My Poor Home Town, Part I: The Good Old Days?

Richard Morrison was a crook. A very successful one, judging by his boasts. After he was caught in 1959, he bragged that he’d stolen $100,000 worth of merchandise in the previous six months. Not bad for a 23-year-old who claimed he’d learned safecracking skills while pretending to buy a safe.

But Richie Morrison had the best assistants a crook could want -- eight Chicago police officers. They not only scouted his targets but also hauled the loot away in squad cars. Morrison kept the cash and the cops got the goods – four truckloads of TVs, jewelry, shotguns and whatnot, hauled out of the homes of seven police officers.

The resulting “Summerdale Scandal,” named for the police district in Chicago’s Uptown neighborhood where the officers worked, led to a massive shakeup. The still-young administration of Mayor Richard J. Daley was compelled to name a squeaky-clean academic, criminologist O.W. Wilson, as chief of police, with a duty to clean up the department and a free hand to do so.

The Summerdale Scandal generated tons of media and barrels of laughs and jeers, but left us Chicagoans shaking our rueful heads. We all knew certain things to be true: That the Democratic party rigs elections, that the Mafia runs the rackets, and that the cops look the other way. That’s Chicago. Deal with it.

I got my own lesson in police corruption at an early age, from my dad.

During World War II, goods considered non-essential were rationed. If you were dying for a Hershey bar, say, you needed a ration coupon to buy one at Walgreens. The only easy way to get that Hershey bar was to go to the movies. Well, my father Irwin Joseph was in the movie business. He could bring home Hershey bars by the boxfull. We always had a few on hand.

One day Dad was on the Outer Drive coming home from work when a cop stopped him. The cop was ready to write a speeding ticket when his eye fell on the carton of Hersheys lying on the back seat. A deal was quickly done; the cop drove off with the chocolate and Dad drove home free of a moving violation. No wonder the comedian Mort Sahl called the Outer Drive ‘America’s greatest collective bargaining agency.’

Like my dad and his Hershey bars, I too bribed my own way out of a moving violation one time. The cop clearly was looking for a payoff. He sat in my passenger seat along North Sheridan Road making chummy conversation until I figured things out and pulled a $10 from my wallet. His tone went icy as he pointed to a spot between the seats where I was to drop the bill. He snatched it and drove off, the money technically not having changed hands. Afterward, I felt soiled.

In my early 20s, I was in the middle of ten-car pileup along South Doty Avenue that spawned dozens of lawsuits. The first one filed against me was from the guy in the 1958 Buick Roadmaster who struck my poor defenseless 1959 MG-A from behind. Luckily, I’d staggered out with nothing worse than a twisted ankle. I was walking from the median strip to retrieve my glasses when the Roadmaster slammed into the rear end at 45mph. The MG collapsed like an out-of-tune accordion and went up in flames.

Now, I wasn’t looking for a big payoff: I just needed a car to drive. But I couldn’t afford to buy one unless someone paid for the one that got totaled, and for that I needed a lawyer. Who told me that, in order to get the money to pay for the wrecked car, I’d need to prove injuries I hadn’t suffered. ‘Go to my friend Moe the Chiropractor,’ said my lawyer. ‘He’ll take care of this.’ Moe made a show of examining me but, when he proposed a spinal manipulation, I couldn’t take any more. ‘Jeez, let’s just get this over with,’ I said and walked the door out with the false injury report.

Yeah, I got the money for the car. And yeah, again I felt soiled. It wasn’t just the cops who were corrupt. Everything was rigged in Chicago.

P.S. Mort Sahl wasn’t the only sender-up of the Chicago PD. For today’s chuckle, visit http://mudcat.org/@displaysong.cfm?SongID=9459

Next: My Poor Home Town, Part II: Send in the Feds?