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With six hundred men packed into the filthy jails of Los Angeles, some of them with faces bloody from the fists of Chief Oaks, the chief himself went off to the convention of chiefs of police at Buffalo. He went in glory, taking the policemen’s and firemen’s band of sixty pieces; the expenses of this tour being in part paid by the protected under-world, and in part loaned by Marco Hellman, banker and chief of the Black Hand. Mr. Hellman went to the station to see the party off, and on their return he went again to welcome them. Day by day we followed in our newspapers the progress of this tour; they had royal receptions in our biggest cities—and also in Lebanon, Missouri, the village which contributed our great chief of police to the world. The local newspaper mentioned that Mount Vernon was the birthplace of George Washington, and Springfield, Illinois, was the birthplace of Abraham Lincoln!

In the meantime, our Civil Liberties Union was collecting affidavits of men who had been beaten and starved and tortured in jail. We presented these affidavits to the mayor, and the mayor referred us to the city council; we presented them to the city council, and the city council referred us to the police commission; we presented them to the police commission, and the police commission referred them to the committee of the whole. As I said at one of our mass meetings: “It is called the committee of the hole because it hides and nobody can find it.” We were told that the charges would be considered when Chief Oaks came back; the chief came back, and went before the City Club, and in a burst of glory stated that if anyone had charges against any police official he would personally take them before the grand jury. Whereupon we made application to him to present to the grand jury the charge that Chief Oaks had beaten prisoners in jail—and he did not keep his promise. We had brought the charges before the Ministerial Union of the city, and the ministers appointed a committee to investigate; this committee met, and heard many witnesses, but took no action, and has never met again.^[B]