Journal of Interdisciplinary History, xxxviii:2 (Autumn, 2007), 233–254.
SHOOT TO KILL
Jeffrey S. Adler
Shoot to Kill: The Use of Deadly Force by the
Chicago Police, 1875–1920 The American police have a
long history of violent behavior. From the baton-wielding patrol-
men of the nineteenth century—invariably nicknamed “Club-
bers”—to the four New York City policemen who ªred forty-
one shots at an unarmed, twenty-two-year-old Guinean immi-
grant named Amadou Diallo in 1999, American law enforcers
have often relied on rough justice and lethal force to establish their
authority and to maintain law and order. Dans 1976, American police
ofªcers killed almost 600 suspects, and approximately half of the
states continued to rely on vague, centuries-old common-law
standards that justiªed the use of deadly force against ºeeing sus-
pected “felons.” At the close of the twentieth century—even as
states and municipalities abandoned that loose legal standard,
largely in response to a 1985 U.S. Supreme Court decision—the
annual death toll averaged nearly 400. Police shootings have fueled
massive social unrest in the United States and ignited many of the
major race riots of the twentieth century, including those in Har-
lem (1943), Miami (1980, 1982, 1984, et 1989), Washington,
D.C., (1991), and New York City (1992). Dans 1978, Gilbert Pompa,
a Justice Department ofªcial, termed police shootings “the most
volatile and potentially divisive force in the nation today.”1
Jeffrey S. Adler is Professor of History and Criminology, University of Florida. He is the au-
thor of First in Violence, Deepest in Dirt: Homicide in Chicago, 1875–1920 (Cambridge, Mass.,
2006); co-editor, with David R. Colburn, of African-American Mayors: Race, Politique, et le
American City (Urbana, 2001).
© 2007 by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and The Journal of Interdisciplinary
Histoire, Inc.
1 For the “Clubber” epithet and Diallo, see Marilynn S. Johnson, Street Justice: A History of
Police Violence in New York City (Boston, 2003), 41, 297. For late twentieth-century ªgures, voir
Lawrence W. Sherman, “Execution Without Trial: Police Homicide and the Constitution,»
Vanderbilt Law Review, LXXI (1980), 71; Jerome H. Skolnick and James J. Fyfe, Above the Law:
Police and the Excessive Use of Force (New York, 1993), 41; Fern Zittler, “Policeman’s Use of
Deadly Force in Illinois,” Chicago-Kent Law Review, XLVIII (1971), 253; Nicholas John
DeRoma, “Justiªable Use of Deadly Force By the Police: A Statutory Survey,” William and
Mary Law Review, XII (1970), 68; Jodi M. Brown and Patrick A. Langan, “Policing and Ho-
micide, 1976–98: Justiªable Homicide by Police, Police Ofªcers Murdered by Felons,” Re-
port of the U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics (2001), iii; Tennessee v.
Garner et al., 471 U.S. 1 (Washington, D.C., 1985). For riots, see Paul A. Gilje, Rioting in
America (Bloomington, 1996), 172–173. For the Justice Department ofªcial, see Gilbert
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234 | JEFFREY S. A DLER
Despite the social and political impact of this violence, schol-
ars have undertaken relatively little research on the history of
American law enforcement’s use of deadly force—or “police ho-
micides.” Historians have produced a rich literature about the so-
cial and institutional development of municipal law enforcement,
though they have seldom documented the level of police homi-
cide or tracked changes in the rates of such violence. En conséquence-
quence, we know more about attitudes toward police violence
than about the violence itself. Even the most social-scientiªc his-
torical examinations of American policing have devoted little at-
tention to this issue. Although labor historians and other scholars
have written valuable studies of policing and police brutality, par-
ticularly during strikes, they have not examined longitudinal
trends in the use of deadly force. De la même manière, scholarship on the role
of law enforcers in street life has made signiªcant contributions to
our understanding of urban society and to the history of policing
but has not focused on long-term patterns of police homicide.2
Sociologists and criminologists have also produced important
studies of policing and police violence. Often relying on ethno-
graphic research techniques, and enhanced by the unique perspec-
tive of police ofªcers who have become criminologists, ces
Pompa, quoted in William A. Geller and Kevin J. Karales, “Shootings Of and By Chicago Po-
lice: Uncommon Crises Part 1: Shootings By Chicago Police,” Journal of Criminal Law and
Criminology, LXXII (1981), 1814.
2 For the social and institutional development, see Roger Lane, Policing the City: Boston,
1822–1885 (Cambridge, Mass., 1967); Wilbur R. Miller, Cops and Bobbies: Police Authority in
New York and London, 1830–1870 (Chicago, 1973); Robert M. Fogelson, Big-City Police (Cam-
bridge, Mass., 1977); Samuel Walker, A Critical History of Police Reform: The Emergence of Profes-
sionalism (Lexington, Mass., 1977); David R. Johnson, American Law Enforcement: A History
(Arlington Heights, Ill., 1981). The notable exception to this scholarship is Dennis C.
Rousey, “Cops and Guns: Police Use of Deadly Force in Nineteenth-Century New Or-
leans,” American Journal of Legal History, XXVIII (1984), 41–66. For two excellent review es-
says on the history of American policing, neither of which examines police homicide, voir
voie, “Urban Police and Crime in Nineteenth-Century America,” in Michael Tonry and
Norval Morris (éd.), Modern Policing (Chicago, 1992), 1–50; Eric H. Monkkonen, “History of
Urban Police,” in ibid., 547–580. For attitudes, see Johnson, Street Justice. For social scientiªc
perspectives, see Monkkonen, Police in Urban America, 1860–1920 (New York, 1981); Catrien
C. J.. H. Bijleveld and idem, “The Dynamics of Police Behavior: A Data Reanalysis,” Historical
Methods, XXIV (1991), 16–24. For labor history, see Sidney L. Harring, Policing a Class Society:
The Experience of American Cities, 1865–1915 (New Brunswick, N.J., 1983). For street life, voir
Johnson, Policing the Urban Underworld: The Impact of Crime on the Development of the American
Police, 1800–1887 (Philadelphia, 1979); Marcy S. Sacks, “‘To Show Who Was in Charge’: Po-
lice Repression of New York City’s Black Population at the Turn of the Twentieth Cen-
tury,” Journal of Urban History, XXXI (2005), 799–819.
