Photo of the Day

No. 361

Left: Police officer on foot patrol settles the boy’s dispute, New York City’s West Side, 1910. Lewis Hine photo. Right: Still from the film "In the Clutches of the Gang " (1914), one of the Keystone Kops series of slapstick comedies produced by Mack Sennet from 1912 to 1917.

When this police officer settled the little boys’ dispute in 1910, foot patrols had been standard police practice for more than a century.

And most people thought it worked quite well.

The police officers became fixtures in the neighborhood.

They got to know people and their problems, and the people got to know them, too.

This familiarity helped the police …