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Book Reviews

Police, politics and corruption in Chicago

By BOB McCLORY

Richard C. Lindberg. To Serve and Collect: Chicago Politics and Police Corruption from the Lager Beer Riot to the Summerdale Scandal. New York: Praeger, 1991. Pp. 366 with appendices, notes, bibliography and index. $39.95 (cloth).

This book could well be subtitled "The Triumph of Evil." In a clear, flowing style and with scrupulous attention to detail, Richard Lindberg chronicles the unholy alliance of politics, law enforcement and crime from the incorporation of the city of Chicago in 1831 through the resolution of the Summerdale police affair in 1961: 130 years of unremitting incompetence, deceit, self-aggrandizement, stupidity and plain venality. There is major evil here, like the "arrangements" between civic officials and syndicate bosses which allow murder and vice to flourish without fear of reprisal. There is small-time evil, like the seemingly instinctive tendency of beat patrol officers to "lounge" on the job. And there is midsize evil, like the penchant for soliciting and taking bribes in exchange for favors. Chicago's reputation as a "city on the make" will not be softened by this impressively researched volume.

Lindberg, editor of the Encyclopedia of World Crime and official historian of the Chicago White Sox, casts a piercing eye on the fragile barrier that stands between civilization and anarchy. There is a depressing sameness about the recurring cycles in which corruption involving city and police officials grows like a cancer, eventually becoming so outrageous that reform is demanded. The rascals are then run out of town, or (more likely) they take lesser jobs until the heat is off. Within a few years the situation turns sour again and the cycle repeats itself.

This is how Lindberg characterizes the city's political atmosphere in the latter years of the 19th century: "The City Council was increasingly populated by a collection of ward bosses who ran their neighborhoods from the corner saloon or pool hall. They were colorful and utterly corrupt. ... In return for a Christmas turkey, a street-cleaning job ... or an even break in court, the slum dweller was expected to do his duty on election day." Meanwhile, the author notes, Chicago policemen of that era "faced the inherent dangers of crippling disablement or early death. Officers assigned to a city beat often fell victim to roving gangs of young thugs who populated the streets after dark. The policeman was alone in the commission of his duties since the City Council was usually slow in appropriating the necessary funds to hire new recruits for particularly sensitive areas."

With a few alterations, that description would be equally appropriate in summing up the Chicago scene in much of the late 20th century. This is not to say that reformers are insincere from the start; it just seems that more often than not they eventually sink into the mire they try to clean up. Take William McGarigle, a police chief of the 1880s who created the first workable bookkeeping system at the station houses, organized the first traffic division and helped found the National Police Association. Within a few years of these achievements, he was indicted in a major graft scheme involving private contractors, then escaped jail by fleeing to Canada with the aid of the county sheriff. Indeed, in Lindberg's long and winding tale, it often becomes difficult to distinguish between the inherently evil and those who become so only for pragmatic or utilitarian reasons.

Perhaps the most enduring value of this work is in its comprehensive look at Chicago's political history from the beginning. Lindberg not only provides names, dates and events, he embellishes the account with fascinating facts, little known details and occasional touches of suspense which give the book a broad appeal. One learns, for example, that Chicago is the first place where police were called "coppers" — so named because John Haines, elected mayor in 1859, was part owner of a Michigan copper mine. In 1866, the city became the first in the nation to employ the Bertillon method of prisoner classification; by measuring certain body parts (like the length of the middle finger or the circumference of the hand), police hoped to exchange indentifying information about suspects. Also in the 1880s, Chicago was the first city to establish a citywide system of call boxes by which beat patrolmen could contact the station, using the newly invented telephone. Likewise, the city set another precedent in 1910 when a criminal was convicted and sentenced to death solely on the basis of fingerprint analysis — a recent development which quickly replaced the Bertillon method.

These innovations notwithstanding, police and political corruption continued unabated into and through the new century. Lindberg closely examines the Haymarket massacre, the race riot of 1919, the scourge of organized crime during Prohibition, the St. Valentine's Day massacre and other major and minor points in Chicago history. And he skillfully sets them in his larger context: the inability of local law enforcement to extricate itself from the tentacles of politics and crime.

Yet Lindberg makes no effort to probe the deeper roots of the problem or to suggest solutions. His approach is straightforward, equally free of cynicism or moral judgment. Indeed, he writes about the decades of frustration and failure with a kind of grim cheerfulness — a quality he may have developed while researching an earlier book, a history of the Chicago White Sox.

His account stops abruptly with the Summerdale incident in which a group of Chicago police officers augmented their income by a series of burglaries that were condoned or ignored by many of their peers. It was a case of such gross criminality that it set off the sweeping reforms of D.W. Wilson, a respected criminologist imported by Mayor Richard J. Daley to clean up the mess. In the last paragraph of his narrative, Lindberg quotes Wilson's prediction that major scandals were at last at an end. His hope, of course, proved in vain. Scarcely did Wilson retire when the Chicago Police Department was awash in charges of racial and sex discrimination, widespread abuse of citizens and abandonment of the psychological screening of police recruits which Wilson had installed. In slightly evolved form, such charges persist today, joined by a new one: the systematic torture of suspects at police stations.

Should Lindberg decide to cover the 30 years since Summerdale, the task would not be overwhelming. The theme of his new book would unfortunately be the same.

Bob McClory teaches at the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University. His book: The Man Who Beat Clout City (Chicago: Swallow Press, 1977), discusses efforts to halt racism in the Chicago Police Department.

April 1992/Illinois Issues/29


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