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1600 JOURNAL OF PROCEEDINGS [Apl. 1,
Another charge made against the Police Commissioners,
and in support of which the Committee allowed some testi-
mony to fee received, was that they failed most signally to
preserve the peace of the city on the day of election, Nov. 2d,
1875, and on the day preceding the same, and that the Police
Force generally was grossly derelict in its duty. It has been
insisted that the Board of Pulice Commissioners are not re-
sponsible for the misconduct of individual members of the
Force not brought to their notice.
This does not answer the charge, Tn point of fact, how-
ever, the individual misconduct of their appointees, both
Judges of Election and Policemen, is proved, in several in-
stances, to have been brought to their attention, and yet
winked at. Judge Pierce, for example, proved the outrage-
ous conduct of Judge Morris A. Thomas at the Municipal
election, and that an account of it and notice that Thomas
had bets depending on the approaching State election, were
given the Board; and yet the Board still chose to retain this
tarce of a discreet Judge at the State election. The Rev.
Mr. Round proves their utter indifference when charges of
partisanship and brutality were preferred by him against
certain of their subordinates on the Police Force, and so it
was in other cases. There can be no question that the Com-
missioners themselves became justly and properly chargeable
with the misconduct even of individuals among their appoin-
tees upon refusing to investigate complaints made against
them.
But the charge reaches much further than individual cases.
It was a duty of the Police Commissioners to have men on
their Force who were trustworthy; to have them so arranged
and overlooked as to insure safety, peace and quiet at the
polls, and a fair election; to use their vast powers of commis-
sioning extra police if occasion seemed to call for it, and
above all, to know no distinction of persons. All of these
duties they failed to perform, and the lamentable result has
thrown a deeper shade than already rested upon the fame of
Baltimore City for peace and order.
Their failure, moreover, in most of these respects, becomes
all the more inexcusable from the fact that their own
evidence shows them to have had every reason to anticipate
just such a state of affairs as ensued on the 2nd of Novem-
ber. The Municipal election, but one Week before, and the
excitement under which theoity had meantime been laboring ;
the activity of the campaign, the closeness of the contest and
Baltimore a previous history under such circumstances; the
large, noisy, riotous crouds admitted to have been in the
neighborhood of police headquarters on the evening of Mon -
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