The Negro in Chicago: A Study of Race Relations and a Race Riot

by Chicago Commission on Race Relations

2. Facilities for bathing, playgrounds, police protection, better housing and neighborhood conditions, are matters deserving the earnest attention of the proper authorities.

3. The employment of the colored people is imperative to the welfare of this community. Discriminating against the Negro, or, in other words, failure to give him an opportunity to make an honest livelihood after having induced him to migrate to this section of the country, simply adds to the already far too great number of hoodlums that infest our city.

4. This jury feels that in order to allay further race prejudice and to prevent the re-enactment of shameful crimes committed during the recent riots, efficient, prompt, and fearless justice on the part of the law-enforcing officers, as well as on the part of the judiciary, be meted out to the guilty ones, whether they be white or black.

5. ... There is a lack of co-operation and harmony among the agencies of law enforcement, which impairs their efficiency, leads to miscarriages of justice, and wastes the public funds.

6. The parole law should be amended so that a criminal once paroled and subsequently arrested may not a second time be paroled.

7. The efficiency of the police force would be further greatly increased by the co-operation of the judiciary in refusing to grant wholesale continuances without carefully scrutinizing the results thereof when members of the police force are required to act as witnesses.

8. The police department is in need of a thorough house-cleaning. Every officer, no matter what his position is, who fails in his full duty should be dismissed. Grafters and those who allow themselves to be dominated by political influences, who are paid to protect the lives and property of our citizens, should be dismissed and punished to the fullest extent of the law.

9. It is the opinion of this jury that the police force is also inadequate in numbers, and at least one thousand (1,000) officers should be added to the existing force.

10. Policemen who have arrived at the age where their usefulness is a matter of the past should be pensioned, notwithstanding their present number, and notwithstanding the fact that the pension fund is already taxed to its utmost. The needed funds for this purpose should be provided.

11. ... payment of salaries to public officers commensurate with the increased cost of living.