Word: rochford
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Some Chicagoans like to sneer that their city has the best police force that money can buy. Others note that it has often been difficult to tell the cops from the crooks without a lineup card. But James M. Rochford, who has spent half of his 52 years on the force, thunders: "I abhor dishonesty among policemen." If he is eager to root out corruption, Rochford has landed the right job; last week he was named Chicago's superintendent of police. He moves in just when the city is in the grip of a police scandal of truly startling...
...with all other phases of public life in Chicago, the investigations-and the appointment of Rochford-have political overtones. The 13,800-member police force is closely controlled by Democratic Mayor Richard Daley, whose scandal-ridden machine has run the city since 1955. The prosecutions are being pushed by two politically ambitious Republicans-U.S. Attorney James ("Big Jim") Thompson and Bernard Carey, the state's attorney for Chicago's Cook County...
Modest Reforms. As the extortion scandal grew, Conlisk stepped down under pressure last November, becoming chief of traffic. Rochford, his right-hand man, was named acting superintendent until a permanent replacement could be found. The city's police board screened 250 applicants for the job, then passed on three names-including Rochford's -for consideration by the mayor. In an anticlimactic ending, Daley then announced, as many had suspected all along he would, that the job was Rochford...
...superintendent is the epitome of the no-nonsense cop who worked his way up from walking a beat. A beefy six-footer with a florid face and thinning red hair, Rochford comes from an Irish-American family of cops; nine of his and his wife's relatives were or are policemen. His courage is unquestioned...
During World War II the man whom the cops call "the Big Rock" won two Bronze Stars as an infantry sergeant in the Pacific. As a policeman, Rochford once walked into a house in pursuit of a sniper who had killed two cops-and he walked out with his man. But his record is not without blemish: he was overall commander during the brutal police clashes with demonstrators at the 1968 Democratic Convention, when his men got out of control. Rochford was also in charge of the police who fired a volley of shots-wounding one youth-in a riot...