspected criminals.
“The modern criminal has at his disposal means of communication and transportation that were unknown in an earlier period,” the Chamber complained. “The telephone, for example, provides him with an avenue of communication that is swift and comprehensive, and, under present Federal law, telephone communications are, in effect, privileged.”
“In the opinion of the Committee on Law Reform,” read the resolution passed in 1960, “the continuing increase in the incidence of criminal activity makes it imperative that the present legal impediment to the use of court-authorized wiretapping for the detection and prosecution of crime be removed, with no further delay.”