Legend Meets Legend

Some of Chicago's 11,200 cops must be honest, but cynical Chicagoans are convinced that the blue-coated arm of the law leads directly to an outstretched hand. One public administration expert studied the Chicago cops' political "clout" and time-perfected "take" systems, reported with scholarly awe that only one procedure would clean up the department: fire all hands, start over. Mob murders go unsolved as in Capone's reign, and petty bribery of traffic cops is the accepted procedure (Comedian Mort Sahl describes Chicago's Outer Drive as "the last outpost of collective bargaining"). But last week Chicago's cops got a new boss, and the legend of irresistible corruption ran into a legend of immovable rectitude.

Iron-jawed, pipe-smoking Orlando Winfield Wilson, 59, California-educated and veteran of 19 years of police work, pioneered much of modern police technology (two-way radio nets, three-wheeler motorcycles, lie detectors, police schools, etc.) during the eleven years (1928-39) he spent building the Wichita, Kans. force into a model outfit. A World War II colonel in the U.S. Army, he organized military police systems in England and Italy, later Germany. As dean of the University of California's School of Criminology in Berkeley, Wilson was called in by 13 North American cities from Birmingham to Vancouver, B.C. to reorganize ailing police departments.

Chicago's Boss-Mayor Richard J. Daley sent an SOS for Wilson last January after a small-bore burglar gave convincing evidence of his year of crime collaboration with ten Chicago cops (TIME, Feb. 1). This evidence, on top of everything else, gave Democrat Daley the worst political rocking of his five years in office, prompted him to demote his police commissioner. To California's Wilson and a blue-ribbon citizens' committee, Mayor Daley gave a sweeping order: Find the best police superintendent in the country. Last week, after interviewing no fewer than 37 candidates, the committee found its man: its own chairman, Orlando Winfield Wilson. To upgrade the job, Daley raised the superintendent's pay from $22,500 to $30,000. The new superintendent started work under few illusions. The morning of his appointment, Chicago papers reported on a four-man gang that stole $1,000,000 in furs and jewelry from Gold Coast apartments. The robbers said that they operated with impunity--before the FBI caught them and got them sent to Joliet--by paying $20,000 a year to detectives on the city burglary squad. One dapper thief, spotted by a victim, was arrested and put through police lineup, but escaped identification because a friendly ($1,000) Chicago cop disguised him in a new hairdo and horn-rimmed glasses.

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