Ah the vice squad. The very name is arrogant and preachy, maybe that's why we don't have them anymore. The name suggests that we are in need of a law enforcement agency to keep us from our vices. In the show "Miami Vice" our vice was drugs. In "Vice Squad" the vice was women. It seems the vice squad itself had a vice, and that was arresting as many women as possible by any means.
The main character, Stephen Lucarno (Paul Lukas), was a foreign diplomat who was seeing an ambassador's wife (Juliette Compton). He was in the car with her in the process of breaking the relationship off when a vice squad officer rolled up on them. They were only talking, but apparently, being in a parked vehicle with the lights off meant something dirty was going on. The cop accused them of "necking." Even though the officer wasn't going to arrest them (because he had no proof), he was going to take down the license plate for his records.
The ambassador's wife was not about to allow her name or vehicle to be put in the records. It would've been a disastrous scandal for her if it were discovered she was on the side of the road with another man. So she ran the cop over and kept going. Stephen, by that time, was outside of the car and could only watch in horror as she mowed down the flatfoot. Stephen was now an accessory to murder unless he accepted the terms laid forth by Sergeant Mather (Rockliffe Fellowes): be a stool pigeon or go to jail. Stephen opted for the former.
A stool pigeon is like a confidential informant, but worse. A stool pigeon is more like an agent provocateur. He gets paid by the law enforcement agency to be a part of, or even instigate the crime for the agency to then make an arrest. In this case, Stephen was meeting with ladies who were too smart to meet with a cop in order to catch them taking payment for sex. It was a shameful job for Stephen, but he was desperate not to go to prison.
After two years of stool pigeoning Stephen had had enough and preferred death to what he was doing. As he went to step in front of a moving train a nice woman named Madeleine Hunt (Judith Wood) saved him. She then took him to his home, dried him out, and took care of him for a couple of days. For her efforts she was made a vagrancy (prostitution) target by Sgt. Mather. And worse still, Stephen unknowingly was the stool pigeon used to arrest her. No, she didn't accept money from him for sex. A crooked Sgt. Mather arrested her even when Stephen said she was not a prostitute.
The point of this movie was to show how vice squads were corrupt and/or abusive. They used their positions as police to entrap women and secure convictions when it came down to the woman's word against the cop's word. Even today we know which way that's going to go.
I didn't know it was acceptable to out the police department on film in 1931 so I was glad to see this. Somehow, I didn't think police suddenly became corrupt during the time of Serpico, and even if these cops weren't on the take, they were being unethical and using dirty tricks just to harass and arrest women. Bravo you bullies.
Free on YouTube.
