Chicago, Satan's Sanctum

by L. O. Curon

The women now demanded that the detectives show their badges of authority. They were shown. Demand was then made that a patrol wagon should be called. This was denied, but accidentally one came along the street returning to its station. When the accused woman caught sight of it she fainted. The boarding house keeper raised such commotion that one of the detectives said, “For God’s sake, shut that woman’s mouth up or she will make us trouble!” They then ran away.

The next day the boarding house woman called on the Chief of Police and told the whole story. He referred her to the Lieutenant at the station of the precinct in which the indignity occurred. To him the entire facts were given, and written down by the desk sergeant. The men were there identified.

On the following day one of the detectives went to the women’s house, accompanied by a brother-in-law, whose wife was a personal friend of the boarding house woman. The detective had a copy of the woman’s statement as she had made it at the police station. He begged for mercy, crying, “he had nothing to say for himself.” He piteously pleaded he had a mother in the hospital, a mother-in-law who was dying, and three small children to support. Suggestions were made, and the woman’s feelings worked upon so that she was induced to leave the city.

Meanwhile the boarding house keeper made a statement at another police station, in which she suppressed the facts as to the diamonds and the money. She was asked to appear before the police trial board, and refused. Thereupon the charges against the detectives were dismissed.

It developed before the Baxter Committee that the Chief of Police had been told all the facts. The papers got hold of an account of the affair, and the Chief called upon the boarding house keeper. In the course of his conversation, this woman trying to protect the officers through her aroused sympathy, was asked by the Chief, “What about those diamond earrings and sealskin sack?” The woman answered, “If you don’t know, I don’t.” He then asked, “Didn’t you tell that to me?” She answered, “If you can’t remember, I can’t.” She was then questioned by the Chief whether these officers were begging her to quash the matter, whether they were offering her money for that purpose, etc.

The Chief stated the reporters were hounding him to death, when the woman asked him “why he did not show her statement?” He replied it was locked up, “if they want any information they can get it from you.”

One of the men is still a member of the detective force. The other resigned and went into the saloon business, and appeared before the committee entering a partial denial of the woman’s story. The knowledge of the Chief of all the facts was fully shown before the committee. Notwithstanding this, he does not appear to have taken any steps to keep the matter before the trial board, or to institute any other proceedings to bring these detectives to punishment.

This is not at all surprising in the face of the fact that this officer is, as is shown in court proceedings, a veritable czar in his own estimation.

The following account is taken from the Chicago Democrat of May 27th ult. A similar report of the case is contained in the other dailies.

“Judge Brentano held, this morning, that Chief of Police K. did not have the power to have a man restrained of his liberty at his (K.’s) request. The decision was brought about on the hearing of a petition for a writ of habeas corpus filed by Attorney F. A. D. for the release of Edward H., who was arrested last Monday morning at Twenty-ninth and State streets on account of the shooting of Officer James S., which resulted from an attempt of a number of officers to enforce the disarmament-of-colored-people policy of the Chief of Police.