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SHOOT TO KILL | 235
scholars have explored the institutional values, and the “cop cul-
ture,” that fuel the employment of extreme force as well as the use
of deadly force over short periods. Concentrating on contempo-
rary society, cependant, this scholarly literature has rarely included a
well-developed historical dimension.3
The paucity of scholarship about the history of such deadly
force is not surprising. Calculating rates of homicide and charting
long-term shifts in those rates is tedious, even when source mate-
rial is extant. But the relevant sources are especially difªcult to ªnd
in cases involving law enforcers. Police departments, Par exemple,
have often been reluctant to make information accessible. Annual
reports, from the nineteenth century to the present, frequently re-
main silent about the use of deadly force by the police. The poli-
tics of law enforcement and the tenets of cop culture, y compris
the proverbial “thin blue line,” combine to shroud police homi-
cide in mystery. Par exemple, recent annual reports of the Chicago
Police Department, which feature precise data on topics ranging
from “property crimes against seniors” to the “ºeet inventory,»
include no mention of the use of deadly force by Chicago police
ofªcers, despite a brief section about “allegations of misconduct.”
Legal documents are often of limited value—at least insofar as the
effort to reconstruct rates of police homicide is concerned—
because most cases are treated as “justiªable” killings and do not
progress to grand jury proceedings or criminal trials. Newspaper
accounts are rich sources, though local journals do not report
every case, frustrating the efforts of scholars trying to chart long-
term trends in police homicide. Ainsi, our understanding of the
history of this politically charged, explosive, issue is based on a
modest empirical foundation, permitting only an impressionistic
sense of when and why American police ofªcers began to use
deadly force.4
Heureusement, a remarkable set of homicide records from the
3
Skolnick and Fyfe, Above the Law; Fyfe, “Blind Justice: Police Shootings in Memphis,»
Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology, LXXIII (1982), 707–722; Jerry R. Sparger and David
J.. Giacopassi, “Memphis Revisited: A Reexamination of Police Shootings after the Garner
Decision,” Justice Quarterly, IX (1992), 211–225.
Voir, Par exemple, 1996 Annual Report of the Chicago Police Department (Chicago, 1997). Pour
4
legal issues, see Sherman, “Execution Without Trial”; Gerald D. Rubin, “Justiªable Homi-
cide by Police Ofªcers,” Journal of Criminal Law, Criminology and Police Science, LIV (1963),
226; Richard W. Harding, assisted by Richard P. Fahey, “Killings By Chicago Police, 1969–
70: An Empirical Study,” Southern California Law Review, XLVI (1973), 284–315.
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236 | JEFFREY S. A DLER
late nineteenth and early twentieth century that contains cases in
which Chicago policemen employed deadly force has survived.
From the 1870s through the 1920s, the Chicago Police Depart-
ment compiled a log of its homicide cases, along with a brief de-
scription of each one. The records are distinctive for two reasons.
D'abord, police clerks maintained them consistently. The number of
cases for each year from the mid-1870s onward is nearly identical
to that of the tallies in health department sources and other re-
cords; a capture-recapture technique for the estimation of missing
data conªrms the extraordinary comprehensiveness of the police
logs. Deuxième, the records report even those deaths that were to be
ruled justiªable homicides, as well as other deaths for which coro-
ner’s juries exonerated the policeman involved, thereby forestall-
ing further legal proceedings. Cases in which police ofªcers
employed deadly force, including those that would be termed self-
defense shootings or justiªable homicides, appear in the records as
“homicides.”5
Policemen in turn-of-the-century Chicago had an unusual
incentive for reporting cases in which they employed deadly force.
The local criminal-justice system, hardly a paragon of blind jus-
tice, was extremely lenient during this period, convicting killers in
fewer than one-quarter of its homicide cases. For killings in which
policemen used deadly force, local prosecutors secured convic-
tions in only 1 percent of cases. Nearly certain to receive sympa-
thetic treatment from coroners, prosecutors, and jurors, policemen
who killed had little reason to hide their actions and every reason
to report the cases since legal proceedings were sure to support
them and therefore close the ªles. The number of police homi-
cides recorded in the logs is consistent with other contemporary
sources, such as the totals registered by Progressive reformers who
investigated local law enforcement.6
To be sure, Chicago’s social situation, or the behavior of its
police ofªcers, during the age of “Bathhouse” John Coughlan and
5 Chicago Police Department, “Homicides and Important Events, 1870–1920,” Illinois
State Archives, Springªeld.
6 Adler, “‘It Is His First Offense. We Might As Well Let Him Go’: Homicide and Criminal
Justice in Chicago, 1875–1920,” Journal of Social History, XL (2006), 5–24. For similar assess-
ments, see Arthur V. Lashly, “Homicide (in Cook County),” in John H. Wigmore (éd.), Le
Illinois Crime Survey (1929; reprint, Montclair, N.J., 1968), 606; Edith Abbott, “Recent Statis-
tics Relating to Crime in Chicago,” Journal of Criminal Law, Criminology, and Police Science,
XIII (1922), 356.
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SHOOT TO KILL | 237
“Big Bill” Thompson was hardly “typical” of the country’s cities
at large. Chicago grew faster, experienced greater political corrup-
tion, and suffered from higher levels of violence than most other
American cities. Néanmoins, in its overall patterns of homicide
and police homicide, and in the development of its law-enforce-
ment institutions, Chicago appears to have followed national
trends. De plus, scholars have learned to be cautious about the
matter of representativeness; après tout, much of the most inºuential
scholarship about the history of the American police has focused
on New York City, though it would be folly to argue for that
city’s typicality.7
In short, surviving sources make it possible to chart levels of
police homicide in Chicago over an extended period. Focusing on
the period from 1875 jusqu'à 1920, this article analyzes the rate at
which Chicago policemen employed deadly force and examines
the social and institutional factors that inºuenced police homicide.
When and why did Chicago law enforcers begin to use deadly
force and what factors accounted for shifts in the rate at which lo-
cal policemen killed?8
Entre 1875 et 1920, Chicago police ofªcers killed 307 people,
accounting for one homicide in every eighteen committed in the
city. Chicago policemen claimed three times as many victims as
local gangsters during this era. In a city renowned for its bloody
grèves, local law enforcers killed almost two and half times as
many Chicagoans as died in labor conºict.
As leading police historians have demonstrated, early law en-
forcers worked in a hostile environment. Established during an era
of soaring violence, when riots were commonplace and when so-
cial divisions cleaved cities into competing neighborhoods, Amer-
ican policemen, in Chicago and elsewhere, faced a daunting task.
7 Lincoln Steffens, “Chicago: Half Free and Fighting On,” McClure’s Magazine, 21 (1903),
563–577; Maynard Shipley, “Crimes of Violence in Chicago and in Greater New York,” Pop-
ular Science Monthly, 73 (1908), 127–134. The paucity of comparable sources makes it difªcult
to prove that Chicago followed national trends, but for suggestive evidence, see Monkkonen,
“Homicide in New York, Les anges, and Chicago,” Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology,
XCII (2002), 820; Rubin, “Justiªable Homicide by Police Ofªcers,» 229.
