No question that cop detectives are detectives. But we need
to separate
the flavors, IMHO, so that we have police detectives,
licensed P.I.'s
(Wolfe and Archie), unlicensed P.I.'s (Matt Scudder),
non-police
detectives before anyone licensed P.I.'s (Holmes), unlicensed
P.I.'s in
an era of licensing (Poirot), curious writers like Jessica
whatshername
who would not list "detective" as occupation on either their
tax return
or their passport, relatives of policemen (Miss Marple), etc
etc ad
infinitum.
If I told you that I was going to give you a detective story
for your
birthday, and you unwrapped a Dick Tracy comic, what would
your reaction
be?
-- Dick Tartow
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Message-ID: <3586B2D8.798A2EA4@sprintmail.com> Date: Tue, 16 Jun 1998 14:00:56 -0400 From: "Lawrence R. (Dick) Tartow, M.D." <goldensam@sprintmail.com> Reply-To: goldensam@sprintmail.com X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.04 [en] (Win95; I) MIME-Version: 1.0 To: jetan@ionet.net Subject: Detectives Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
<< Huh? a plainclothes cop isn't a detective? This is, I believe, the earliest class of investigators to use the word detective.>>
Right you are. But, see my post to the list today. :-)
Investigators usually were recruited from former thief-takers or constables who had continued their stipendiary investigative activities after the creation of police departments. Although they brought investigative skills to the police, they also brought the bane of stipendiary police--corruption. In 1877, when three of the four chief inspectors of the CID were found guilty of corruption, the CID was eliminated although later reorganized. Chicago disbanded its unit in 1864 and Boston its unit in 1870, and New York City suffered major scandals in 1877--all as a consequence of corruption. All of these cities soon reconstructed their investigative units, but improvement of the status of detectives had to wait until well into the 20th century. ["Police: The history of policing: DETECTIVE POLICING IN ENGLAND AND THE
UNITED STATES" Britannica Online.
<http://www.eb.com:180/cgi-bin/g?DocF=macro/5005/13/7.html> [Accessed 16 June 1998].
-- Dick Tartow
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