Incorporation brings law and order to Arlington Heights

No sooner had the seal of incorporation been affixed and ”Arlington Heights” replaced “Dunton” on the railroad station sign than the new board of trustees appointed James McLaughlin village constable.

He was not paid a salary, but was put in charge of collecting dog taxes, from which he got 10 percent — about $1 a dog. Any pooch he apprehended that had no tax tag, he euthanized with his billy club and got 50 cents. The street commissioner’s salaried job was frequently paired with the constable’s duties, since both positions dealt with order and flow of commerce in the streets.

This multi-tasking officer was responsible for seeing that people didn’t tie their horse up to private property without the owner’s consent. They should not annoy people in the street or interrupt any school or church meeting with profane language or vulgar conduct.

Citizens were required to dispose of loose garbage and clean up after their horse (like walking your dog today, only with a snow shovel and grain sack). Those who let their horse clomp along the sidewalk were subject to a fine.

Being an essentially peaceable community, it was 1889 before the trustees popped for a tin badge with “police” embossed on it for $1.50.

During this time, the railroad was the village lifeline, bringing in goods and services while taking away everything from milk cans to cattle. It also brought in seed and farm implement drummers, transients looking for odd jobs and lowlifes looking to gull the hicks for a quick score and move on. The saloons in town and the railroad station became hangouts and occasional trouble spots.

Arlington Heights needed a jail. In 1892, the village purchased a “city hall” at the corner of Wing and Davis streets, which served as a courthouse. As the number of tosspots, tax evaders, trespassers and cardsharps multiplied, the village finally bought two iron bar cells for the city hall basement, measuring five-by-seven feet and six-by-seven feet with six-foot ceilings, costing $200. Prisoners were given three blankets.

The city hall could be rented for meetings, lectures and entertainment events. Renters understood their assemblies could be interrupted at any time by some scrofulous, loudmouth drunk being dragged thrashing through the hall to the basement jail.

@$ID/NormalParagraphStyle: Irene Larson, Police Department: To Better Serve the Community, Chronicle of a Prairie Town, Arlington Heights, Illinois; Arlington Heights Historical Society, 1997

Policing became more complex as the village grew and as the horse nuisance was replaced by the bicycle nuisance and then the horseless carriage, the need for more and better trained officers devolved around a three-man patrol force.

In December 1921, the village ponied up $250 for a motorcycle. With Prohibition encouraging the “Roaring ’20s,” flappers and sheiks in their powerful roadsters looking for booze-filled laughs “scorched” down back roads out in the sticks.

After the construction of Northwest Highway, the Arlington Heights police force, following decades of nickel and dime budgets, finally took in some serious money with the adoption of the “speed trap.”