CHICAGO’S RULERS

Greymouth Evening Star, 8 December 1945, Page 8

CHICAGO’S RULERS

GANGS AND RACKETEERS.

Shades of the “bad old days” of gangsters and racketeers have returned to Chicago, which is undergoing its most serious crime wave since before the war (reports the New York correspondent of the “Sydney Morning Herald.”) Murders, assaults, and robberies have increased to such an alarming extent that there is a renewal of urgent public demand for reorganisation of the politically-controlled Police Department. Its records at present show more than a dozen unsolved'murders, mostly gang assassinations. Chicago, unlike New York and the majority of the other large American cities, has not been successful in ridding itself of corrupt politics, and the results have been a series of alliances i between some politicians and labour racketeers who have not hesitated to use criminals for their own ends. Businesses and industries of all kinds have been forced by necessity to pay , tribute directly and indirectly to 'racketeers and gangsters. In some cases, payment of tribute has been the only method of safeguarding lives and property. Main driving force behind the movement to reform the Police Department is the Chicago Crime Commission, which, since the last war, has been fighting continuously against not only the active criminals but those who provide the funds and motives. Its work reached a peak during prohibition days when the city, according to Mr. Virgil W. Peterson, operating director of the Commission, “virtually surrendered to the Al Capone gang.” Some degree of success was achieved, and at the outbreak of the war, Chicago was enjoying comparative freedom from serious crime. That happy condition lasted throughout most of the war, but there has been a serious increase in crime during the first eight months of this year.. In that short period alone, there have been 129 murders, 2,433 robberies, 1,393 assaults, 11,377 larcenies, and 214 rapes. Those figures contributed to an increase of 5,538 in serious police cases compared with 1943. ■Chicago, second largest city of the United States, with a population of 4,499,000, has a police force which stands only fifteenth in the country. It totals only 5,272. ■ Apart from the political influences to which the Department has always been subjected, it is considered that such a force is totally inadequate to deal with the volume of crime in a city which achieved an international reputation for lawlessness.