To Serve and Collect: Chicago Politics and Police Corruption from the Lager Beer Riot to the Summerdale Scandal

(Hardback)

Publishing Details

Classifications

Physical Properties

Description

In this serious yet entertaining book, historian Richard Carl Lindberg probes unexplored avenues of Chicago history and presents the first in-depth history of the Chicago Police Department in over a century. The book traces the stormy history of the department from the 1850s to the Summerdale Scandal of the near present. Interspersed with the major chapters about the chaotic struggle between reform and the machine are short, intimate vignettes: the Armory Station, a gray, somber fortress that housed some of Chicago's most desperate characters for over thirty years; Francis O'Neill, Chicago's turn-of-the-century police chief who collected Irish folk songs and transcribed them into sheet music; the first fingerprint conviction in Cook County in which a man paid the ultimate price; and a retrospective look at some of the most infamous murder cases of the century and how the police solved them. Lindberg discusses the tie between politics, organized crime, vice, and the police department. He presents a history of Chicago politics and law enforcement in chronological order and recounts pivotal events in Chicago history in the police context. The book reveals how police corruption in Chicago was the result of the political drag on the department; the pernicious influence of meddling aldermen and vice operatives that prevented the police from carrying out their sworn duties in a forthright manner. Lindberg examines the lack of central authority over the police department; police superintendents were traditionally weak, subservient figures to the mayor, unable, and often unwilling to exercise control over the bureaucracy. Students and scholars of history, criminal justice, Chicago history, and law enforcement will find To Serve and Collect provocative reading.

Reviews

.,."An insightful, thorough, provoking book that will raise the ire of a few and bring resounding applause from many."- John Jemilo Executive Director Chicago Crime Commission
"Richard Lindberg's To Serve and Collect is not only a delight to read but this work provides invaluable information, in the form of hard data and rich anecdote, about Chicago's nitty-gritty past. Lindberg chronicles the city's blatant boondogglers and corrupt political sachems with devastating accuracy. His attention to detail, a hallmark in his writing, will be appreciated by historians, librarians, and researchers. Anyone interested in Chicago's lavish and outlandish past will revel in this wonderful and enlightening work, one that should stand as a classic in its field for decades to come."- Jay Robert Nash Crime historian Author of The Encyclopedia of World Crime
"The turbulent history of the Chicago Police is a story that has needed to be told. Lindberg pulls no punches as he relates the department's moments of valor, and its times of disgrace."-Frank Sullivan Former Spokesman for the Chicago Police Department, 1968-72

Author Bio

RICHARD C. LINDBERG is Official Historian of the Chicago White Sox and editor for The Encyclopedia of World Crime. He is the author of Chicago Ragtime: Another Look at Chicago, 1880-1920 and Who's on Third The Chicago White Sox Story.