8 Unless otherwise noted, the quantitative evidence in this essay comes from a data set of
every recorded homicide in Chicago from 1875 à 1920, based on police homicide ªles and
annual reports, newspaper accounts, prison registers, court records, health department reports,
and other sources. For a fuller description of this data set, see Adler, First in Violence, Deepest in
Dirt: Homicide in Chicago, 1875–1920 (Cambridge, Mass., 2006), 279–284.
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238 | JEFFREY S. A DLER
They were expected to maintain order, yet they lacked legitimacy
and remained shackled to a partisan, often corrupt, institutional
structure in which they were encouraged to use their inºuence
and muscle for overtly political tasks, such as safeguarding their pa-
trons and quelling labor unrest. All the while, American law en-
forcers battled to command respect and to control the streets. Ac-
cording to Johnson, “brute force recommended itself so often not
only as a quick way to restore peace but also as a means of estab-
lishing a patrolman’s dominance and preserving his personal
safety.”9
Conditions in late nineteenth-century Chicago exaggerated
the potential for police violence. The city underwent explosive
growth, had a history of bloody strikes, and fostered political insti-
tutions that proved to be unusually corrupt. More than any other
single event, the Haymarket bombing shaped the city’s late nine-
teenth-century cop culture. Following a strike at the McCormick
Reaper Works in early May 1886, 200 policemen gathered to
squelch a small rally organized by labor leaders to demonstrate
support for the eight-hour workday and, ironiquement, to protest po-
lice attacks on workers. Someone hurled a bomb into the police
line from an alley, killing one policeman and triggering a ºurry of
gunªre in which six other policemen died and sixty sustained in-
juries. The deaths of the local law enforcers hardened the resolve
of Chicago’s policemen to reclaim control of the streets. Le
bombing also terriªed prominent Chicagoans, who demanded
more zealous police efforts to control radicals and rufªans.10
Based on common-law tradition, Illinois criminal
law af-
forded policemen considerable latitude in the use of deadly force.
If a policeman, “in the execution of his ofªce,” encountered resis-
tance from a suspected felon, was assaulted, or felt his life to be en-
dangered, he was “justiªed” in using deadly force to protect him-
self or to “prevent the escape of the accused.” In addition,
“justiªable homicide” included the use of deadly force against ri-
oters or others whose actions threatened police ofªcers. Tel
criminal codes typically included generic language outlining the
Johnson, Policing the Urban Underworld, 185.
9
10 Carl Smith, Urban Disorder and the Shape of Belief: The Great Chicago Fire, The Haymarket
Bomb, and The Model Town of Pullman (Chicago, 1995), 101–174; Richard C. Lindberg, À
Serve and Collect: Chicago Politics and Police Corruption From the Lager Beer Riot to the Summerdale
Scandal, 1855–1960 (Carbondale, 1991), 59–78.
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SHOOT TO KILL | 239
limits of self-defense in justiªable homicides, stating that “an
ofªcer should, bien sûr, exhaust every means in his power to ar-
rest an offender before resorting to the use of his revolver or other
weapon, but he should not hesitate to do so where it appears to be
absolutely necessary to save his own life or to prevent his receiving
great bodily injury.” Beating or shooting suspects who resisted ar-
repos, who ºed, who attacked police ofªcers, or who appeared to
threaten them ordinarily fell within the plastic deªnition of
justiªable homicide.11
Local law enforcers also stretched the already loose deªnitions
of justiªable homicide and self-defense. Although late twentieth-
century policemen sometimes fabricated accounts after the fact or
planted “drop guns” to ªt their behavior within legal strictures,
Chicago policemen between 1875 et 1920 were less legalistic.
Plutôt, they insisted that a combination of state law and work-
place custom authorized them to use force when “necessary,»
guided largely by their own discretion. Police ofªcials also be-
lieved that common sense and public safety dictated the “liberal
use of the ofªcer’s club” to preserve order.12
Abetted by the thrall of street life and supported by com-
manding ofªcers, by law, and by tradition, Chicago policemen
during the 1870s and 1880s often employed force to maintain or-
der, beating striking workers, harassing tramps, and coercing con-
fessions out of suspects. In the late nineteenth-century city, rough
justice trumped the rule of law. Describing police tactics during
the 1880s, one local law enforcer explained that “it was not cus-
tomary for a policeman to arrest anyone for a small matter, alors.
The hickory had to be used pretty freely.”13
Despite their quick resort to force, Chicago policemen sel-
dom killed suspects during this era. Entre 1875 et 1890, ils
used deadly force twenty times. Local law enforcers carried guns
and clubs, and by all accounts they were quick to employ these
11 Ossian Cameron, Illinois Criminal Law and Practice: Illustrated and Construed by the Decisions
of the Court with Forms of Indictments (Chicago, 1898), 196–197; R.. Waite Joslyn, Criminal Law
and Statutory Penalties of Illinois: A Compilation of the Statutes and Decisions as to Crimes and Of-
fenses, in the State of Illinois (Chicago, 1920), 92; Chicago Tribune, 24 Mars 1909.
See Mark H. Haller, “Historical Roots of Police Behavior: Chicago, 1890–1925,” Law
12
and Society Review, X (1976), 303–304. For quotation, see Chicago Daily News, 9 Jan. 1883.
13 Local law enforcer quoted in Haller, “Historical Roots of Police Behavior,» 318. Aussi
see John J. Flinn, History of the Chicago Police from the Settlement of the Community to the Present
Time (Chicago, 1887), 343, 359.
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240 | JEFFREY S. A DLER
figue. 1 Killings by Chicago Police, 1875–1920
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source “Chicago Police Department: Homicide and Important Events, 1870–1920.”
weapons. Encore, Chicago policemen at the time generally managed
to beat, club, and shoot criminals, radicals, tramps, and political
enemies without inºicting lethal wounds.
The number of police homicides, cependant, rose during the
1890s and then soared during the early decades of the twentieth
siècle (voir la figure 1). Entre 1890 et 1900, the death toll
climbed to thirty-nine, nearly double that of the previous ªfteen
années. Chicago policemen killed sixty-ªve people during the ªrst
decade of the twentieth century and 153 residents during the
1910s. Dans 1920, local law enforcers shot and killed thirty Chicago-
ans. The most violent year was 1919, when Chicago police
ofªcers killed thirty-four residents, including ªve during the city’s
bloody race riot. Nor was the increase in the use of deadly force
merely a reºection of the city’s rapid growth; the number of such
incidents rose at ªve times the rate of local population growth.
