The Rock Takes Over

Some Chicagoans like to sneer that their city has the best police force that money can buy. Others note that it has often been difficult to tell the cops from the crooks without a lineup card. But James M. Rochford, who has spent half of his 52 years on the force, thunders: "I abhor dishonesty among policemen." If he is eager to root out corruption, Rochford has landed the right job; last week he was named Chicago's superintendent of police. He moves in just when the city is in the grip of a police scandal of truly startling proportions, even by its historically gamy standards.

In the past three years, 86 policemen have been indicted for crimes; 48 have been convicted, including two captains. A total of 407 cops have been fired or forced to quit after superiors accused them of such activities as consorting with prostitutes and selling heroin. Investigations are still going on.

As with all other phases of public life in Chicago, the investigations--and the appointment of Rochford--have political overtones. The 13,800-member police force is closely controlled by Democratic Mayor Richard Daley, whose scandal-ridden machine has run the city since 1955. The prosecutions are being pushed by two politically ambitious Republicans--U.S. Attorney James ("Big Jim") Thompson and Bernard Carey, the state's attorney for Chicago's Cook County.

Thompson uncovered two highly organized police extortion rings that preyed on the near-North Side liquor trade during the past few years. The cops set up "vice clubs" and "invited" everyone to join who sold liquor--the owners of corner taverns, Gold Coast bistros, swinging singles spots and homosexual hangouts. Dues were $100 to $200 a month, and the benefits of membership were simply the privilege of operating without harassment. Those who refused to join sometimes found cops entering their places and endlessly checking identification of their customers. Uncooperative owners were threatened with loss of their liquor licenses, which the police controlled.

The two extortion rings netted more than half a million dollars for their police operators. Thompson has so far indicted 37 men and won convictions of 23, including the two captains. Meanwhile he is investigating four other districts of Chicago for possible rings.

In still another scandal, after six bodies were found floating in the city's waterways, suspicion focused not on Chicago's gangsters but on Chicago's cops. Some of the victims were thought to be dealers in heroin who had failed to buy off the police with bribe money.

Two policemen were sentenced to life for their roles in two of the killings.

Last November the Chicago Tribune documented many sickening cases of police brutality. Among the victims were a teen-ager who lost an eye after being wantonly slugged by a policeman, and a woman who gave birth to a deformed child after being pounded in the abdomen by a patrolman. The series of articles led to the indictments of four cops, whose cases are still pending.

Dirty Money. After the liquor extortion scandals broke in 1972, Superintendent James Conlisk created a task force called C-5 to ferret out corruption.

The agents moved into the 21 police districts, posing as cops, garbagemen and vagrants. They frequented gambling dens and policy wheel operations, and they found plenty of crooked cops. These police were regularly making their "meets" with the persons who were buying their protection or picking up their "drops" of money left for them to collect at designated spots. An area where "dirty money" was to be made easily was often dubbed a high-crime or "fast" district, and the cop who was not on the take was often automatically suspected of being an undercover agent.

Why else would he pass up the money?

Modest Reforms. As the extortion scandal grew, Conlisk stepped down under pressure last November, becoming chief of traffic. Rochford, his right-hand man, was named acting superintendent until a permanent replacement could be found. The city's police board screened 250 applicants for the job, then passed on three names--including Rochford's --for consideration by the mayor. In an anticlimactic ending, Daley then announced, as many had suspected all along he would, that the job was Rochford's.

The new superintendent is the epitome of the no-nonsense cop who worked his way up from walking a beat. A beefy six-footer with a florid face and thinning red hair, Rochford comes from an Irish-American family of cops; nine of his and his wife's relatives were or are policemen. His courage is unquestioned.

During World War II the man whom the cops call "the Big Rock" won two Bronze Stars as an infantry sergeant in the Pacific. As a policeman, Rochford once walked into a house in pursuit of a sniper who had killed two cops--and he walked out with his man. But his record is not without blemish: he was overall commander during the brutal police clashes with demonstrators at the 1968 Democratic Convention, when his men got out of control. Rochford was also in charge of the police who fired a volley of shots--wounding one youth--in a riot at a 1970 rock festival in Grant Park.

Rochford immediately called for a "complete turnabout" on the force and proposed a list of modest reforms that filled three single-spaced pages. Main items: setting up a new Office of Professional Standards, staffed in part by civilians, to investigate police brutality and corruption; reinstating psychiatric evaluations of applicants to weed out the emotionally unstable; and attracting more blacks and Spanish-speaking people to the force. Rochford also asked the mayor to take away the police's power to issue liquor licenses and give it to some other city agency.

In addition, Rochford disclosed results of lie-detector tests that he had ordered 72 top officers to take in order to determine if any had participated in or condoned acts of corruption. Seven men failed all four questions, and nine failed one or more. Rochford demanded and is getting the resignations of all 72 officers. He will now determine who should be reinstated, demoted or fired.

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