Even by barbaric U.S. standards, the Chicago police’s reputation as particularly thuggish, and their stations torture chambers, has been long established. Irish Communist, and editor of the Voice of Labor, T.J. O’Flaherty meets some Irish-American cops as he is arrested for a deportation hearing and winds up in the Detective Bureau lockup for the night, which he duly describes for his paper.

‘Conditions in the Chicago Detectives Bureau’ by Thomas J. O’Flaherty from Voice of Labor (Chicago). Vol. 11 No. 588. March 2, 1923.

When I was arrested on a deportation warrant on January 29 and taken to the Detective Bureau by Messers Jacob Spolansky and Sergeant Mac Donough I did not expect to remain in that chamber of horrors over night, In fact MacDonough informed me that Spolansky would take me over to the Immigration Department right away. He did not and so this tale can be told.

While waiting for my removal to the Immigration Department I talked with the desk sergeant who was after returning from Ireland. He was an agreeable fellow and we chatted and smoked cigarettes until it was evident that I was to remain there all night, so he had to lock me up.

At six o’clock when a detective squad goes on duty the prisoners are called out for questioning and inspection. They are lined up against a wall and bombarded with every kind of verbal abuse known to the generously foul vocabulary of a detective.

On the whitewashed wall in front of which the “suspects” stand is a printed motto entitled “We bury others; why not you?” On the ceiling about three feet from the wall is a long shade which keeps the glare of about ten electric lamps on the face of the victims. Behind this light stand the detectives–about twenty of them. Most of them are husky individuals with brutal expressions. A few look humane; perhaps for a purpose. It is hardly thinkable that any decent person could stand the foul spiritual (?) environment of that detective bureau.

Abuses Victims.

The officer in charge of the squad going on duty stood in the middle of the leering crowd of detectives with papers in his hand containing the names and records–in case they have a record of those about to be quizzed. He called a name. The person called came forward and subjected to a grilling.

My typewriter refuses to take down the language that came from the maw of the plug-ugly at this stage of the examination. Nothing was too filthy. The victim could not very well help saying something. But his interrogator was never satisfied with any reply. Take off your hat.” “Put on your hat.” “I have a good mind to beat your head off” and such expressions were mild. The majority of the expressions used would be considered bad form in a bawdy house.

And these men claim to the Christians.

Usually Beaten.

I have since learned that while this scene is being enacted–it takes place three times a day, about 8 and 9 o’clock in the morning and 6 in the evening–physical exercise is indulged in and the burly detectives punch the poor helpless creatures and bang them against the wall until their desire for revenge is satisfied. It was the general opinion that the public scare caused by the treatment accorded to the organist John Fitch, saved us from similar treatment. The hypocritical papers pretend that this is a revelation to them but it is common knowledge that in the detective bureau it is the custom to take out the prisoners three time a day when the squads go on duty and treat them in this savage manner.

I was called by name. The interrogator looked at me as if an apparition appeared before him. He worked his ugly mug into such a shape that he did not look very different from the picture of the Neantherthal man. He hurled various questions at me while his aids chimed in by suggesting that tar and feathers should be my punishment. Perhaps the Ku Klux Klan is represented on the detective bureau. It’s that type of moron who would join the night shirt brigade.

Queer Idea of Work.

“What do you do,” I was asked. I informed them that I edited the Voice of Labor. “Trying to get by without working,” remarked one of the flat-footed fraternity, no doubt being of the opinion that a man who uses his head rather than his feet is not rendering the kind of service that could be termed “work.” The Workers’ Party did not sound good to their ears. They wanted to know what it was affiliated with. One fellow hazarded the information that was in league with the I.W.W., but the chief inquisitor turned a look of ineffable scorn on him and remarked, “I.W.W. Hell. It’s affiliated with the Communist Party.”

After being told quite forcibly that I was everything but an ornament on the American landscape and that I would be sent back to Ireland, where they “are killing each other,” my Irish-American interrogator finally advised me to take myself out of his presence, that I was paining his eyes. The feeling of repulsion was mutual. When I looked at this fellow it occurred to me that if William Jennings Bryan had one good look at him that he would drop his opposition to the monkey. If Bryan has as much regard for his God as he pretends to have he surely would not place the responsibility of putting such a human hyena into the world on his shoulders.

I returned to my cell after the inquisition and listened to the others getting tormented. It is impossible to describe the character of the proceeding on paper, suffice it to say that I have heard vile language used where the scum of the earth vied with each other in uttering the foulest expressions, but I will confess that the depths of obscenity reached by the alleged protectors of society would make the most hardened habitue of the lowest dive in Chicago blush with shame.

Filthy Cells.

So much for the verbal abuse. A few words about the cells. There are five cells on the first floor of the detective bureau. Those who were in charge of booking the prisoners were as humane as their positions allowed. They performed their dis- agreeable functions without harshness. The prisoners responded to this treatment and were orderly. After a prisoner is booked and searched he is taken to a cell. These cells are absolutely unfit for dogs, not to speak of human beings. They are dirty and suffocating, and dark. A heath of fresh air apparently has not entered these cells for years. The windows in front of the cells are black with dirt and the only light that comes into this steel cage is a flicker from the electric bulb that hangs outside the cell door.

After a night on the plank bed we were taken before the inquisition again at 8 o’clock the following morning. The procedure was the same as on the preceding evening, only the personnel of the detective squad was different. My questioner was less abusive than the boor who was in charge on the previous occasion.

I was finally released from this foul den when the Labor Defense Council secured $1,000 for my bail. (Since this story was written the Detective Bureau was investigated by a Chicago Tribune reporter and condemned as unfit even for beasts. (Ed.)

The Voice of Labor was a regional paper published in Chicago by the Workers (Communist) Party as the “The American Labor Educational Society” (with false printing and volume information to get around censorship laws of the time) and was focused on building the nascent Farmer-Labor Party while fighting for leadership with the Chicago Federation of Labor. It was produced mostly as a weekly in 1923-1924 and contains enormous detail on the activity of the Party in the city of those years.

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/vol/v11n588-mar-02-1923-VOL.pdf