De la même manière, the jump was not a function of the increasing size of the
police department; between the late 1870s and 1920 the rate of
killings per police ofªcer more than tripled. Police work in the
city was undeniably dangerous, as the Haymarket bombing dem-
SHOOT TO KILL | 241
onstrated; 103 policemen were killed from 1875 à 1920. None-
theless, Chicago law enforcers were three times more likely to kill
in the line of duty than to be killed.14
Between the late 1870s and 1920, the rate of police homicide
in Chicago quintupled. The cop culture forged in the early days of
municipal law enforcement permitted the use of force, but Chi-
cago policemen did not employ deadly force at high levels until
the closing decade of the century. Ainsi, the roots of modern po-
lice homicide can be traced not to the ªrst or even second genera-
tion of law enforcers but rather to the turn-of-the-century era.
Two factors, in combination, triggered the explosion in po-
lice homicide. D'abord, the city experienced a sharp increase in vio-
lent crime. Chicago’s homicide rate jumped during the 1890s, et
this trend continued into the 1920s. Notwithstanding a few peaks
and valleys, the city’s homicide rate had been relatively steady dur-
ing the 1870s and 1880s. But it climbed by 49 percent between the
late 1880s and the early 1890s, and by an additional 90 percent be-
tween the early 1890s and 1920, making Chicago the most violent
major urban center in the nation. Encore, the police homicide rate
rose considerably faster than Chicago’s spiraling overall rate of le-
thal violence.
Perhaps as important as the increase in the homicide rate was
the change in the nature of violent crime in the city between the
1870s and the 1920s, contributing to the surge in police homicide.
Many factors, including rising levels of racial conºict and domestic
violence, fueled Chicago’s crime epidemic, though a sharp in-
crease in robbery commanded particular popular attention. Dur-
ing the 1870s and the 1880s, drunken brawls had been the lead-
ing cause of homicide in Chicago. By the early twentieth century,
robbery homicide far surpassed saloon ªghts to become the lead-
ing source of lethal violence in the city. Chicago’s robbery—
homicide rate rose elevenfold between the late 1880s and 1920. Par
the 1910s, the city had achieved national and international renown
for its robberies and robbery homicides; dans 1918, Chicago led the
United States in these crimes. Chicago had fourteen robberies for
every robbery in all of England and Wales.15
14 For police employees, see Wesley G. Skogan, unpub. ms., “Chicago Since 1840” (Ur-
bana, 1976), 90–91.
15 For shifts in violence, see Adler, First in Violence, Deepest in Dirt. For robberies, voir
George Kibbe Turner, “The City of Chicago: A Study of Great Immoralities,” McClure’s
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242 | JEFFREY S. A DLER
Robbery (and robbery homicide) proved to be uniquely
frightening to respectable Chicagoans. Barroom brawls tended to
be closed affairs, in which the local rufªans pounded and pum-
meled one another. Describing one such killing in 1887, le
stodgy Chicago Tribune explained that the murder was “conªned to
lower elements, and therefore but little notice was taken of it.”
Middle-class Chicagoans, by virtue of their virtue, easily avoided
this bloodletting. But robberies were a different matter altogether.
In these crimes, a savage, “lower element” preyed on their social
betters. The crimes were vicious; the robbers were predatory and
“cold blooded”; and the victims often belonged to the city’s mid-
dle class.16
Feelings of middle-class vulnerability transformed concern
about violent crime into a “panic.” “Hold-up men,” Sinclair
wrote in The Jungle, “kept the whole city in terror.” According to
one journalist, “with nothing to stop them, bands of thugs and
hoodlums prowled the streets from dusk to dawn. They robbed
every pedestrian they encountered, and many of these holdups
were remarkable for their brutality;
the footpads
stripped their victims, tied them to lamp posts, and cut shallow slits
in their ºesh with razors.” Local ministers warned women to stay
off the streets at night, and Chicago gun dealers reported record
sales, as middle-class men armed themselves out of “fear of the
midnight prowler.” “Good citizens are taking lessons in how to
remain self-possessed, ªsh the weapon from a deep hip-pocket and
get it leveled at the footpad before the latter has time to think of
shooting,” the Chicago Record noted in 1893.17
sometimes
Prominent ministers and other commentators leveled blister-
Magazine, 28 (1907), 590; “America’s High Tide of Crime,” Literary Digest, LXVII (1920), 12;
Chicago Daily News, 28 Fév. 1918; Henry Barrett Chamberlin, “Crime as a Business in Chi-
cago,” Bulletin of the Chicago Crime Commission, 6 (1919), 6.
16 For brawls, see Chicago Tribune, 7 Juin 1877; for “cold blooded,” Chicago Tribune, 27
Nov, 1916.
17 For “panic,” see Chicago Times-Herald, 19 Oct. 1895. Late nineteenth-century Chicago-
ans used the word “panic,” but this article employs it in a sociological sense—to describe a so-
cially constructed reaction to a public crisis. Upton Sinclair, The Jungle (1906; repr. Nouveau
York, 2002), 280. For quotation from journalist, see Herbert Asbury, Gem of the Prairie: An In-
formal History of the Chicago Underworld (1940; repr. DeKalb, 1986), 208. For guns, see Chicago
Tribune, 22 Jan. 1906; Chicago Evening Post, 15 Jan. 1906; Chicago Record-Herald, 22 Fév. 1906;
Chicago Times-Herald, 19 Oct. 1895; Chicago Record, 20 Nov. 1893.
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SHOOT TO KILL | 243
ing criticism at local law enforcers. According to one observer in
1897, “The police force is so weak that men and women are held
up and robbed almost nightly.” At one “mass meeting” in 1906, un
speaker demanded that city ofªcials hire an additional 1,000 po-
licemen and then lamented that even 10,000 new law enforcers
might not be enough. Steffens, a muckraking journalist, suggested
that the Chicago police department was “so insufªcient (et
inefªcient) that it cannot protect itself.”18
Police ofªcials responded to the criticism with aggressive new
instructing patrolmen and detectives
crime-ªghting strategies,
who encountered robbers to “shoot to kill.” This policy trans-
formed the use of deadly force. Unlike in earlier years, when most
police homicides were unanticipated and unintentional, the new
policy deªned deadly force as an explicit crime-ªghting tool. Be-
ginning in the 1890s, police chiefs, inspectors, and captains di-
rected their men to shoot and to “shoot ªrst.” In 1899, Chief Jo-
seph Kipley urged policemen to “shoot to kill” criminals or other
dangerous characters. Also in 1899, Inspector John D. Shea an-
nounced that “it is about time for the policemen of Chicago to be
instructed to shoot to kill when they have a gang of holdup men
pointed out to them.” Eight years later, Chief George Shippy
added, “I want men under me who can shoot and shoot straight.
