“Well, we’re going to start something up this way.”
“Not unless it’s on the order books and the captain stands for it,” answered the police officer carefully.
Result:—
The next day that lieutenant was transferred by the powers of the Vice Trust. One hour and a half after his successor took his place, the new commander was seen watching a street faro game in progress. He stood across from it and watched the gambling combine’s agent skin the “pikers” and he never moved to stop it.
Certain policemen in Chicago who are compelled to arrest certain well known criminal characters, cheat justice even after the arrests are made. They send the criminals to certain corrupt criminal lawyers. Then when the case comes to trial, the policemen lose their memories and do not remember the incriminating circumstances under which their prisoners were taken. These policemen receive a percentage, amounting to about fifty per cent, on the cases which they give to this class of shysters.
Could Chicago have a deeper blot of shame, dishonor and disgrace on her escutcheon than the present police department?
Can the condition be remedied?
Is there hope that some day criminals may be locked behind barred doors that gold cannot pick?
There is always hope while honest men and women live and struggle to build up a city to rear their children unsullied. The police department is only one part of a great slave system. The evil is back at the ballot box. It is the old and only solution here as elsewhere, in the conditions that make Chicago the “wickedest city in the world.”
That solution is the annihilation AT THE BALLOT BOX of the powers of vice, graft and sin,—the Vice Trust with its Directorate of Ten.