Evening Republican, Volume 20, Number 193, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 12 August 1916 — Clancy Prevented Theft of Queensboro Bridge [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

Clancy Prevented Theft of Queensboro Bridge

NEW YORK. —Persons who have been accustomed to waking up every morning and finding the Queensboro bridge in its usual place will be pleased to hear that an attempt to steal that $20,000,000 structure piece by piece has been frustrated. Just as in other days, the

man who had reached the summit of high finance was described as one who would sell the Brooklyn bridge if he could find a purchaser, so henceforth the superlative criminal will doubtless be described as he who would steal the Queensboro bridge —if Clancy were not on the job. Clancy is a policeman. He is an eagle-eyed policeman. “Curiosity” is his middle name. He Is attached to Hunter’s Point police station. His

"beat” the other day was the Queensboro bridge. About four o’clock in the afternoon Clancy saw four men in an automobile drive on the bridge and stop near a big copper feed cable for electricity belonging to the city. The men, all in overalls, got out their tools and began to work with the cable. Clancy stood at a distance and looked. He also did a little thinking. "Faith,” said he to himself, “a fine time o’ day for men to be a-working.” The more Clancy thought about this situation the more he was convinced that it was an extraordinary thing for persons seemingly employed by the city to be doing any work on a Saturday afternoon. “Something must have happened,” he muttered, as he cogitated this strange situation and meandered slowly in the direction of the laborers. But the laborers saw him coming. Three of them jumped into the automobile and escaped, while the fourth attempted unsuccessfully to outrun the wily policeman. When Clancy went back to the place where the men had been working he found that the big cable had been cut in two places. It’s worth $1.25 a foot. “Faith,” said Clancy' “that is the very worst thing I ever heard of—trying to steal the bridge from under my feet.”