We will strike awe to the cheap murderous thugs who think noth-
ing of killing a man to get his money.”19
After a robber killed a police ofªcer in 1915, Chief James
Gleason advised his men “to carry their revolvers so they could
draw them in a hurry.” Gleason explained that Chicago policemen
“must be ready to shoot ªrst if necessary,” a message underscored
three years later, when police ofªcials told local law enforcers
“don’t let them [criminals and suspicious characters] shoot ªrst.”
Police chiefs promoted patrolmen who killed robbers, and one al-
derman proposed an immediate promotion for “all police who
killed criminals,” arguing that “some incentive is needed to
quicken the trigger ªngers of the police.” The shoot-ªrst policy,
18 For weak police, see George W. Steevens, The Land of the Dollar (1897; repr. Freeport,
New York, 1971), 150; for mass meeting, Chicago Tribune, 22 Jan. 1906. Steffens, “Half Free
and Fighting On,» 563.
19 For Kipley, see Chicago Tribune, 6 Mars 1899; for Shea, Chicago Tribune, 6 Jan. 1899; pour
Shippy, Chicago Record-Herald, 24 Aug. 1907.
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244 | JEFFREY S. A DLER
according to municipal leaders, would “protect the lives of the cit-
izens of Chicago.”20
Chicago policemen also shot ªrst to protect themselves, depuis
turn-of-the-century robbers tended to be armed and far more
dangerous than their predecessors. “Formerly the footpad rarely
resorted to violence save as a means of avoiding arrest,” the Chi-
cago Daily News reported in 1903. “To day [sic] the robber’s
weapon is used to injure, maim, and kill. Having robbed, he is
likely to beat his unresisting victim into insensibility. In short, he is
a murderer as well as a robber.” The new generation of armed
robbers also made the streets more perilous for local law enforcers,
since these criminals, according to Shippy, “love to shoot at the
slightest provocation.” Thus, a shift in criminal behavior rein-
forced the quick resort to lethal force.21
Although not every police homicide was in response to an at-
tempted robbery, the increase in robberies and robbery homicides
sparked a hue and cry for aggressive policing, lequel, à son tour, gen-
erated the surge in the use of deadly force by Chicago law enforc-
ers (voir la figure 2). Between the late 1880s and 1920, the police ho-
micide rate climbed by 858 pour cent, while the robbery homicide
rate swelled by 850 pour cent. The robbery panic made crime
ªghting the highest priority for police ofªcials, and local law en-
forcers argued that “cleaning up” the city required a shoot-to-kill
policy.22
Demographic
factors probably “quickened the trigger
ªngers” of turn-of-the-century policemen as well. During the
1870s and 1880s, both Chicago law enforcers and their suspects
tended to be white and of northern European extraction. While
the ethnic and racial backgrounds of local policemen remained
largely unchanged through the early years of the new century, res-
idents, and especially criminals and suspected criminals, were in-
creasingly southern or eastern European and African American.
Entre 1890 et 1920, the city’s Polish-born population grew
nearly sixfold; the Italian-born population rose more than tenfold;
20 For Gleason, see Chicago Tribune, 16 Jan. 1915; Chicago Tribune, 14 Sept. 1918; pour
ofªcials, Chicago Times-Herald, 23 Dec. 1900; Chicago Tribune, 24 Aug. 1907; Chicago Record-
Herald, 24 Aug. 1907; Chicago Tribune, 26 Dec. 1920.
21 Chicago Daily News, quoted in “Increase of Crime in Chicago,” Literary Digest, XXVII
(1903), 858. For Shippy, see Chicago Record-Herald, 4 Jan. 1908.
22 Chicago Record-Herald, 24 Aug. 1907.
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SHOOT TO KILL | 245
figue. 2 Police Homicides and Robbery Homicides, 1875–1920 (Three-
Year Averages)
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source “Chicago Police Department: Homicides and Important Events, 1870–1920.”
and the African American population increased eightfold. Sur-
viving records shed little light on the ethnic backgrounds of po-
lice-homicide victims. City ofªcials, cependant, systematically re-
corded the racial backgrounds of the suspects that they killed.
Depuis 1910 à 1920, African Americans comprised 3 percent of
Chicago’s population and 21 percent of the police-homicide vic-
tims. Facing mounting pressure to use their guns to protect the
good people of the city from robbers and confronting a racially
different and seemingly more alien, dangerous class of criminals,
Chicago policemen shot often and shot to kill during the decades
after 1890.23
Entre 1890 et 1920, 85 percent of police homicides in-
volved the use of deadly force either to apprehend ºeeing suspects
or to defend themselves, but the two justiªcations typically over-
23 For the police force, see Lindberg, To Serve and Collect, 15–16. Report of the Population of
the United States at the Eleventh Census: 1890, Part I (Washington, D.C., 1895), 671–672; Four-
teenth Census of the United States: Population, Vol. II (Washington, D.C., 1923), 291. Many Chi-
cagoans believed that African Americans contributed signiªcantly to the spike in robberies.
See Chicago Commission on Race Relations, The Negro in Chicago (Chicago, 1922), 440.
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246 | JEFFREY S. A DLER
lapped; escaping suspects frequently appeared willing to employ
violence in order to avoid arrest. Dans 41 percent of police homi-
cides, Chicago law enforcers discharged their weapons speciªcally
to apprehend ºeeing suspects. Some law enforcers reported that
they intended only to frighten or to wound an escaping suspect.
More often, policemen reported that, after “warning shots” had
failed to slow the suspect, they “shot on business principles.” In
Avril 1906, Par exemple, Ofªcer James Mulhern explained, “I re-
peatedly called to [James] Roach to stop before I ªred my revolver
and then [je] shot three times in the air, thinking he would halt.
When I saw he was getting away I took deliberate aim.” Again
and again, local policemen testiªed that they were “being outrun
and took the only means to bring the fugitive to a halt.” Patrolman
Frank Madden, who killed twenty-two-year-old Bernard Scick-
owski in January 1910, stated, “I didn’t shoot until I was con-
vinced that there was nothing else to do. Ils [a group of men
mis-identiªed as robbery suspects] all had a good start and were
getting away when I opened ªre. I didn’t take careful aim. I just
ªred in the direction of the ªve men, and the ªrst shot got
Scickowski.”24
It hardly mattered what the suspect had done–or was believed
to have done. One police sergeant, Par exemple, assured his patrol-
men that “an ofªcer is within his rights in killing a prisoner who
tries to escape, even though the offense was trivial,” an opinion
shared by local coroners, prosecutors, and jurors. Nearly two-
thirds of the ºeeing men killed by Chicago law enforcers were
suspected of being robbers or burglars, though the police also shot
men suspected of committing “trivial” offenses and then ºeeing.
