Policeman
"One of the Finest"

Irish Americans controlled Chicago ward politics -- and the police force. When it was founded in 1855, the Chicago Police Department only employed native born men. Within a decade, though, a third of Chicago's police were Irish, and by 1900 the Irish dominated the department. Famously corrupt, Chicago's "finest" prevented German Americans from voting, traded favors with Michael Cassius McDonald's crime syndicate, and avoided setting foot on, much less policing, the city's roughest streets.