WANTED.(The Talk of the Town)(New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and city marshals)

Do not let it be said that Mayor Bloomberg is weak on job creation. Late last month, a newly appointed mayoral committee began accepting applications for the position of city marshal. The job, obscure and unsalaried, is one of the oldest in local government, dating back to 1655. It has been out of favor for several administrations, however, and no new marshals have been hired since 1989. Ed Koch, who was then the mayor, deemed it "anachronistic" and tried to do away with it. Although state law permits the city to maintain eighty-three marshals, only thirty-eight are working today. Now, in the spirit of bringing free enterprise to public endeavor, Bloomberg is looking to hire some more.

Unlike federal marshals (whose job dates back only to 1789), city marshals are not in the business of transporting prisoners or offering protection, and they have no authority to make an arrest. Technically, they are not even city employees. They operate as independent contractors, and are called upon to enforce civil-court orders. They carry badges (which they pay for themselves), but don't wear uniforms. Practically speaking, they belong somewhere in the extended family of bounty hunters and repo men. When a tenant doesn't pay his rent, it's a city marshal who comes to evict him. When a driver racks up more than two hundred and thirty dollars in parking tickets, a marshal tracks down his car for towing. A marshal must also be an expert at breaking and entering--for those occasions when property needs to be seized.

"This is not a job you and I want," Peter Piscitelli, a lawyer who represents the New York City Marshals Association, said the other day. The work, because of its adversarial nature, can be dangerous. In 2001, a marshal named Erskine Bryce was pushed over the bannister in a Bedford-Stuyvesant apartment building during an attempted eviction; the culprit, a fifty-three-year-old woman who had no intention of giving up her place, then clubbed him with a pipe, doused him with paint thinner, and set him aflame. If you do get the job, you'll almost certainly want to carry a gun.

Evictions, in general, are not for the ...