Still another divine declared at the same meeting, “But when in one night five homes in the block in which I live—and I moved there because it was the safest place in the city—are robbed, and, within the same week, three men are held up within two blocks, the conditions are serious.” Serious, indeed, they are, despite assurances of protection by the police force emanating from the highest official authority!
A few plain truths as to the utter prostitution of the civil authorities to the power of the criminal classes in Chicago, and as to the filthiness of those classes, are attempted to be given in the following pages. They may assist in arousing the people to a keen sense of their duty as citizens to demand from a new administration a rigid enforcement of the law by public officers, and that these officers shall become the servants of the people rather than remain the slaves, as well as the persecutors for private gain, of the riffraff of the community.
CHAPTER II.
The Police Force—Its Strength—Composition—Power Dominating—Duties of Defined—Population of Chicago—Nativity of—Police Enemies of Civil Service—Demoralizing Effect—Tariff on Crime—Rates on Gambling Houses, Etc.—Penalty for Refusal to Pay—Instances of Police Rates—Method of Collection—Habits of Policemen—Some Are “Hold Up” Men—Blackmail Levied—Law Department—Arrests in 1897—Police Fix Boundaries for Crime—Chief’s Testimony—Analysis of Arrests in 1897 in Second Police Precinct—In City at Large—Division of Fees and Fines With Magistrates—Police Courts, Corrupt—Cost of Police Force.
The Police Force of the City of Chicago consisted on December 31st, 1897, of 3,594 men, of which number 2,298 were first-class patrolmen, the remainder being officers, sergeants, clerks, drivers and patrol-wagon men. The number of square miles of territory embraced within the city limits was, and is, 186.4.
The force is composed largely of men of one nationality or of their descendants. A large majority affiliates with the same church. Prior to the passage of the civil service law in 1895, each bi-ennial administration made the force its own valuable mine in which veins of rich rewards for its friends and political workers were found. To this force the aldermanic supporters of the administration attached their henchmen and ward heelers, and these, in turn, as public officers, looked after the political welfare of their backers and of the administration these backers supported. Thus, the political complexion of the force was liable to change every two years. Notwithstanding the presence of a civil service law on the statute books under which the force is now supposed to have been re-organized and re-appointed, its political complexion remains the same. The organization is dominated by the political party which alone uses the distinctive title of “Tammany.” The civil service law has been attacked, in behalf of this public force, by officials who were sworn to sustain it, until through their repeated assaults upon it, its administration is looked upon as farcical, and its administrators as its most cunning and relentless foes.
The duties of the police force are clearly defined in the city charter. Generally, that instrument provides, “The police shall devote their time and attention to the discharge of the duties of their stations according to the laws and ordinances of the city and the rules and regulations of the department of police, and it shall be their duty, to the best of their ability, to preserve order, peace and quiet, and enforce the laws and ordinances throughout the city.”
According to the school census of 1898, the population of Chicago was then 1,851,588. This population is one of the most polyglot of any city in the world. Each modern language is spoken by some one class of its people.