Untouchable Ness could have saved Ferguson

Eighty years ago, Elliot Ness, Mr. Untouchable himself, became Director of Safety for Cleveland, OH, responsible for both the police and fire departments, Ness encountered one of the most corrupt police departments in the nation. There was no training academy. New recruits, mostly political appointees, were given a badge and a gun and told to uphold the law. Ness, learned the new field of scientific criminology from the highly revered criminologist August Vollmer at the University o Chicago. He immediately set up Cleveland's (and one of America's) first police training academies. He sought out idealistic, young college students instead of uneducated political hacks. He even quietly, because it was controversial, began recruiting African American recruits to patrol Cleveland's black community because he felt black policemen could better relate to and police Cleveland's inner city.

Too bad a little of Ness's wise, progressive approach to public policing didn't rub off on the city fathers of Ferguson, MO. If it had, Ferguson may have been able to avoid becoming the poster city for a failed police force, a failed city administration and probably America's least desirable city to live in.