| What | This collaborative series is a peek into the issues facing law enforcement and community relations within our urban communities. |
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| When | We will begin Part I of this collaborative series with a snapshot of the early origins of modern day policing, setting the stage for a deeper dive into the present day issues in Part II of this series. |
| Who | This Source Card overview begins with a look at a man named Robert Peel who may not be a household name to many of us, but as it turns out, in many ways he may well be the founding father of today’s modern day police force as we know it. |
| Why | To facilitate a collaborative process that promotes just a little more understanding from all sides on a complicated set of issues facing our country’s urban centers. And along the way, with your help and input, incorporate some of these themes and issues into our Back of the Yards comic series. |
With this Source Card collaboration, we’ll explore a range of topics centered on law enforcement and community relations. We’ll begin with a look at the origins of modern policing and gradually move toward examining the many challenges police departments face today.
As we explore these topics, you’ll be invited to participate—individually or alongside others. Our hope is to engage not only urban youth and their academic communities, but also subject-matter experts, including police officers themselves.
That’s the vision, at least—and we’ll discover together exactly where this collaboration leads. For now, let’s start at the beginning: the early roots of the modern police force and the work of a man named Robert Peel...
As noted in the brief introduction above, much of the credit for establishing the framework of modern policing goes to an early 19th-century English statesman named Robert Peel. And with that in mind, one can’t help but wonder what Peel himself might think if he were alive to witness the state of policing today…
Of course, saying that a lot has changed since Robert Peel’s day would be something of an understatement.
In Peel’s era, the newly formed police—nicknamed “Bobbies” in his honor—patrolled metropolitan streets armed with nothing more than wooden batons. Their most common encounters involved public drunkenness and the occasional street fight, with the underlying hope that their steady presence alone would be enough to deter crime…
In the summer of 2020, total Chicago shootings that July were at a 75% increase as compared to previous July. And as I write this blog entry, just over the last weekend alone here in Chicago, at least 49 people were shot, seven fatally.
Violence in our cities is nothing new. And to be fair, the fact of the matter is that violent crime within the United States has actually been on a steady decline over the last 15 years. But that shouldn’t in any way diminish the very real challenges within our urban centers today, as further evidenced by a murder rate that was up 16.1 percent in America’s 25 largest cities in 2020.
And it is this volatility that police officers walk right into the front lines every day. As Chicago’s former superintendent David Brown put it just after a shooting of 3 Chicago officers, “when they leave home, they leave their loved ones and put their stars on and risk everything. They risk everything protecting us all.”
All of this is further complicated by modern drug-enforcement laws, which place additional frontline responsibilities on police officers. These pressures can create an environment where officers feel compelled to “produce” in order to meet job expectations. Yet in doing so, an unintended adversarial relationship often develops between law enforcement and the very communities they are meant to patrol and protect.
In his book Justice Without Trial, Law Enforcement in Democratic Society (1967, latest edition 2015), sociologist Jerome Skolnick maintains that any job description that calls upon a person to exercise decision-making authority in the face of physical danger may simply be asking too much of the practitioner.
Combine that danger with the systematic pressures police officers feel from above and from within, it would seem to be a wholly undeniable understatement to say that the job of a police officer is a profoundly difficult one.
But as we will try to further explore as this collaboration develops, the same systematic pressures that our police officers feel from above and within, as they also put their lives on the line daily, may also be contributing to the widely disproportionately negative impacts within our black and brown communities that exist today, which are equally undeniable.
As part of this collaboration—and to help shape two new police characters for our Back of the Yards comic series—we plan to facilitate an open dialogue between participating youth and both active and retired police officers. Excerpts from these conversations, paired with supplemental comic illustrations, will appear in the Supplement of Issue 3 and may even influence the dialogue or scenes involving the new officers and other characters in the series.
You can help us build this dialogue by reflecting on the prompts below. We’ve also created a workbook, accessible through the yellow button, that offers additional context and provides space for you to jot down notes if that’s useful.
After you’ve considered the prompts and gathered your thoughts, you can share your ideas with us through the “Let’s Collaborate” form at the end of this Studio Card page.
As we reach out to both active and retired police officers to participate in this dialogue, what questions would you consider asking them? Take a moment to think about the topics or experiences you are most curious about, and how their perspectives could help inform the creation of our new police officer characters for the Back of the Yards comic series.
From a law enforcement officer’s perspective, what opening questions would you ask a participating youth? Consider what you would want to learn about their experiences, perspectives, or ideas, and how these insights might help foster a meaningful dialogue.
Do you have any additional suggestions for making this open dialogue more meaningful and productive for both participating youth and police officers? Think about ways to foster understanding, encourage participation, or create a positive and respectful exchange of ideas.