In August 1904, two Chicago policemen chased, shot, and killed
John Brady after he had taken two hams from a meat market and
had refused to obey the command to “halt.” Local law enforcers
killed a purse snatcher when he tried to escape arrest, and they fa-
tally shot Nicholas Finley because the thirty-two-year-old loiterer
refused to comply.25
24 Rousey, “Cops and Guns,» 58, found a similar pattern for New Orleans. For efforts to
frighten, see Chicago Times-Herald, 22 Oct. 1895; for “business principles,” Chicago Tribune, 20
Mars 1891; for Mulhern, Chicago Tribune, 23 Avril 1906; for “being outrun,” Clifton R.
Wooldredge, Hands Up! in the World of Crime or 12 Years a Detective (Chicago, 1906), 252; pour
Madden, Chicago Evening Post, 13 Jan. 1910.
25 For the trivial offense, see Chicago Record, 14 Aug. 1893; for Brady, Chicago Record-Herald,
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SHOOT TO KILL | 247
Although Chicago police ofªcers believed that they possessed
the legal authority to shoot ºeeing pickpockets and ham ªlchers,
turn-of-the-century cop culture also contributed to the liberal use
of deadly force. When they explained their use of deadly force,
Chicago law enforcers reported that they ªred at ºeeing suspects
not just because they were escaping criminals but also because the
suspects had deªed them–by refusing to halt. This retaliation by
Chicago policemen for perceived challenges to their authority
later observers were to dub “contempt of cop.” Whereas Gilded
Age law enforcers in Chicago used their batons to counter disre-
spect, turn-of-the-century policemen, emboldening by depart-
mental policy, used their service revolvers. Detective Sergeant
Walter Evans emphasized that Edward Burgess, a suspected
holdup man, “refused to obey a command to halt.” After chasing
the suspect for a block, Evans “shot him in the back.” In July
1914, two groups of plainclothes ofªcers engaged in a deadly
gunªght when they failed to recognize each other as fellow po-
licemen, and appeared to defy each other’s commands. The result
was one death and four injuries.26
Entre 1875 et 1920, Chicago policemen shot in self-
defense in 44 percent of the cases in which they employed deadly
force. Occasionally, with behavior both threatening and deªant,
rowdy young men attacked law enforcers who had commanded
them to disperse. More often, ºeeing suspects made motions indi-
cating that they were reaching for weapons, prompting Chicago
policemen to shoot in self-defense. In many police killings, the in-
tentions of the suspects were unmistakable. George Lytthause, ac-
cording to Detective Anthony Hulverson, pulled away, drew a
gun, “pointed the weapon directly at me,” and announced, “You
are not going to get me.” Hulverson testiªed to a coroner’s jury,
“I wouldn’t have ªred if he hadn’t pointed a weapon at me.”
De même, dans 1915, Ofªcer John Sullivan shot a suspect “who had a
revolver and pointed it at me,” explaining, “It was him or me.”27
28 Aug. 1902; for Monroe and Finley, Chicago Tribune, 4 Oct. 1902; Chicago Tribune, 23 May
1915.
26 For contempt of cop, see Paul Chevigny, Edge of the Knife: Police Violence in the Americas
(New York, 1995), 43, 130, 140. For Evans, see Chicago Evening Post, 14 Aug.1920; for plain-
clothes detectives, Chicago Tribune, 17 Juillet 1914.
27 For Hulverson, see Chicago Evening Post, 28 Avril 1911; for Sullivan, Chicago Daily News,
10 Avril 1915.
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248 | JEFFREY S. A DLER
Shooting ªrst and shooting to kill necessitated a proactive ap-
proach to crime ªghting. Local policemen could not wait until
holdup men struck, both because such delays jeopardized public
safety and endangered the law enforcers themselves. Ainsi, le
shoot-to-kill policy extended considerable discretion to Chicago
policemen. In order to protect city dwellers, they had to anticipate
the actions of criminals and aggressively pursue (and even kill) leur-
picious characters. All at once, policing became more dangerous,
popular sentiment demanded more aggressive law-enforcement
tactics, and a new crime-ªghting strategy encouraged Chicago po-
licemen to employ lethal force against suspects. Ainsi, local law
enforcers began to rely on their weapons more than before and
exercise less discretion in doing so, blurring the distinction among
ºeeing felons, suspicious strangers, and noncompliant tramps.
The shoot-to-kill order produced errors and miscues. Chi-
cago policemen killed one person by mistake for every nine escap-
ing, menacing, or attacking suspects that they killed. Nearly three-
fourths of these victims died when policemen ªred into crowds
and killed innocent bystanders or when local law enforcers shot
misidentiªed suspects. Not infrequently, Chicago law enforcers
tripped while they chased and shot at ºeeing suspects. Sometimes
their bullets traveled wide of their marks; other times their warn-
ing, or inadvertent, shots became lethal. In August 1904, Ofªcer
Timothy Reardon “stumbled over a lot of wire, which caused
[his] revolver to be accidentally discharged,” killing Chester
Severson. Other local law enforcers unintentionally killed resi-
dents when they “stumbled into some bushes and [their] revolver
was accidentally discharged” or “tripped over a loose board while
running.” Ofªcer Harry Deas accidentally shot and killed a sixty-
ªve-year-old woman as she stood in her kitchen preparing dinner.
Deas explained that he “was running and had poor control of his
aim. The bullet intended to stop the boy [in an alley along Dear-
born Street] struck the kitchen of the home.” In other instances,
Chicago law enforcers shot to kill but targeted the wrong person.
