Crime and police corruption became headline news in Chicago last January when eight officers of the law were arrested for burglary. As operating director of the Chicago Crime Commission since 1942, VIRGIL W. PETERSONhas been in a unique position to observe and study the scandals that have beset the police department of Illinois’s largest city through the years.
In the your 1951, seven out of every ten crimes were unsolved, says VIRGIL W. PETERSON, Operating Director of the Chicago Crime Commission, and for those criminals who were let off or who got away, crime does pay — and pays far too well. Mr. Peterson supports his argument with names and cases in the Chicago metropolitan area — the turbulent area which he has had under professional scrutiny since 1942. But the evidence presented to Judge Proskauer of the New York State Crime Commission of the crime and extortion in the docks makes it appallingly clear that Chicago is not in a class by itself. Mr. Peterson’s most recent book, Barbarians in Our Midst, was published last summer under the Atlantic-Little, Brown imprint.
Crime waves have followed every great war. Are our American courts any better prepared to protect the community against the gangsters who flourished in 1919 and may flourish again?