THE assault from the left was furious, fluky and bizarre. Yet the Chicago police department responded in a way that could only be characterized as sanctioned mayhem. With billy clubs, tear gas and Mace, the blue-shirted, blue-helmeted cops violated the civil rights of countless innocent citizens and contravened every accepted code of professional police discipline.
No one could accuse the Chicago cops of discrimination. They savagely attacked hippies, yippies, New Leftists, revolutionaries, dissident Democrats, newsmen, photographers, passersby, clergymen and at least one cripple. Winston Churchill's journalist grandson got roughed up. Playboy's Hugh Hefner took a whack on the backside (see PRESS). The police even victimized a member of the British Parliament, Mrs. Anne Kerr, a vacationing Laborite who was Maced outside the Conrad Hilton and hustled off to the lockup.
Creative Warlord. "The force used was the force that was necessary," insisted Police Superintendent James Conlisk Jr. He could point to the fortunate fact that no one was killed. He also pointed out—almost with pride—that the casualties included 152 cops. Yet the cops' excesses during the Democratic Convention were not basically Conlisk's doing. Chicago is Mayor Richard J. Daley's satrapy.
Daley takes a fierce, eccentric pride in Chicago. For 13 years, he has ruled his province like a Chinese warlord. The last of America's big-city bosses, the jowly, irascible mayor has on the whole been a creative autocrat, lacing his megalopolis with freeways, pulling in millions in federal spending.
Daley is also something of an original. In a city with as robust a tradition of political corruption as Boston or New York, he has maintained a pristine record of personal honesty. Yet, like any other expert monarch, he has always known where and how to tolerate corruption within his realm. The son of a sheet-metal worker, Daley grew up in the gritty district of Bridgeport, where he continues to live in a modest bungalow. After starting out as a secretary to the city council at 25, Daley scrambled upward through the party ranks. Hence his understanding of Chicago's muscles and nerves is deeply intuitive. But it is growing archaic, as the mayor's lines to the Negro community atrophy and he continues to rule in the personalistic style of a benevolent Irish despot of the wards.
Daley nonetheless retains formidable influence within the Democratic Party. Thanks to his control of the state government and delegation, King Richard is one of the most assiduously courted Democratic politicians in the country. As Robert Kennedy said last spring: "Dick Daley means the ball game."
It was through such clout that he secured the Democratic convention for Chicago. However, Lyndon Johnson and other party leaders are equally to blame. They wanted the convention in Chicago this year in large part because they felt that it was the one city where the authorities could deal successfully with the planned disruptions. Daley thought so as well.