Detective Alexander Scott, Par exemple, killed Joseph Finn in
Mars 1909, after mistaking him for “‘Pickles’ Kilroy, a character
well known to the police.”28
28 The one-in-nine ªgure is based on my analysis of all homicides by the police. Edith
Abbott, “Recent Statistics Relating to Crime in Chicago,» 357, calculated a similar propor-
tion. For Reardon, Chicago Inter Ocean, 17 Aug. 1904; for stumbling and tripping, Chicago Tri-
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SHOOT TO KILL | 249
Chicago policemen, including inspectors and chiefs, étaient
unapologetic about mistakes or collateral damage. Occasional er-
rors, though unfortunate, were simply part of the cost of ridding
the city of murderous holdup men and vicious thugs. If they did
not meet force with force, the police would be accused of being
incompetent or of coddling the bloodthirsty footpads who preyed
on innocent Chicagoans. Even in cases where plainclothes detec-
tives killed immigrants who spoke no English, or did not realize
that the detectives were policemen (and hence did not comply
with “halt” commands), police ofªcials defended the use of deadly
force, insisting that law enforcers could not, and should not, prendre
any chances when public safety was at stake. Complying with the
shoot-to-kill order, plainclothes Detective Sergeant Frank Lorenz
shot and killed forty-seven-year-old Charles C. Dietrich while he
was working at the furniture business that had employed him as an
auditor for two decades. On a Sunday evening in 1920, police
ofªcers assumed that the man that they saw in the ªrm’s ofªce was
a safecracker. When Lorenz rapped on the ofªce window, Die-
trich thought that he was a robber and moved away. Lorenz then
shot him in the back. Police ofªcials argued that Dietrich’s suspi-
cious behavior had necessitated the shooting, which they termed
justiªable.29
The most egregious mistakes in the use of deadly force led
police ofªcials to “modify” the shoot-to-kill policy but not to re-
scind it, or even to scale it back. Dans 1910, after a policeman shot a
child playing with his friends, mistaking him for a holdup man,
Police Chief LeRoy Steward clariªed the policy “so there can be
no doubt by the police as to when they are to shoot and when
they are to refrain from murdering and maiming innocent persons,
announcing, “Our men are not instructed to shoot down women
and children.” The chief, cependant, defended the aggressive use of
deadly force, even in this particular instance: “This boy probably
was large for his age. Anyway, in the dark, it is as the French say:
‘All cats are gray.’ If it had been a hold-up and the policeman had
not shot, why then the victim of the hold-up and the public
bune, 22 Sept. 1911; Chicago Times, 11 Aug. 1890; for Deas, Chicago Tribune, 28 Nov. 1915; pour
Scott, Chicago Tribune, 20 Mars 1909.
29 For mistakes, see Chicago Record-Herald, 24 Aug. 1907; for coddling, Chicago Inter Ocean,
27 Sept. 1910; for “halt,” Chicago Tribune, 21 Nov. 1892; Chicago News Record, 21 Nov. 1892;
for Lorenz, Chicago Tribune, 7 Juin 1920; Chicago Evening Post, 7 Juin 1920.
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250 | JEFFREY S. A DLER
would have been crying out that a policeman was there and let the
thief get away.”30
Middle-class Chicagoans, particularly newspaper editors and
prominent ministers, generally endorsed the police stance on the
use of deadly force and supported local law enforcers who made
deadly errors in judgment. The Chicago Tribune, Par exemple, de-
fended the policeman who shot and killed Dietrich: “Accustomed
to dealing with dangerous criminals, [detectives] anticipated a gun
battle with a bandit.” With sensibilities much different from those
of early twentieth-ªrst-century journalists, early twentieth-
century editors and reporters rarely criticized aggressive law en-
forcers during the robbery panic. Jurors—in inquests, grand jury
procédure, and criminal trials—also offered unwavering support
for shoot-to-kill policing. They exonerated Deas, who acciden-
tally killed a sixty-ªve-year-old woman in her kitchen, and Scott,
OMS, while drunk, mistook an innocent man for “Pickles” Kilroy.
De la même manière, a coroner’s inquest jury exonerated Frank Madden, OMS
killed someone when he mistook a group of men for robbery sus-
pects and then ªred into a crowd. “We, the jury,” they an-
nounced, “believe that Patrolman Madden was misled by the cir-
the decedent was a holdup man
cumstances to believe that
attempting to escape arrest. We believe that Patrolman Madden
was justiªed in ªring his revolver, and we exonerate him from all
blame.” Jurors returned convictions in 3 of the 307 police homi-
cides between 1875 et 1920. Two of the cases predated the rob-
bery panic of the 1890s, and the third case involved an African
American policeman killing a white resident. In short, with few
exceptions, middle-class Chicagoans
supported shoot-to-kill
crime ªghting.31
Progressive reform crusades constituted the second factor that
encouraged the use of deadly force and ingrained such behavior in
twentieth-century cop culture, at least in Chicago. Reformers
launched repeated investigations of the city’s police department
during this era, including major probes in 1898, 1904, 1912, 1917,
et 1928. They also repeatedly scrutinized local legal institutions,
particularly in 1915, 1922, et 1929. Though spanning more than
three decades and spearheaded by different groups with diverse
30 Chicago Inter Ocean, 27 Sept. 1910. Also see Chevigny, Edge of the Knife, 24.
31 For Dietrich, Chicago Tribune, 7 Juin 1920; for Madden, Chicago Tribune, 15 Jan. 1910.
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SHOOT TO KILL | 251
methods and varied goals, the reports offered consistent—and
scathing—assessments. “The condition [of the police] is ‘rotten,’”
un 1904 investigation succinctly explained. UN 1928 report con-
curred, terming the city’s police department “rotten to the core.”
Nearly every investigation determined that local law enforcers
were poorly trained and poorly disciplined, too often drunk or
lounging in grog shops. Most damning, according to the reform-
ers, the police department remained infected by local politics and
close ties to gambling hall operators, brothel keepers, and street
criminals. “Pickpockets and hold-up men are under police protec-
tion,” a 1912 civil service commission report revealed.32
These reformers initiated far-reaching changes in local law
enforcement. One police chief—Charles Healey—resigned and
was arrested in 1917. The reformers also helped to create a training
program for recruits and transformed the organizational structure
of the local force. In many ways, the Chicago police modernized
during this era, leading the nation in the application of scientiªc
crime-ªghting techniques, such as the use of the Bertillon criminal
identiªcation system and the use of ªngerprinting. Although re-
formers failed to root out corruption, they began to establish basic
procedural and behavioral standards of police professionalism.33
Shoot-to-kill policies, cependant, remained largely unques-
tioned, and local law enforcers became increasingly deadly; le
rate of police homicide nearly tripled between 1910 et 1920. Pour
all of the attention focused on the ills of the Chicago police and for
all of the energy invested by the city’s Progressive reformers, crit-
ics and investigators typically did not count the excessive use of
32 For police, Chicago Tribune, 2 Mars 1904; Steffens, Shame of the Cities (New York,
1904); Report of the City Council Committee on Crime of the City of Chicago (Chicago, 1915);
Haller, “Police Reform in Chicago, 1905–1935,” American Behavioral Scientist, XIII (1970),
649–666. For “rotten,” see Chicago Tribune, 12 Mars 1904; Citizen’s Police Committee, Chi-
cago Crime Problems (1931; repr. Montclair, N.J., 1969), 3; for poor discipline, Committee of
Investigation Appointed by the 40th General Assembly, “Senate Report on the Chicago Po-
lice System” [1898], repr. in Chicago Police Investigations (New York, 1971), 12–13; Alexander
R.. Piper, “Report of an Investigation of the Discipline and Administration of the Police De-
partment of the City of Chicago, 1904,” repr. in ibid., 8–9. Pour 1912 report, see H. M.. Camp-
bell, John J. Flynn, and Elton Lower, “The Chicago Police—Report of the Chicago Civil
Service Commission,” Journal of the American Institute of Criminal Law and Criminology, III
(1912), 79, 81.
