The Mayor Who Wanted to be an Autocrat
Mayor Ronald’s fascination with authoritarian rule leads to a public firing during a police board meeting.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
An entertaining passage-at-arms took place between Mayor Ronald and Policeman E. H. Harding at the meeting of the police commissioners last evening, which resulted in Officer Harding being dropped from the force. Previous to the meeting, Mayor Ronald had been entertaining the commissioners with the autocratic methods of policemen in Mexico, noting that in that country the mayor was judge, jury, and executioner. At the meeting, the mayor stated he wanted Harding dropped from the force for personal reasons. Harding made a plea for himself, arguing he was a good officer and was being fired because he had caught the brother of the mayor and other officers in the 'awkward squad' for misconduct. A heated exchange followed, with the mayor eventually admitting he wished he could 'clean out' the whole police force. The motion to fire Harding was adopted.
“I told you I regretted that I had not cleaned them out all the way down the line—the whole force.”
This 1891 struggle over mayoral control of the police force echoes contemporary debates about city hall's influence over the Seattle Police Department. The mayor's explicit desire to act as an 'autocrat' mirrors recurring tensions between political leadership and municipal labor.
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