As a cover to the purposes of this scheme, it was proposed to place these collections to the credit of the Policemen’s Benevolent Association Fund of Chicago, which, by reason of the failure of a bank, whose officials are now under indictment for the misappropriation of public funds other than those of this association, had become badly impaired. This proposal followed the appointment of the legislative committee of investigation, by way of preparation to conceal the real purpose of the swindle. That association repudiated the plan.
The Chief of Police was asked by the committee of investigation whether he thought it was the proper thing for him, as Chief of Police of Chicago, “to give to a man to go out among business men, corporations and manufacturing establishments of the city a letter telling them that everything this man did and said you would be responsible for, if you knew he had been indicted and arrested in different cities of the United States for defrauding the people out of money on this same identical scheme?” He answered, “I don’t believe it.” Immediately he was asked, “Have you heard A. was arrested a number of times?” and in reply said, “I read in the newspapers that he was arrested and had trouble in Detroit.” Again he was asked whether A. had given him any information as to the number of times he had been arrested for getting money on false pretenses, and his answer was, “I can give you some information on that subject.”
These extracts from the sworn testimony of this official, speak in no commendatory manner of his sense of official responsibility. They point to a mind deadened to all sense of the duties of his position; they elevate him before his force as a conspicuous example for them to follow, in his disregard of the principles of official decency. In themselves they urge upon that force, by their silent influence, an emulation of such a blackmailing course, even though in its accomplishment the assistance of a swindler is required, and deliberately accepted.
A brother of the Chief, a member of the detective force, was frequently found in poolrooms, assisting in their management, and yet the Chief seems to have been unable to acquire the knowledge that poolrooms were running wide open throughout the city. He probably knew it as an individual. In response to a question as to his information on this subject he answered, that no particular complaints were made—“the newspaper boys often came around and said there was pool selling going on at different places,” and he presumed “if a desperate effort had been made to look that kind of thing up, we might have possibly been successful.” More open admissions of official incompetency it would, perhaps, be difficult to make, and no more flagrant instances could be cited of official degeneracy than are these extracts from the sworn testimony of a defiant and dangerous public servant.
In the attack on the Police Pension Fund, which was established under an act of the legislature for the benefit of an officer who shall have reached the age of fifty years, and who shall have served at reaching that age for twenty years on the force, then be retired with a yearly pension equal to one-half of the salary attached to the rank which he may have held for one year next preceding the expiration of his term of twenty years, or who shall have become physically disabled in the performance of his duty, there was manifested a degree of moral irresponsibility, if not of criminality, and a blind adherence to partisanship in defiance of the laws, seldom found in the history of any municipal corporation, and unmatched even by the developments of the Lexow committee of New York City, in matters of a kindred character, inquired into by that committee.
For the sake of creating vacancies in the ranks of the police force, to be filled by appointments to be made by the Chief in defiance of the civil service law, and while that law was running the gauntlet of every conceivable attack, both open and covert, which could be made upon it by every department of the city’s administration, and by none more virulently than by the Law Department, a plan was devised and put into execution whereby officers of all ranks, after years of police service and experience and in strong physical condition willing and anxious to remain in their positions, were retired from the force against their protest, merely to make way for the substitution of new appointees—the political friends of the Chief and his superior. Men with good records and physically able to perform their duties were thus forced upon the rolls as pensioners, to deplete a fund, sacred as a trust, not only for the benefit of the living and necessitous pensioners, but also for the widows of the men who had lost their lives in the service and the wives and children of those who had died after ten years of police duty. One effect, as to the standing of this fund, was to reduce the balance on hand January 1, 1897, from $16,837 to $4,543 December 31st, 1897. Thus over $10,000 was raided, seized and forced upon unwilling pensioners, “still able bodied and anxious to retain their positions at their full salaries.” A more contemptible exercise of political power and administrative robbery could not well be imagined.
The omissions of the police force in the enforcement of the laws, their acts of commission in evading, attacking and disregarding others, especially those relating to all night saloons, the source of most of the arrests for disorderly conduct, where wantonness is displayed, assignations are arranged, drunkenness aided and brawls engendered, are blamable, not so much upon the patrolmen, as upon their superior officers. The patrolmen do as they are told. They report infractions of the law, or not, according to their instructions. Their eyes are opened or closed, as the “wink is tipped” to them from above. The men are brave in moments of danger, fearless in rescuing the inmates of burning buildings, risking their lives in stopping runaway horses, tender in caring for lost children, or destitute persons, both men and women, and faithful in the performance of their duties as members of the ambulance corps.
During the year 1897 one hundred and eighty were injured while on duty, and of this number forty-seven were on service in the first precinct, embracing the business district, the thoroughfares of which are the most crowded and in which the heaviest fires happen, while only seven were injured in the second precinct along the “levee”—the tough precinct. Given proper management, strict discipline and law abiding example, it could be made, and ought to be made, one of the “finest” forces in the world. Thugs and thieves, within the past two years, through the manipulation of the civil service law, have been admitted to its ranks, to its everlasting disgrace and that of the usurped appointing power.
The number of arrests in 1897 for those offences from the perpetrators of which the police are charged with receiving protection money, was less than in any of the previous years since 1895, notwithstanding the increase in population, according to the school census, from 1,616,635 in 1896, to 1,851,588 in 1898, an increase in round numbers of 234,000.
The following is the number of arrests for the years 1894, 1895, 1896 and 1897 for offences as named, viz.: