The Chicago Police Scandals
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.
VIRGIL W. PETERSON
A PLANE carrying American tourists landed in England in October, 1959. Alighting from the plane were Mr. and Mrs. Tony Accardo. Worldrenowned as the leader of Chicago’s infamous Capone gang, Accardo immediately attracted the attention of Scotland Yard. But of even greater interest to the alert London police were the Accardos’ traveling companions, Mr. and Mrs. Anthony DeGrazio. Through prompt communication with American officials, Scotland Yard learned that Anthony DeGrazio was then a lieutenant of the Chicago Police Department.
The Accardo-DeGrazio party spent a month touring England, France, Switzerland, Portugal, Italy, and Spain. The spectacle of a high-ranking officer of the Chicago Police Department touring the Continent as a bosom pal of one of America’s most notorious gang leaders received wide publicity. Newsmen of several foreign countries pursued the party, seeking interviews and photographs. The Chicago Police Department became the subject of ridicule and the butt of jokes throughout the world. Chicagoans were incensed, and the entire city was disgraced.
Upon returning to Chicago, DeGrazio was suspended, charges were filed against him, and the Civil Service Commission trial was held early in January, 1960. The public learned that the gangster and the police lieutenant had been lifelong friends. When DeGrazio was married the first time, in 1927, Accardo was an usher at the wedding. Already Accardo had won his spurs as a hoodlum, and DeGrazio’s record in the police department included a firing by the Civil Service Commission on August 22, 1924, on
charges of neglect of duty and accepting a bribe, and the usual reinstatement as a patrolman the following January. On May 6, 1933, DeGrazio was promoted to sergeant, and the following year, when Accardo was married, DeGrazio accompanied the gang leader and his wife on their honeymoon. By that time Accardo had been arrested with Al Capone’s brother Ralph and “Machine Gun” Jack McGurn, had jumped bond on a gun-carrying charge, had been named publicly as a suspect in the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre, and was carried on the public enemy list. In recent years the illegal activities of Accardo have been fully explored by senatorial committees and highly publicized by the daily press, in magazine articles, and over the radio and television. The name of Tony Accardo was associated by everyone with the Capone gang, and the Capone gang had become a symbol for ruthlessness, murder, and evil.
The bizarre DeGrazio-Aecardo incident had followed closely on the heels of two other major scandals in Chicago. In April, 1959, it was brought to light that bond forfeitures in the municipal court totaling about $250,000 had been improperly vacated with certain bondsmen receiving most of the favors. The public furor over the bail bond scandal had barely subsided when there was uncovered a cesspool of corruption in the traffic courts. Hundreds of thousands of dollars in traffic fines had disappeared through the process of recording cases as dismissed, although the motorists had paid their fines. And as the year 1959 came to a close, the Chicago Tribune was featuring a series of articles which revealed that the city payrolls carried the names of numerous well-known underworld figures whose services to the city were hardly commensurate with their listed salaries.
The public was in an angry mood as it awaited the civil service decision in the case involving Lieutenant Anthony DeGrazio. But about two weeks before the trial board’s order of discharge was handed down on January 27, 1960, Chicago was stunned by what Mayor Richard J. Daley described as “the most shocking and disgraceful incident in the history of the Chicago Police Department. ”
ON JANUARY 15, 1960, Chicago newspaper headlines reported the arrest of eight policemen and the recovery of thousands of dollars worth of burglary loot in the homes of seven of them. Responsible for the arrests was an insignificant twenty-three-year-old common thief, Richard Morrison, whose accomplices in scores of burglaries were members of the police department. Living on the proceeds of stealing for the greater part of a decade, Morrison had a long arrest record for burglary in Chicago and had received jail sentences for this offense in Los Angeles in 1955 and in Las Vegas in 1957.
Following his arrest in Chicago in July, 1959, he made confessions in which he implicated himself in about fifty burglaries. At that time he intimated to the head of the burglary detail that his accomplices were officers of the Chicago Police Department. He refused to identify them, however, and apparently little credence was placed in his story by the chief of detectives or the commissioner of police, to whom an oral report of his charges was made. Although facts were readily available which indicated Morrison’s charges might be true, no investigation by the police department was made of possible officer involvement in a burglary ring.
When Morrison was brought into criminal court, he wanted to make a deal — a deal which would give him a short prison term in exchange for a plea of guilty. The state refused to bargain, however, and demanded a minimum prison sentence of twenty years. At this point Morrison asked for a conference with the state’s attorney and the public defender. He had decided to unfold the complete story of the lucrative burglary ring which had operated for almost two years on Chicago’s North Side.
Following a secret investigation of Morrison’s charges, which lasted several weeks, a predawn conference of officials was held at the Union League Club in Chicago on January 15, 1960. Armed with search warrants, state’s attorney’s investigators and a few selected police officers headed lor the homes of eight policemen named by Morrison as active members of his burglary ring and placed them under arrest. Burglary loot was positively identified in the homes of seven of them and loaded into four police wagons for transportation to the Criminal Court Building as evidence. Two rooms were required to store the stolen articles, which included television sets, draperies, radios, furniture, tires, automobile batteries, antifreeze, shotguns, outboard motors, cigarette lighters, and numerous other items.
Announcements of the arrest of eight police burglars and the seizure of thousands of dollars worth of stolen merchandise stunned the entire city. And as excerpts from Morrison’s confession were made public, the citizens’ tempers reached a white heat.
Morrison related that “from day to day I met cops in a restaurant at one A.M. and we set up jobs every night. ... I kept meeting more coppers that were burglars. . . . Sometimes we drove through the district and cased places up and down alleys for the next day or night.” The police officers “were greedy. . . . They went after anything from automobiles parked in the streets to gum-ball machines. . . . I was allowed to keep any cash I stole. The policemen gave me orders for stuff they wanted or their wives wanted. At World Series time, they all ordered portable TV sets. When the weather began getting cold, they wanted antifreeze.”
As the thieving policemen left the Summerdale station each night, they were fully prepared to take advantage of any opportunity that might arise. Some of them carried burglary tools in the squad cars they were driving. Frequently, when citizens reported burglary offenses to the police department, the very officers who were responsible for the crimes conducted the official investigation. When one business place was being looted, some thoughtless person had left his automobile parked near the loading platform, which hampered the burglars in removing the stolen merchandise. The policemen used their squad car to push the offending vehicle out of the way.
During the burglary of a music store by Morrison, the offense was reported to the police department, which sent officers to the scene of the crime. Another officer, who heard the radio dispatch, drove his automobile at the breakneck speed of eighty miles an hour to the music store to warn Morrison of impending danger. On another occasion, while two officers were looting a store and sorting the articles they intended to cart away, Morrison drove a squad car around by himself, listening to the police radio for a possible alarm on the burglary then in progress. The officers also offered to lend Morrison a police uniform to wear on burglary jobs, but he declined. “Too much trouble changing clothing,” he explained.
Morrison became more and more important to the officer members of the burglary ring. They resented any extracurricular activities on his part which might interfere with the ring’s burglary operations. In December, 1958, when a bogusmoney expert gave Morrison a bundle of onehundred-dollar bills to dispose of, the policemen were angry because “I wasn’t giving them any of my time.” The police officers “didn’t want to take hundreds” because bills in such a large denomination were too risky to pass. The officers “wanted to take twenties,” but Morrison’s friend could not meet the officers’ specifications. At least one officer was not so careful, however. In the spring of 1959, U.S. Secret Service agents arrested Morrison for passing counterfeit money. It was learned that one of his close associates was a Chicago policeman who was known to have passed one of the counterfeit bills. Since the officer had been a member of the department but a short time, he was still in a probationary status, and was summarily discharged without a civil service trial.
Officers who were members of the burglary ring usually committed their crimes while on duty and dressed in police uniform. One, however, desired to avoid sharing his burglary loot with his co-officers. He asked Morrison to aid him in burglarizing a tavern. Fifteen cases of liquor and a large set of carpentry tools were stolen. The officer who committed the burglary on his day off duty had formerly owned the tavern.
The burglary ring consisting of Morrison and the eight policemen arrested January 15, 1960, stole merchandise valued at $100,000 during a two-year period. Heavy losses forced some storekeepers out of business. Others had their insurance canceled. The proprietor of one establishment wailed, “These guys broke into this store four times and cleaned it out. Guns, television sets, appliances, everything that wasn’t nailed down. Then I’ll be a dirty name if one of them didn’t come around at Christmastime and ask for a handout.”
Morrison had dealings with many officers other than the eight members of his ring arrested January 15, 1960. Two officers switched evidence in a burglary case pending against Morrison in order to ensure that the prosecution would fail. These policemen were arrested on January 19, 1960, and charged with conspiracy to obstruct justice. Three other policemen were arrested the same day on charges of extorting $1200 from Morrison. The money was demanded on threat of arrest. One of these officers had himself been tried and acquitted on charges of burglary and possession of a stolen gun in 1952. Later that same year, he was again arrested in connection with a burglary investigation. Although he was fingerprinted and photographed at the time, just three years later he was appointed a member of the Chicago police force following an alleged investigation of his background !
ONCE Morrison’s confession was made public, the police scandal spread to every part of the city. In a West Side garage used jointly by a policeman and his brother-in-law, there were recovered thirty-eight dozen nightgowns and three cartons of electric motors stolen from a truck. The policeman had joined the force in 1957, just six years after he had been brought into boys court in Chicago and placed on supervision for six months. He and fourteen other employees of a company had been charged with the theft of television tubes valued at $15,000. The company officials had furnished this information to the police department prior to the officer’s appointment, but apparently the bad employment record, resulting in arrest and court action, was not considered sufficiently significant to disqualify him.
On Chicago’s South Side, a policeman and two companions forced their way into two homes under pretext of searching for narcotics. In each instance they bound their victims and robbed them at gunpoint. After the purported arrest of one man, they placed him in their automobile, robbed him of $513 and a wrist watch, and dumped him in the street, d he police officer was arrested and suspended from the force less than a week after the burglary scandal broke. About the same time, it was disclosed that another police officer had admitted looting a South Side appliance firm. This officer, contrary to department regulations, had been working during his off hours as a watchman for this company from April to September, 1959, when he was discharged. With the aid of still another policeman, he had looted his employer’s establishment and had permitted other officers to enter the place, steal merchandise, and haul it away in squad cars. Nominal restitution had been made in the amount of $700, and the company refused to press criminal charges or notify the commissioner of police because it “didn’t want to get on the wrong side of the police force.” Subsequently, the two policemen were indicted by a grand jury on charges of stealing merchandise valued at $1800. When they entered pleas of guilty on June 21, 1960, they were merely given a slap on the wrist by the imposition of a three-year probationary sentence. Indirectly, the sentencing judge condoned the stealing on the grounds that their take-home pay as policemen was only $350 a month.
With the scandal breaking in an important state and in a national election year, it was inevitable that corruption in the Chicago Police Department would become a major political issue. Republican State’s Attorney Benjamin S. Adamowski charged that the department was rotten to the core and fixed the responsibility on the Democratic machine, which controlled the police force. Republican Governor William G. Stratton called for an administrative reorganization of the Chicago Police Department and pointed out the urgent need for “very drastic measures.” Former Democratic National Chairman Stephen A. Mitchell, who was campaigning against the organization candidate for governor in the impending primary, stated, “Everywhere,
I heard people discussing the police scandal. It is front-page news across the state. What had long been widespread resentment has now turned to disgust.” Democratic Mayor Richard J. Daley pledged that the three remaining years in his term of office would be devoted to ridding the ranks of the police force of unfit officers and restoring the good name of the department and the city.
At a special press conference called by Mayor Daley on January 23, 1960, it was announced that Timothy J. O’Connor, who had been commissioner of police since 1950, had resigned, and he had appointed a committee of five civilians, to be headed by a noted police authority, Orlando W. Wilson, Dean of the School of Criminology at the University of California, to select the bestqualilied man in the nation to head Chicago’s police force and to make recommendations for the reorganization of the department. Deputy Commissioner Kyran Phelan was named acting commissioner of police until the committee could make its selection.
Mayor Daley is a man of high personal integrity and has a long record as a good public servant. His sincerity in seeking an outstanding administrator to head the police force and to reorganize the department on a sound basis could not be questioned. As head of the Cook County Democratic Party, he had to take drastic action. The police scandals were shaking the very foundations of one of the most effective vote-getting machines in the nation.
THE evils brought to light in 1959 and early 1960 had not suddenly developed, nor were they peculiar to Chicago. Time and again, the New York City Police Department has been rocked by scandal. In the early 1930s the Kansas City Police Department was largely under the domination of boss Tom Pendergast’s lieutenant, John Lazia, a notorious gangster and gambling boss. By 1934, one out of every ten men on the force had a police or criminal record, and the police department was working hand in glove with the crooks who were infesting the city. Although the Kansas City force eventually became an efficient law enforcement agency, as late as 1949 and early 1950, a gang leader, Charles Binaggio, was making a strong bid to gain control of the department in order to “open up the town.” About the same time, the Los Angeles department, hit hard by scandals, appointed for an interim period a retired marine general, William A. Worton, to head the force, re-establish discipline, and restore public confidence. Worton was succeeded by Chief William H. Parker, a career policeman, and the Los Angeles department became one of the country’s outstanding forces.
Several years ago, Cleveland brought in a former federal agent, Eliot Ness, to clean up its police force. He was succeeded by Alvin J. Sutton, a former FBI agent. Between the efforts of Ness and Sutton, nine high-ranking police officers were sent to jail and thirty-three others were forced to resign. About two decades ago, in Detroit, so many police officers were suspended during a gambling investigation that some of the stations were unable to man all their beats. Until recent years, Philadelphia’s police force was regarded as corrupt and inefficient. A wave of reform brought in a new regime. Thomas J. Gibbons, chosen from the ranks, was placed in charge of the police department and given a free hand. Of five thousand men on the Philadelphia force in 1952, Gibbons replaced three thousand of them within a period of six years.
Almost every major American city has been plagued by police scandals, which have followed a customary pattern. In the wake of a scandal, there has usually been a sweeping reorganization of the department under new leadership, resulting in improvement of either a permanent or a temporary nature. Throughout Chicago’s history, the city has been disgraced by numerous police scandals. But, until the present time, political leaders have always successfully resisted any genuine reorganization of the police department. The typical official attitude was perhaps best expressed only a few years ago during a police investigation by Mathias “Paddy” Bauler, Chicago’s colorful 245-pound saloonkeeper alderman of the Forty-third Ward: “Chicago ain’t ready for reform!” As a result, the evils which produced the police burglary ring scandal were never eliminated; they were merely consolidated into the woof and warp of a faulty police structure.
IN 1931, almost three decades ago, a Citizens’ Committee under the direction of the late Bruce Smith, one of the leading police authorities in America, completed a thorough study of the Chicago Police Department. One of the chief ills pointed out by this committee was the longstanding tradition of political interference in the administration of the department. Although the police headquarters building is located at 1121 South State Street, almost two miles from city hall, on North LaSalle Street, the office of the commissioner of police had always been maintained next door to the mayor’s — an outward symbol of the close relationship that has long existed between Chicago’s law enforcement and politics.
For almost two decades, virtually no constructive steps were taken to eliminate the abuses pointed out in the Citizens’ Committee report of 1931. The tradition that the police force was to be run by politicians for political purposes was a part of what became known in the department itself as “the system.” However, when Martin H. Kennelly became mayor in 1947, the political climate in which the police department was required to operate changed radically. No longer could ward committeemen and aldermen dictate law enforcement policies or control the assignment or transfer of police personnel. Mayor Kennelly appointed impeccable Stephen E. Hurley, a former president of the Chicago Bar Association, as chairman of the Civil Service Commission. Examinations were honestly conducted. Promotions were made on the basis of ability, not political influence. Under Mayor Kennelly, law enforcement in Chicago improved appreciably, but his policies were met with bitter opposition from the ward bosses, and they dumped him as the organization candidate in the 1955 election. The significance of this action was not lost on the police department.
When Richard J. Daley became mayor in 1955, he continued most of the law enforcement policies of his predecessor. He retained as commissioner of police Timothy J. O’Connor, originally appointed to that post by Mayor Kennelly in 1950. O’Connor, a man of unimpeachable integrity, was one of Chicago’s better police commissioners, and law enforcement unquestionably improved during his administration. Yet, ironically, Chicago’s worst police scandal occurred during his regime.
Throughout most of Chicago’s history, the police commissioner was selected on the basis of politics. Many commissioners were notoriously poor administrators, thoroughly indoctrinated in the bad traditions of the department, but with little genuine understanding of sound police organization. As far back as 1947, the Chicago Crime Commission in its annual report warned that “Chicago can never . . . rid itself of its reputation for lawlessness unless there is a genuine reorganization of its police department.” This was never done, and by 1960 the top command had actually lost control over the department. It had become virtually impossible to fix responsibility, an essential ingredient in any effective police administration.
The police burglary ring could never have involved so many officers or reached such huge proportions if the supervising personnel, particularly the sergeants, had been functioning with any degree of effectiveness. In some Chicago police districts there was only one sergeant on duty on a shift. At times when a second sergeant was available, he was provided with no car or other equipment. Thus, he was immobilized insofar as performing supervisory duties was concerned. There were instances of as many as eighty or more men working under the supervision of a single sergeant, which, as a practical matter, was tantamount to no supervision at all.
The Chicago police scandals were inevitable products of administrative laxity, a condition that had prevailed for many years. In the annual report of the Chicago Crime Commission in February, 1949, it was pointed out that the “glaring weakness in the administration of the police department is the absence of proper supervision and inspection of personnel.” Burglaries were then being committed with regularity in some business districts when officers were absent from their assigned posts of duty for many hours at a time. Collusion was uncovered between police switchboard operators and numerous officers. In return for monthly payments to the switchboard operators, the officers were able to leave their posts of duty with the assurance that their required hourly police-box pulls would falsely be recorded on the official reports as having been made. This practice, said the commission, “could not arise in an administrative system which properly fixes responsibility on superior officers to see that men assigned to a post of duty actually performed their duty.”
THESE abuses continued unabated, and others developed. In some districts, following the suspension of an officer without pay for misconduct or inattention to duty, his fellow officers contributed to a pool from which the miscreant’s salary was paid while he was suspended. As a result, instead of punishment, the offending officer received, in effect, a vacation with pay.
In almost every phase of administration, the top command had lost adequate control over the department. The record system was outmoded, report writing was often deplorable, and frequently it was next to impossible to locate an investigative file on a particular crime. Crime statistics, which should serve as an important aid in police administration, were unreliable. In some districts there was downright falsification of figures. Many offenses were not recorded on the official records at all, while others were simply downgraded — burglaries became property losses, and robberies were carried as simple assaults. The communications system was antiquated and totally inadequate. Some detectives assigned to a district were without radio equipment. The detective bureau, both as to personnel and organization, was unequipped to perform its primary function adequately. Many detectives improperly spent much time on routine patrol duty, while patrolmen on the beat who were present at the scene of a crime were expected to take no action and did not even submit a report. Adding to confusion and inefficiency was the decentralization of the detective bureau. There were occasions when as many as three separate groups of officers were working on the same major offense. Under such circumstances, investigation leads were often not followed through to a conclusion, and supervision was ineffective.
For administrative purposes, the city of Chicago is divided into thirty-nine police districts, each with a station and headed by a captain with the usual complement of lieutenants and sergeants as supervising personnel. This territorial division was suitable to an earlier day, when the department was not mechanized and police radios had not yet become a part of the communications system. Under present conditions, it would perhaps be more realistic to reduce the number of police districts to ten or fifteen. Numerous captains and lieutenants would thus be available for day and night supervisory work, which is sorely needed.
The organizational and administrative structure of the department doomed it to failure. But it was in the area of personnel management that Chicago’s police force fell short to the greatest extent, a situation that prevails in many, if not most, police departments in America. Shackled with civil service procedures that are geared to mediocrity, not excellence, and hamstrung with judicial interference designed to promote votes, not efficiency, sound personnel management is impossible.
Faulty recruitment procedures placed men on the force who were totally unsuited for law enforcement. For many years the Chicago Crime Commission had urged that before appointment to the police department a candidate should be subjected to a thorough and painstaking character investigation. Yet no character investigation worthy of the name was conducted. Even the standards for entering the department were woefully low. For example, there were no minimum educational requirements whatever. Apparently, the lawmakers who fixed the statutory entrance requirements were not interested in the intellectual capacity of police applicants, as long as they could vote in Chicago. Unsound requirements of city residence were rigidly enforced, thus further limiting the number of applicants from which the personnel could be selected.
Numerous unqualified men appointed to the police force were frozen in jobs that they should never have secured in the first place. Through cumbersome civil service procedures and judicial interference, the police department was totally unable to control effectively its personnel through discipline. Cases involving serious charges against Chicago police officers almost invariably followed the same pattern. After lengthy civil service hearings, orders of discharge were appealed to the courts. And the courts would promptly overrule the Civil Service Commission finding and order the discharged officers restored to duty with back pay. Under such conditions, effective discipline becomes nonexistent.
In spite of these shortcomings, however, the Chicago Police Department has its fair share of splendid officers who would be a credit to any law enforcement agency. Unfortunately, when the burglary scandal broke there were charges that most of Chicago’s policemen were dishonest. This was untrue. Overlooked was the fact that police officers are representative of a cross section of the general public, from which they are selected. And basically they are just as honest, or dishonest, as this cross section. Also conveniently ignored was the fact that much corruption in the department was precipitated by the socalled good citizen. For years it has been a common practice lor many citizens to attach a fiveor ten-dollar bill to their driver’s licenses. When stopped for a traffic violation, they have handed their license to the police officer in the hope that he would detach the bill, return the license, and retrain from making an arrest. Far too often they have not been disappointed. In many places in the city, businessmen have regularly made payments to officers for the privilege of parking their automobiles in no-parking zones. Traffic enforcement became notoriously corrupt, a situation that could not exist in a well-disciplined department. But the general public cannot escape its share of responsibility for police failure.
THE rebuilding of the Chicago Police Department presents a Herculean task. The civilian committee appointed by Mayor Richard J. Daley on January 23, 1960, cast aside tradition and forthrightly attempted to fulfill its mission of selecting the best-qualified man available in the nation to head the Chicago police force and to recommend sound policies for the future administration of the department. After careful consideration of all candidates, four of the five members of the committee urged its chairman, Orlando W. Wilson, a police authority with an international reputation, to permit his name to be considered for the post. On February 22, 1960, the committee submitted its report to Mayor Daley, recommending the appointment of Orlando W. Wilson to head the Chicago Police Department and outlining policies to govern its future administration.
Among the committee’s recommendations was the creation of a nonpartisan police board to make nominations for the head of the department, subject to the approval and appointment of the mayor, to remove him for cause, and to establish policies to govern the department. A proposed city ordinance to establish this police board and to make possible the appointment of Orlando W. Wilson, a nonresident of Chicago, accompanied the committee’s report. It was also recommended that the mayor seek the enactment of state legislation to strengthen the police board and prevent its abolition by future action of the city council and to provide that any United States citizen is eligible for appointment to the Chicago Police Department, regardless of his pre-employment residence. The committee further recommended the establishment through state legislation of a merit system to replace existing civil service procedures for police personnel, to institute an aggressive recruitment program on a nationwide as well as local basis, raise standards for appointment with improved examination procedures, conduct exhaustive background investigation of all applicants, extend the present six-month probationary period to one year, initiate action for the removal of both dishonest and incompetent members of the force, provide salaries that will attract and hold professionally qualified personnel, expand and improve training and educational programs, organize the force and adopt procedures that will assure effective direction, coordination, and control of the department, and provide the head of the department with needed staff and consultant services, for an interim period, to deal with technical problems.
On March 2, 1960, Mayor Daley appointed Wilson as superintendent of the Chicago Police Department. On the same date, the city council, by a vote of forty-five to one, passed an ordinance creating a five-man police board. The ordinance also changed the status of the superintendent from a city officer to an employee, thus removing the one-year residence requirement for officers, as provided by state law. Three of the men appointed to the police board had served on the mayor’s committee. Two of the three lived in suburban towns beyond the city limits of Chicago.
Superintendent Wilson immediately embarked on the colossal task of thoroughly reorganizing the Chicago Police Department. In addition to personal aides brought in from other cities to help him administer the department, Wilson also retained four outside experts for an interim period in the fields of communications, crime statistics, research and planning, and police training. A bureau of inspectional services was created, with Captain Joseph Morris, an outstanding Chicago police officer, in charge. Among the units in this bureau are the division of internal investigation, charged with the vital task of policing the department’s personnel, and the division of intelligence, which has the responsibility of collecting and coordinating data on important gangster and racketeering elements. On April 15, 1960, the office of the superintendent of police was moved from city hall to police headquarters at 1121 South State Street.
Naturally, the task has just begun, and years of dedicated effort will be required to bring it to a completion. But without the insidious influence of politics or other special interests, the job can be done, and Chicago’s law enforcement future looks brighter than it ever has looked. Mayor Daley’s administration, which was rocked by the scandal, has in its hands the opportunity to go down in history as the one which really cleaned up the city’s police force.