Letter Enforcement Of The Law, With Penalties At Maximum And No Discrimination, Is His Formula

Lax Law Is Like Mouse Trap That Is Not Set for Action

Corporal Tidd is the representative of a great organization for law enforcement. He is modest about it and has no gory details to offer-so he says, but these few gems of police wisdom reveal the mature experience which could only come to a group who had learned to know their criminals:

"A lax law is like a mouse trap that isn't set. It may be a good enough mouse trap but it will never be of any use until it can catch mice.

"Letter enforcement of a given law with penalties fixed at the maximum and no discrimination in the application of it are the constituents of a thorough law enforcement."

Mathematically speaking, the degree of ease with which a law can be enforced is directly proportional to the opportunities the miscreant has for evading arrest.

In other words, if every policeman in Lancaster knew by his first name, every man in Lancaster and knew just where every one of these men might be found at a given season of the year, law enforcement would not be very difficult. Or if law violators had no better way of putting ground between themselves and the clutches of justice than a pair of snow shoes or a dog team and nothing better to hide behind than a snow bank, prohibition would not be a hard nut to crack.

This is the analysis of the Canadian Northwest Mounted Police.

In a brief interview Corporal Claude B. Tidd, for more that nineteen years one of the red-coated ambassadors of justice on the rim of the world, the Arctic Circle, tried to grasp the situation confronting local, state, and national authorities in meeting the problems of prohibition and transplant it into the region with which he is familiar.

Corporal Tidd who with his wife is visiting at the home of the latter's parents at 840 East Orange street [sic], this city, is now enjoying his first visit to the United States . He stated that at his station at Ross River , in the far north, news reaches him but seldom. The only newspapers arriving there are brought through the courtesy of friends and can never be expected more than twice a year. For this reason he is not, he said, well versed with the problems law enforcement agents meet here. When told of some of the methods of operation and manners in which the aim of the law is defeated by violators of the prohibition amendment he was openly surprised. Terms such as "hi-jacker," "runner," "bootlegger," "moonshiner," "speakeasy" and similar word which have come into every day use in our language since 1919 needed defining in some cases and in others to be distinguished from one another.

In attempting to transplant the problems of law enforcement into the far north the Corporal said: "It is as though you were taking the problems of one planet to another orb. There can not possibly be any comparison between the United States and its dense population and the desolate reaches of the country in which I live and work."

He pointed out that the people with whom he deals are widely scattered over a territory almost too large to be grasped by the imagination. "Why," he said, "All of the people in the entire territory I patrol could be placed in a little corner of Lancaster and the increase would hardly be noticed. I know practically every man between Yukon and the border of British Columbia ."

These people, he said, the majority of them Indians, are a settled, law abiding people. From the very nature of the environment in which they live they are extremely congenial. The visits from the red-coat are looked forward to and he is regarded not as a bullying policeman prying into peoples' affairs but as a welcome guest and a close friend of all of them. "Up north," Tidd said, "We do not see people often and when we do we feel mighty glad to see them and friendly toward them." Tidd represents the government of Canada in his lone post and in the vacant miles around it and the residents feel that a violation of a law is not merely breaking the prescriptions of a statute but a wrong to a close friends [sic]. For this reason he is seldom asked to make an arrest or to go on a man hunt.

Prohibition and other social laws he said would not be hard to enforce in the far north because he people in the first place respect the laws to a greater degree than they do here. They are not numerous and are not hard to find, hence their chances of evading detection are less. They do not have the aid of high powered motor cars, good roads and other facilities that make the law breaker's escape from the scene of his activities so easy.

Long ago in Canada , when the Northwest Canadian Mounted Police gained their reputation, it was in all probability a hard country. The officers met with the most adverse conditions under which to work. Extreme climatic rigors combined with the offender to make good his escape. These first red-coated minions of the law forced a hard justice hom [sic] upon the offender and have left a stamp on the entire territory. Letter enforcement of a given law, with penalties fixed at the maximum and no discrimination in the application of it are the constituents of a thorough enforcement. A lax law, Tidd pointed out, is like a mouse trap that isn't set. It may be a good enough trap all right but it will never be of any use unless it is used to catch mice.

He pointed out that the duties of the Canadian Northwest Mounted Police have come to be crime-prevention in nature rather than crime-detection.