The Sunset of 1974: Lenny Patrick’s Changing World

Long Run ◽

Hard Evidence ◽

The Difference ◽

Chicago Police ◽

Legal Sense ◽

Changing World

This chapter documents Lenny Patrick’s growing paranoia by 1974. This was a pivotal year—the twenty-fifth since the death of Benjamin Zuckerman and Patrick’s own rise to power. Everyone knew that and, for practical purposes, such knowledge mattered. It meant people made way for him; that they understood he had influence to help in shady business; and that they acceded to his suggestions, requests, or threats. In a legal sense, though, the difference between knowledge and proof was everything. Until law enforcement had hard evidence against him, he was a free man. And by 1974 the FBI and Chicago Police Department had been trying to collect such evidence for at least fifteen years through sustained campaigns of surveillance, wiretapping, and harassment. Wherever Patrick went, someone was trying to track him. He had had a long run as boss of Chicago Jewish organized crime, but the net was tightening around him.

Paternalism and the Birth of Professional Police Organization

10.5406/illinois/9780252038068.003.0003 ◽

2017 ◽

Author(s):

Sam Mitrani

Keyword(s):

Law Enforcement ◽

Republican Party ◽

Daily Activity ◽

Police Department ◽

Central Place ◽

Party Politics ◽

Law And Order ◽

Police Organization ◽

This chapter examines how the Chicago Police Department evolved into a professional police organization based on the ideology of paternalism. The election of Thomas Dyer as mayor in 1856 started a five-year period of contestation over the basic shape of the new police force. On the surface, this fight pitted law-and-order Republicans against Democratic supporters of immigrants and looser law enforcement. But party politics tells only a fraction of the story. The underlying dispute was between two conflicting visions of the police, each of which had supporters particularly within the Republican Party. Some members of both parties, most notably Dyer, a Democratic, and Republican Mayor John Wentworth, sought to fit the police into the older paternalistic method of keeping order. This chapter considers how the Chicago police came to occupy a central place in city machine politics and discusses Wentworth's organizational police policies that were consistent with his broader paternalistic vision of the institution. It also describes the police's daily activity between 1855 and 1862, including dealing with the problems arising from the Civil War.

Revised findings for "Procedural justice training reduces police use of force and complaints against officers"

10.31235/osf.io/xf32m ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

George Wood ◽

Tom Tyler ◽

Andrew V Papachristos ◽

Jonathan Roth ◽

Pedro H. C. Sant'Anna

Keyword(s):

Procedural Justice ◽

Police Officers ◽

Use Of Force ◽

Police Department ◽

Original Study ◽

Statistical Problem ◽

Police Use Of Force ◽

Point Estimates ◽

Wood et al. (2020) studied the rollout of a procedural justice training program in the Chicago Police Department and found large and statistically significant impacts on complaints and sustained complaints against police officers and police use of force. This document describes a subtle statistical problem that led the magnitude of those estimates to be inflated. We then re-analyze the data using a methodology that corrects for this problem. The re-analysis provides less strong conclusions about the effectiveness of the training than the original study: although the point estimates for most outcomes and specifications are negative and of a meaningful magnitude, the confidence intervals typically include zero or very small effects. On the whole, we interpret the data as providing suggestive evidence that procedural justice training reduced the use of force, but no statistically significant evidence for a reduction in complaints or sustained complaints.

Neighborhood Context and Homicide Clearance: Estimating the Effects of Collective Efficacy

Homicide Studies ◽

10.1177/1088767918755419 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 22 (2) ◽

pp. 188-213 ◽

Cited By ~ 14

Author(s):

Ashley M. Mancik ◽

Karen F. Parker ◽

Kirk R. Williams

Keyword(s):

Collective Efficacy ◽

Police Department ◽

Neighborhood Context ◽

Community Members ◽

Community Characteristics ◽

Combining Data ◽

Homicide Clearance ◽

Chicago Police ◽

The Impact

Only a handful of macro-level studies of homicide clearance exist, and the impact of community characteristics is mixed. In addition, community members are critical to clearances, but the willingness of residents to unite for the collective goal of aiding in investigations (via collective efficacy) remains to be tested. Combining data from the Chicago Police Department, Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods (PHDCN), and U.S. Census, we estimate the effect of collective efficacy on homicide clearances in Chicago neighborhoods, while taking into account neighborhood characteristics and case composition. Results indicate that economic disadvantage, residential stability, and victimization significantly decrease homicides clearances, while collective efficacy increases clearances.

