1 rule for crooks, another for “innocent citizens”

In June 1927, John Kimball, the night manager at Chicago’s Newberry Hotel, charged that Lieutenant Leo Carr and several police officers at the Chicago Avenue station forced him to confess to stealing $100 from the hotel (Chicago Tribune, June 5, 1927, p. 20). Two weeks later, members of a criminal gang admitted to a burglaries, including the one Kimball had confessed to (Chicago Tribune, June 18, 1927).

But the police did not drop the charges against Kimball. Instead, as the Chicago Tribune noted, when Kimball was testifying before the grand jury to help indict members of the burglary gang, the case against him was set for a hearing before a Cook County judge. Since he missed the court date to provide evidence to the grand jury, his bond was forfeited and it was only after lawyers and his employer interceded that the charges against him were dropped (Chicago Tribune, July 2, 1927).

Confronted with Kimball’s claim that he falsely confessed after being beaten at the Chicago Avenue station, chief of police Michael Hughes reluctantly ordered an investigation. Yet Hughes’ condemnation of police misconduct lacked conviction. He did not approve, he said, of police officers mistreating “innocent citizens.” But he added, that was not the rule for everyone.

So long as I am chief of police in Chicago criminals aren’t going to be handled with gloves. That’s one thing you can be dead sure about” (Chicago Tribune, July 3, 1927).

Hughes went on to complain about reformers, criminologists, social workers, and even the ungrateful people of Chicago, who criticized the hard working police, rather than the criminals. The police, he said, “were driving the crooks out of Chicago and we’re not being nice to them.” Rather than help the police, Hughes complained, the public criticized them (Chicago Tribune, July 3, 1927).

The Chicago Tribune expressed some doubts about the distinctions Hughes drew. “There is pretty general acceptance of the theory,” the paper wrote in an editorial, “that the police must beat up a suspected man, if he has a criminal record, to get the facts out of him.” But, the paper went on, it “isn’t a very pretty theory and it doesn’t work so exceptionally well,” since those confessions were often thrown out in court. The paper went on, more pointedly

The fundamental law of the land is supposed to protect any one from cruel and unusual punishment, but that is merely highbrow stuff for the he-man chief” (Chicago Tribune, July 5, 1927, p. 10).