Crime conditions in Chicago are even worse than is indicated by these figures, which are based on incomplete police records. In 1919 the police records showed 1,731 burglaries or persons arrested for burglaries, while Bulletin No. 9 of the Chicago Crime Commission reported 5,509 burglaries during the first eleven months. During the same period the police records showed 1,975 robberies or persons arrested for robbery, while the Crime Commission bulletin listed 2,470 robberies. This bulletin says:
An investigation in August, 1919, to determine whether all crimes were being reported from the Eleventh Precinct and the Englewood precinct showed that in forty instances burglaries and robberies committed during the ninety days preceding had not been reported. A detailed statement of these offenses was prepared giving the victim's names, addresses, date and amount of loss, and presented to the general superintendent of police. The list was checked by the departmental inspector and found correct.
Another investigation by the Crime Commission showed that in one month a certain police captain reported only thirty-seven of the 141 criminal complaints made to him for his district.
In his book, Crime in America and the Police, Raymond B. Fosdick wrote (1920):
London in 1916, with a population of seven and a quarter million, had nine premeditated murders. Chicago, one-third the size of London, in the same period had 105, nearly twelve times London's total. In 1916 Chicago with its 2,500,000 people had twenty more murders than the whole of England and Wales with their 38,000,000. The Chicago murders during the year totalled one more than London during the five-year period, 1910-14 inclusive.
In 1917 Chicago had ten more murders than the whole of England and Wales, and four more murders than all England, Wales, and Scotland. In 1918 Chicago had fourteen more murders than England and Wales, and in 1919 the number of murders in Chicago was almost exactly six times the number committed in London.
Chicago in 1916 had 532 more burglaries than London; in 1917, 3,459 more; in 1918, 866 more, and in 1919, 2,146 more. In 1918, for example, Chicago had twenty-two robberies for every robbery in London, and fourteen robberies for every robbery in England and Wales.
Chicago's arrests for 1917 exceeded London's by 61,874.
Thefts of automobiles reported in 1919: New York, 5,527, Chicago 4,316.... London, 290, Liverpool, 10. Comparative statistics as to the number of automobiles in English and American cities are impossible to obtain.
It is apparent that this reign of violence and lawlessness must have a potent effect upon the crime rate of Negroes in Chicago.