Table F
Italian Arrests in Cleveland, 1870-1902
| Year | Total Arrests | Total Foreigners Arrested | Total Italians Arrested |
| 1870 | 4,004 | 2,554 | 2 |
| 1874 | 9,571 | 8,563 | 32 |
| 1875 | 8,823 | 4,685 | 18 |
| 1876 | 8,407 | 1,046 | 19 |
| 1877 | 7,845 | 3,892 | 24 |
| 1878 | 7,151 | 3,281 | 22 |
| 1879 | 6,539 | 3,042 | 12 |
| 1880 | 7,432 | 3,469 | 27 |
| 1881 | 7,465 | 3,628 | 29 |
| 1882 | 6,741 | 3,377 | 14 |
| 1883 | 7,254 | 3,577 | 36 |
| 1884 | 7,271 | 3,540 | 42 |
| 1885 | 6,882 | 3,409 | 29 |
| 1886 | 6,732 | 3,409 | 24 |
| 1887 | 8,588 | 4,083 | 27 |
| 1888 | 8,731 | 4,026 | 38 |
| 1889 | 10,377 | 4,644 | 34 |
| 1890 | 9,616 | 4,199 | 55 |
| 1891 | 11,133 | 4,967 | 66 |
| 1892 | 10,717 | 4,941 | 81 |
| 1893 | 9,368 | 4,227 | 56 |
| 1894 | 9,751 | 4,016 | 85 |
| 1895 | 11,006 | 4,449 | 80 |
| 1896 | 13,491 | 5,302 | 107 |
| 1897 | 14,481 | 5,601 | 121 |
| 1898 | 14,452 | 5,571 | 193 |
| 1899 | 15,674 | 5,679 | 176 |
| 1900 | 19,923 | 7,227 | 205 |
| 1901 | 19,219 | 7,385 | 237 |
| 1902 | 18,236 | 7,350 | 261 |
Source: The Annual Report of the Departments of Government of the City of Cleveland, 1870-1902.
Beginning in 1870 and ending in 1902 the Police Department of the City of Cleveland annually published its detailed accounting of the year’s criminal activity within the city. For the 32 years studied the police department listed individual crimes and the number of occurrences of each. It then also listed by nativity the number of individuals from the major 15 ethnic groups within the city arrested and charged with a crime.[1]
Numerically the Italians during this period were not a major criminal threat to the peace and security of the city. Indeed, their crime statistics were usually less than 5% of the foreign population. If the above “official” figures of the police department are relatively accurate there was a great deal of “ethnic” criminality in Cleveland, but the groups which contributed most to this situation were not the Italians, during this period at any rate.
The statistical information stops at 1902, for in that year the police department no longer supplied the same kind of numerical breakdown as it had, and only designated “white” and “colored” criminal figures.
- Crimes in the reports were never specified for individual groups, but in 1910, for example, there were 7185 arrests with the following crimes comprising more than half of the charges:
↵intoxication 1,089 assault and battery 1,361 petty larceny 711 vagrancy 258 gambling 206 violating the automobile law 190