THE POLICE AND PETTY LOCAL GRAFT.
The police are not satisfied with the percentage which is granted them for the protection which they grant to the vice holes. The little fellow is still itching for the little graft. To obtain it he uses all the brutality that is usually a strong asset of an unintelligent nature.
When police in a district discover that certain gamblers are running small games and not paying protection money, they walk right through rows of open-faced gamblers, select the man in question and throw him into jail. The arrest is supposed to serve as a warning. The man usually heeds the warning and goes forth to gather protection money for the local police.
Hundreds of street walkers, new to Chicago, who have not been registered regularly by the vice lords and are not paying the regulation protection, are victimized by the policeman on his beat. They are compelled to give him a mere pittance to cover up their sins and ease his hunger for filthy money.
Even in the police department itself there is a constant bickering and quarreling over the division of graft. They are like a lot of hungry vultures circling about their loathsome carcass of dead meat. One police official wars against the entrance of another police official within his territory.
Recently a negro opened a crap game in Cottage Grove avenue. He paid high protection money to the police of the district which was supposed to be turned over in part to the vice lords to appease their hunger. Things ran along smoothly for some time. Then a new and brutal face that showed a star came to his place and demanded money. The negro declared he had already paid his money.
“Not the big boss,” said the detective meaningly. “My boss used to have this district but he was transferred. You must still come across to him.”
The negro refused to do so. The “big boss” police official went to the gambling fraternity and the result was that the negro was put out of business. The night his place was closed, another, run by a friend of the “big boss,” opened across the street. The police never molested it. A local lieutenant told the negro that the “big boss” police official was known in the department as a “double-crosser.”