Police ‘Crackdown’ Yields Few Real Cases : Chicago Transit Patrols Under Scrutiny

A police crackdown on criminals who prey on subway and elevated-train passengers has netted some big names--such as Ernest Hemingway, Kenny Rogers and the Hunchback of Notre Dame.

If you think that sounds strange, you are in good company.

Public officials also are suspicious. In fact, the Police Department’s internal affairs division is investigating to see if patrolmen assigned to transit duty charged some fictitious suspects with misdemeanors to make it appear they were tough on crime and to improve their performance statistics.

“It’s a massive hoax,” said Alderman Edward Burke, who disclosed the alleged practice during his campaign for the Democratic mayoral nomination.

“You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to see what’s happening,” said state Rep. James Stange, a suburban Republican who became interested in transit crime after his best friend was killed on a train.

“If (police) are doing this, they ought to be disciplined,” Mayor Eugene Sawyer said Friday, as the controversy grew.

Patrols Beefed Up

Police patrols on the city’s buses and trains were stepped up last fall, after two riders were murdered and a woman passenger was forced off an elevated train and raped on a downtown platform during the afternoon rush hour. Scores of other passengers were victimized by pickpockets, purse-snatchers and con men.

At times, the city’s rapid transit system seems crowded with thugs, hustlers and thieves of a sort likely to be found in a Charles Dickens story. “There’s a pickpocket on board,” a conductor on the North Side subway warned passengers last week. “Watch your wallets!”

“You have to be crazy to ride the trains at night,” Stange said.

In response to the crime wave, additional police officers, many in plain clothes and some with dogs, were assigned to ride the trains and buses that are used by as many as 2 million people daily.

The extra patrols did generate more cases--so many that, last month, the chief Circuit Court judge said he would have to open a special courtroom because the citations and arrests were running at more than 400 a week.

The chairman of the Regional Transportation Authority praised the Police Department for putting together a special force of “young, aggressive” officers who were “making a lot of good arrests.”

Padded With Infractions

Now, however, it appears that many--perhaps most--of those cases were fictitious, or the offenses were petty ones, such as discarding a cigarette butt, spitting or begging. Few of the transit cases ever came to trial.

“No one shows up (in court) for these cases,” said Judson H. Miner, Chicago’s city attorney. “When these cases come up, there is no policeman, no evidence and no defendant,” added Miner, who asked the Police Department to investigate its transit unit’s arrests and citations.

Alderman Burke, a former policeman, said that about “70% of the transit unit’s cases were not physical arrests, but citations (tickets). At least 50% of those were issued to derelicts or phony individuals. By the time these citations get to court, 80% are dismissed.

“It’s a quota mentality,” Burke said. “A real travesty.”

Stange charged that, instead of patrolling, “the police officers are spending hours working out at a YMCA.” Stange said he has been getting information from both police and transit personnel.

Ernest Hemingway, by the way, was charged with soliciting money from passengers. He never lived at the address given on the citation and never worked for the hotel named as his employer, according to the Chicago Tribune.