Keepers Kept

Sed quis custodiet ipsos custodes? To keep the official keepers of the law within the law they keep, the National Commission on Law Enforcement last week reached out and drew into its service as expert investigators two good lawyers-- Professor Zechariah Chafee Jr. of the Harvard Law School and Walter H. Pollak, Manhattan attorney. Their assignment: to upturn all possible facts for the Commission's subcommittee on "Lawlessness of governmental law enforcing officers." Libertarians were heartened by the appointment of Professor Chafee for they knew him of old as a thoroughgoing liberal who in the past has had no patience with law officers who abuse the law. They recalled that he was one of a dozen lawyers who in 1920 investigated and made a blistering report on illegalities committed by the Department of Justice in harassing, herding up and deporting Red suspects after the War. Also they were mindful of the work Professor Chafee did during the great Federal coal investigation of 1923 when he made his report on the infringement of civil liberties in mining areas.

Mr. Pollak, a criminal investigator of no small ability, assisted in the prosecution of Nicky Arnstein, bond thief, in 1921. Lately he has been picking over the ruins of Manhattan's City Trust Co. collapse (TIME, Feb. 25).

To these experts will fall the task of discovering why Prohibition agents are quick to shoot down liquor suspects on sight. Likewise they will delve in the susceptibility of dry officers to be bribed out of their enforcement duty.

Other items on the Chafee-Pollak agenda: Illegal suppression of free speech, lawless police interference in strikes and labor mass meetings, illegitimate espionage by Federal agents, use of the Third Degree, illegal methods employed by city police departments during "crime drives."