ICE's tough-guy moment fails disastrously

Two are dead as agents trample over the Constitution

Police Captain Frank Pape cultivated a reputation in the 1950s and early 60s as Chicago’s “toughest cop.”

“Pape has been in 15 gun battles in which nine hoodlums were killed,” wrote James Gavin in the Chicago Tribune on April. 17, 1960. Detective magazines ran 49 articles about him, including an interview with Coronet in which he declared, “I’m not going to take any lip from a hoodlum.”

When Pape died in March, 2000 at the age of 91, his New York Times obituary said he was responsible for sending 300 men to prison and five to the electric chair. It noted that he “bragged that he never used his gun to fire warning shots, only to kill.”

But according to Gavin’s story in the Tribune, Pape wasn’t only a tough guy. “He has been known to lend money to hoodlums just released from state prison.” When the detectives on his squad started quarreling, Pape knew just what to do. He would soothe their tempers with an invitation to his mother’s cottage in a northern Illinois lake region. There Pape w…