The Day After New Year’s Day Reception given by Taddeus Czernick, who was the police commissioner of the City of Philadelphia was considered by Staff Inspector Peter F. Wohl as a lousy idea whose time had unfortunately come.
New Year’s Eve is not a popular festive occasion so far as the police of Philadelphia are concerned. For one thing, almost no police are free to make merry themselves, because they are on duty. On New Year’s Eve all the amateur drunks are out in force, with a lamentable tendency to settle midnight differences of opinion with one form of violence or another, and/or to run their automobiles through red lights and into one another, which of course requires the professional services of the Police Department to put things in order.
New Year’s Day is worse. Philadelphia greets the New Year with the Mummer’s Parade down Broad Street. There are massive crowds of people, many of whom have ingested one form of antifreeze or another, to control. Pickpockets and other thieves, who have been anxiously awaiting the chance to ply their trades, come out of the woodwork.
