Crime -- Illinois -- Chicago; Police corruption -- Illinois -- Chicago; Political corruption -- Illinois -- Chicago
The questioner called the Chief's attention to a newspaper and some
advertisements it carried. In spite of the questioner's declaration that
the paper was a Tammany organ, and that all Tammany men were supposed to
buy it and read it, the Chief declared that he never had done so. The
questioner made the Chief a present of a copy of the paper, and asked him
to read over the massage advertisements. The Chief thanked him and said,
"I will attend to these places because I do not believe in such disguises
for disorderly houses. Such places are usually in tenement houses and
flats. I will attend to them and drive them out."
"Will you make the same pledge about pool rooms," demanded the questioner
quickly?
"That I cannot promise," replied the Chief.
"Why can't you promise it?" asked the questioner.
"Because they conduct that sort of business in places where we can't get
at them, and you know it, but I will try and stamp it out."
Chicago and New York methods quite agree, with the advantage in favor of
New York. In the latter city, the Chief of Police "will try" to stamp pool
rooms out. In Chicago, the Chief, in his reply to similar questions, said:
"While a man may come to my office and give information that a certain
individual is violating the law somewhere and it is a trivial offense, I
do not pay so much attention to it as I do when a report reaches my office
that a man has committed a serious crime, such as murder, that a serious
crime has been committed on the outside. I should naturally abandon that
part of it, and take up the more serious offense, and I have been looking
up serious crimes, such as burglary, robbery and the hold-up people, and I
have made a desperate effort to suppress that."
It was in this connection reference was made by the committee to the fact
that one of Chicago's policemen had shortly before been arrested for
holding up a citizen and robbing him in the daylight hours, which called
forth the reply already quoted in these pages to the effect that this
particular star had been tried, that he was a member of the police force
for ten years, was a good officer, but got drunk and became a "little
indiscreet." For this he was dismissed from the force, but reinstated
because "many people" vouched for him. It seems almost incredible that
that man is today a member of Chicago's police force; yet such is the
shameful fact.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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