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"Clean & Paint." By far the major undertaking of Tamm's men, however, is the work they do analyzing individual police forces in excruciating detail. One recent 498-page study of New York's finest called for a complete overhaul of the organizational machinery; then it described just how the new one should be set up, from the elimination of the slot for the department's No. 2 man right down to a cutback of the city's much admired but outmoded mounted patrolmen. In another study, Boston's force was told to raise salaries, lower the compulsory retirement age and get civilians to do clerical work. Baltimore's cops were brusquely told that they did have an organized crime problem, no matter how loudly they insisted otherwise. The 1965 Baltimore report also outlined a whole new set of street-by-street beats and noted dryly that an effort should be made at police headquarters to "clean, paint and illuminate as many of the halls and offices as is practical."
Such criticisms are rarely ignored, if only because the cities themselves pay the cost of the studies (they can run to as much as $100,000, take up to a year to prepare). The jolting indictment of the Baltimore force prompted the resignations of the commissioner and his chief inspector. In New York, a twelve-man board is considering the I.A.C.P. recommendations and is expected to implement many. In fact, the nation's police forces are so anxious to hear what is wrong with them that there are currently 22 that have paid in advance for studies. One of the 22 that is due next week is a report on the Dallas department. "Law enforcement used to be pretty insular," says Los Angeles Chief
Tom Reddin. "I call it the blue curtain." But now, with Quinn Tamm poking at the curtain, constructive self-criticism is bringing the police into closer touch with the public.