To Serve and Collect: Chicago Politics and Police Corruption from the Lager Beer Riot to the Summerdale Scandal, 1855-1960

by Richard C. Lindberg

Crooked politicians, gangsters, madams, and cops on the To Serve and Collect tells the story of Chicago during its formative years through the history of its legendary police department.

408 pages, Paperback

First published January 30, 1991

Reviews

[DENNIS ROHATYN]

Reader Jim is doubly mistaken. On p. 159 Lindberg states point-blank that Al Capone was
a "punk" who hailed from the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn. (PS, Little Italy is on the
Near West Side of Chicago, not in the old country). On pp. 203-06 he discusses the "myth"
that Eliot Ness created to promote himself, including his "sensational" raids on gin mills in
Chicago Heights, 30 miles south of the Windy City. He points out that a team of IRS agents
were the ones who nailed Capone, and that Ness faded into obscurity long before his death.
It is a pity that Jim quit reading, because Lindberg's book is the gold standard by which all
works on the history of Chicago law enforcement are judged (Sam Mitrani, The Rise of the
Chicago Police Department: Class and Conflict, 1850-1894 [U. of Illinois, 2013] is excellent,
but confined to the 19th century). It requires no praise or endorsement from anyone. For
the best books on organized crime, John J. Binder, Al Capone's Beer Wars (NY: Prometheus,
2017), Jonathan Eig's Get Capone (NY: Simon & Schuster, 2010), Gus Russo's The Outfit (NY:
Bloomsbury, 2001) Deirdre Bair's outstanding biography, Al Capone (NY: Nan A. Talese, 2016),
Robert M. Lombardo, Organized Crime in Chicago (U. of Illinois, 2012) and several important
studies of individual gangsters by Rose Keefe, whose blogspot offers a rich repository of info.
and analysis for beginners and scholars alike. Also invaluable is Informer, an online journal
of the History of American Crime and Law Enforcement, which grew out of William J. Helmer
and Rick Mattix, The Complete Public Enemy Almanac (Nashville: Cumberland House, 2007),
the standard reference work for the period between the two world wars. All of these sources
are ultra-reliable, without being dull or pedantic. As for Lindberg, few people know as much
about local crime and corruption as he does: Perry Duis, Sudhir Venkatesh, and (who else?)
Mike Royko are among his only peers, past and present. You can trust him implicitly, but
he won't do you any good if you misread him, or worse yet, if you don't know how to read.

[Jim · Rating 1 out of 5]

I quit reading this book at about page 210 because of certain inaccuracies concerning Al Capone. If the author can't get his facts straight on Scarface, then how can I believe the rest of the book.

First he states that Mr Capone was born in Italy. He actually was born in Brooklyn in 1899. Al is reported to have repeatedly said that he is an American, not an Italian.

Second, Scarface was brought down by IRS agent Frank Wilson who brought the charges of tax evasion that finally landed Al in prison. Eliot Ness was nothing more than an agent who was immortalized in a novel written by Oscar Fraley. Mr Ness did harass Big Al, but was not instrumental in bringing him to justice.

[Sam Reaves · Rating 3 out of 5]

From Long John Wentworth's firing the entire police department to Richie Morrison's gang of uniformed burglars, it's all here: the good the bad and the ugly of Chicago police history. Lindberg examines in depth the struggle for the soul of the CPD. Heroes and villains aplenty, sometimes in the same person.