Carter Harrison Remakes the Chicago Police Department
This chapter examines Chicago Mayor Carter Harrison's reorganization of the Chicago Police Department to increase its legitimacy and usefulness during the first half of the 1880s. The events of the 1870s set the stage for an unprecedented strengthening of the police department in the first half of the 1880s. At the beginning of the decade, the police force was undermanned and lacked legitimacy among the majority of Chicago's population. The police were chastised by elite observers for corruption and inefficiency and viewed by the working class as little more than servants of the rich. This chapter discusses the measures adopted by Harrison to rehabilitate the police department's image, such as improving police technology; maintaining police neutrality in strikes; initiating civil service reform; giving the department a new set of social-service responsibilities; giving the police new incentives; and hiring a more ethnically representative group of police officers.