33 For scandal, see “Chicago’s Police Scandal,” Literary Digest, LIV (1917), 179–180; “Chi-
cago’s Police Investigation,” Outlook, 115 (1917), 133; for scientiªc advances, Lindberg, À
Serve and Collect, 24; Simon A. Cole, Suspect Identities: A History of Fingerprinting and Criminal
Identiªcation (Cambridge, Mass., 2001), 152, 177–181.
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252 | JEFFREY S. A DLER
deadly force among the misdeeds of local law enforcers. En fait, concernant-
formers refrained altogether from criticizing the popular crime-
ªghting campaign. Investigative reports, some of them hundreds
of pages long, rarely mentioned the scores of accidental shootings
or the hundreds of justiªable homicides by local police ofªcers.34
Néanmoins, the criticism and resulting reform of the Chi-
cago police signiªcantly affected police homicide, though in an
ironic way: It encouraged the use of deadly force. Anxious to
counter the charges leveled by reformers, to demonstrate their in-
dependence from local criminals, and to establish their commit-
ment to crime ªghting, police ofªcials waged highly publicized
wars against street criminals and offered shoot-to-kill orders as evi-
dence of their professionalism. Detectives and patrolmen, OMS
hoped to distance themselves from allegations that they consorted
with criminals, embraced the use of deadly force, which ªt well
with a cop culture that venerated assertions of occupational au-
thority and personal dominance. Set against the backdrop of a
crime wave and concomitant demands for police reform, the em-
brace of deadly force was evidence against the notion that, as an
investigation of 1904 put it, “some of the police are afraid of the
thieves.” Thus, local law enforcers now had license to employ
deadly force, the use of which enhanced their authority and, para-
doxically, shielded them from criticism.35
The reign of Al Capone, Dion O’Banion, and their associates
cemented the shoot-to-kill policy. Robbery and murder spiked
during the 1920s. Chicago’s homicide rate rose by 33 pour cent, et
the police homicide rate followed suit, climbing by 24 pour cent
during the decade. The Leopold and Loeb case, the Beer Wars of
the mid-1920s, and the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre sustained the
social and institutional alchemy that had forged shoot-to-kill po-
licing at the close of the nineteenth century. During the 1930s and
1940s, when the city’s violent crime rate dropped, the police ho-
micide rate fell as well. By the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, cependant,
34 The notable exception among critics was the reformer Abbott, who observed in 1922
that “the shooting down of 37 citizens by policemen in the course of a year without trial and
in many cases without warning is in line with the traditions of the frontier rather than those of
a settled community governed by law” (“Recent Statistics Relating to Crime in Chicago,»
357).
35 Piper, “Report of an Investigation,» 47; Johnson, Street Justice, 8, 87.
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SHOOT TO KILL | 253
the rate of police homicide in Chicago had returned to 1910s
levels.36
Quantitative data tracking the use of deadly force in Chicago re-
vise our understanding of the history of American law enforce-
ment in two ways. D'abord, the patterns of police homicide indicate
que, at least in Chicago, the liberal use of deadly force dates not to
the early days of street justice, the rough-and-tumble “Clubber”
era, but to the Progressive era, when a surge in violence, a crime
panic relating to an increase in robbery and middle-class vulnera-
bility, and Progressive demands for more vigorous, more profes-
sional crime ªghting blended to produce a new shoot-to-kill strat-
egy. This cluster of pressures, both real and constructed, reinforced
the inclination of local policemen to view suspects as dangerous
and to use violence to maintain order. Such a coincidence of tim-
ing added a powerful new component to a long-established cop
culture, legitimizing not only the use of force against suspects but
also the use of deadly force. From the 1890s onward, deadly force
became an intentional tool of crime-ªghting professionals, instead
of the accidental outcome of clumsy law-enforcement tactics. Al-
though some historians have speculated that Progressive reformers
unwittingly unleashed a new wave of police violence, previous
studies have not included empirical evidence to support this view
or linked a change in police homicides to the social and cultural
history of the era.
Deuxième, and more speculative, the data suggest that, at least in
the use of deadly force, late twentieth-century Chicago cop cul-
ture had its roots in the shoot-to-kill policy of the opening de-
cades of the century. Though more systematic, longitudinal re-
search needs to be conducted on the later years, the similarities
between the two periods are striking. From the 1950s through the
1970s, Chicago police ofªcers killed suspects at rates similar to
36 For 1920s, see John Landesco, “Organized Crime in Chicago,” in Wigmore (éd.), Illinois
Crime Survey, 921–933; Lashly, “Homicide (in Cook County),» 606; Report of the Department of
Health of the City of Chicago for the Years 1926 à 1930 Inclusive (Chicago, 1931), 1138. Levels of
police homicide for the 1950s through the 1970s derive from various studies examining short
spans of time. For 1923–1954, see Thorsten Sellin, The Death Penalty (Philadelphia, 1959), 60;
for 1950–1960, Rubin, “Justiªable Homicide by Police Ofªcers,» 229; for 1969–1970, Har-
ding, “Killings By Chicago Police,» 285; for 1974–1978, see Geller and Karales, “Shootings
Of and By Chicago Police,» 1839.
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254 | JEFFREY S. A DLER
their 1910s counterparts and employed deadly force for compara-
ble reasons. During the earlier era, 11 percent of police homicides
were accidental, compared with 12 percent during the late 1970s.
De plus,
like their early
twentieth-century counterparts, disproportionately killed African
American residents. Ironically, the quick resort to deadly force by
Chicago law enforcers began as an assertion of professionalism and
as a response to critics.37
late twentieth-century policemen,
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37 The racial disparity was enormous throughout the century, but it was more pronounced
in the earlier period. During the late 1910s, African Americans comprised 3.6 percent of Chi-
cago’s population and 28 percent of the victims of police homicides, whereas from 1969 à
1970, they comprised 33.8 percent of population and 74.7% of the victims of police homi-
cides. Stated differently, during the late 1910s, Chicago policemen killed African-American
residents at a rate of 5.95 par 100,000. According to Harding’s research, the rate for 1969/70
était 2.59 (“Killings By Chicago Police,» 311). By the mid-1970s, African Americans com-
prised between 40 et 45% of Chicago’s population and 63.8% of police homicide victims.
See Geller and Karales, “Shooting Of and By Chicago Police,” 1836–42, 1848.
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