The Introduction of Tasers and Police Use of Firearms: Evidence from the Chicago Police Department

AEA Papers and Proceedings ◽

10.1257/pandp.20191029 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 109 ◽

pp. 157-160

Author(s):

Bocar Ba ◽

Jeffrey Grogger

Keyword(s):

Event Study ◽

Policy Change ◽

Police Department ◽

Patrol Officers ◽

Field Training ◽

Many police jurisdictions have recently expanded their Taser arsenals with a goal of reducing officer-involved shootings. We analyze substitution between Tasers and firearms by means of an event study made possible by a policy change at the Chicago Police Department. Before March 2010, only sergeants and field training officers had access to Tasers; after that date, they were made available to patrol officers. We find that the change in Taser policy led to a large increase in Taser use, but not to a decrease in the use of firearms.

Complaining While Black: Racial Disparities in the Adjudication of Complaints against the Police

City and Community ◽

10.1111/cico.12388 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 18 (3) ◽

pp. 1028-1067 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

Jacob William Faber ◽

Jessica Rose Kalbfeld

Keyword(s):

Neighborhood Effects ◽

Police Department ◽

Neighborhood Context ◽

Police Misconduct ◽

Predominantly Black ◽

Black Neighborhoods ◽

Communities Of Color ◽

High Crime ◽

Reports of citizen complaints of police misconduct often note that officers are rarely disciplined for alleged misconduct. The perception of little officer accountability contributes to widespread distrust of law enforcement in communities of color. This project investigates how race and segregation shape the outcomes of allegations made against the Chicago Police Department (CPD) between 2011 and 2014. We find that complaints by black and Latino citizens and against white officers are less likely to be sustained. We show neighborhood context interacts with complainant characteristics: Incidents alleged by white citizens in high–crime and predominantly black neighborhoods are more likely to be sustained. These findings provide context for understanding tensions between communities of color and the CPD. These results are consistent with theories that individual and institutional actors prioritize white victimhood and reflect the neighborhood effects literature stressing the interaction between individual and contextual factors in shaping outcomes.

Sam Mitrani. The Rise of the Chicago Police Department: Class and Conflict, 1850–1894.

The American Historical Review ◽

10.1093/ahr/119.5.1709 ◽

2014 ◽

Vol 119 (5) ◽

pp. 1709-1710

Author(s):

Robert M. Lombardo

Keyword(s):

Police Department ◽

Chicago’s Anarchists Shape the Police Department

10.5406/illinois/9780252038068.003.0008 ◽

2017 ◽

Author(s):

Sam Mitrani

Keyword(s):

Working Class ◽

Labor Movement ◽

Police Department ◽

Strong Force ◽

Real Mass ◽

Socialist Movement ◽

Chicago Police ◽

The Relationship

This chapter examines how the Chicago Police Department was transformed by its struggle with the city's anarchist and socialist movement during the 1870s and 1880s. Compared with the department's interaction with the wider labor movement and the working class generally, the relationship between the police and the militant workers' organizations varied solely in degree. The police and the anarchists consistently faced each other with unmistakable hostility. The first real mass confrontation between the anarchists and the police took place during the 1877 upheaval, when the police broke up their meetings with violence. But in the 1880s, the anarchist organizations grew rapidly in size and increasingly set themselves against the police. This chapter shows that the conflict between the police and the anarchists shaped the development of the Chicago Police Department, in part due to the threat of mass strikes, riots, and revolution that pushed the city's elite to seek a strong force that could be relied on to respond to the workers' movement.

The Native-Born Protestant Elite’s Bid for Control in the 1870s

10.5406/illinois/9780252038068.003.0005 ◽

2017 ◽

Author(s):

Sam Mitrani

Keyword(s):

Fear Of Crime ◽

Municipal Government ◽

Police Department ◽

Economic Life ◽

Urban Life ◽

City Government ◽

Business Elite ◽

Chicago Police ◽

The City

This chapter examines how the Chicago Police Department figured in the native-born Protestant elite's attempt to control urban life in the city during the 1870s. In the 1870s, it became increasingly clear that the promise of “free labor” would not be met. Native-born Protestant urban elites across the country felt as if the cities were slipping into the grasp of immigrant workers and unemployed vagrants. This chapter describes the efforts of Chicago's traditional native-born, Protestant urban elite to enforce stricter temperance laws, regulate economic life, especially construction, and gain tighter control over the municipal government itself. It begins with a discussion of the responses of Chicago's business elite and politicians, the city government, and the police to the Great Chicago Fire of 1871 as well as to the fear of crime that gripped Chicago in the summer of 1872. It then considers the Committee of Seventy's attempts to control the police and their divided stance over temperance and concludes with an assessment of the power struggle in the Chicago Police Department that would continue through 1873.