Beyond the day-to-day realities of policing in our modern communities, societies depend on law and order to preserve safety, stability, and the well-being of the public. Yet in a democracy, these needs must always be weighed against the dangers of excessive state authority—particularly the potential for police power to suppress or control dissent. Striking this balance has long been a challenge in the United States and elsewhere, especially within urban communities during periods of social tension and political upheaval.
Within Chicago, where this collaborative comic project was born, this tension has long been evident. The Chicago Lager Riot of 1855 and the 1968 Chicago Democratic National Convention protests both highlight tensions between maintaining public order and protecting civil liberties.
During the Chicago Lager Riot, working-class immigrants protested strict temperance laws and Sunday saloon closures imposed by city leaders. Police used force to suppress demonstrations, revealing how state authority could be used to enforce moral or political agendas at the expense of public dissent.
More than a century later, during the 1968 Democratic Convention, antiwar demonstrators clashed with Chicago police, whose aggressive tactics—widely televised—sparked national debate over “law and order” and the limits of police power.
The 1968 Democratic National Convention unfolded amid intense social and political turmoil. The Vietnam War, civil rights struggles, and the recent assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy had deeply divided the nation. Protests for peace and justice clashed with demands for “law and order,” making Chicago a focal point of the era’s unrest and polarization.
Both events illustrate the enduring struggle in American democracy to balance the state’s responsibility to preserve order with citizens’ rights to protest and express opposition to government policy. They also reveal the strain such conflicts place on police officers themselves, who are often caught between enforcing authority, maintaining public safety, and navigating the moral and political pressures of their time.
Long before he entered the collaborative scene with us as Creative Director at Made Collaborative, Len Kody worked with other comic artists – including participating project artist, Tony Maldonado – to develop a working comic anthology depicting the tumultuous events and characters leading to the 1968 Chicago convention protests. That comic is an ongoing creative work by Len and other artists (over 150 pages to date), but within the original comic storyline, Len created two fictional characters – both of whom were Chicago police officers.
Jimmy O’Herron and Frank Zomksi are two characters from Len’s Chicago 1968 comic. Each officer is deeply rooted in Chicago’s history—one of Irish descent, the other Polish—and both find themselves caught in the social powder keg of the 1968 Chicago protests. These two characters will serve to inform a collaboration to create a new police officer character for the Back of the Yards comic series, which we will introduce just below.
To help set the stage for this collaboration, Len has generously allowed us to include three excerpts from the original Chicago 1968 comic. Each excerpt features one or both of the O’Herron and Zomksi characters. You can access them by clicking the yellow button below.
Within Len Kody’s Chicago 1968, the fictional police officer characters of Jimmy O’Herron and Frank Zomksi find themselves caught in the social powder keg that was the 1968 Chicago protests. It is through these two police officer characters that we see how these broader societal tensions may take a significant toll on police officers themselves, who often face immense pressure, public scrutiny, and the emotional strain of navigating volatile situations while attempting to uphold both public safety and constitutional rights.
With this collaboration, we will be creating “Officer #1” for our Back of the Yards comic series. This Officer #1 character will be an older, more senior officer – perhaps at the tail end of his policing career. And in addition, this new Officer #1 character will be related to, in some way, either Jimmy O’Herron or Frank Zomski from Len Kody’s Chicago 1968 comic. How exactly this new character is related, and what that relation even means to this new character’s other traits – all of that will be entirely up to you and others who participate in this collaboration.
To help facilitate the development of this new character, we point you to a digital template that we previously developed – Studio Cards #1. You can access this template by clicking on the Studio Card to the right.
As you will see, this Studio Card digital template walks you through a simple 5 step process to shape your character ideas into a character ready for the Back of the Yards comic series.
The general framework of this digital character template is:
Step One – Creating Your Character’s Background and Basic Traits
Step Two – Developing Your Character’s Personality
Step Three – Developing Your Character’s Archetypes & Core Values
Step Four – You Character’s Biography & Other Interesting Facts
You can also access Issue #1 of the Back of the Yards comic in Studio Card #1!
Begin by making a key creative choice:
Choose one of the two officers from Len’s Chicago 1968 comic—O’Herron or Zomsky—to whom the new Officer #1 will be connected or related to in some way.
For example, given the difference in time from 1968 to the more current setting of the Back of the Yards, this relationship could be a nephew or niece, or even a child depending upon age. In any case, this relationship will help anchor your character’s physical presence, personality, and background.
With that connection in mind (O’Herron or Zomsky), describe the physical traits of Officer #1.
Consider:
Next, create the essential biographical details for Officer #1.
You may include:
Using your notes from the steps above, write a two-to-three-sentence introduction that could appear in a screenplay the moment Officer #1 first appears. (If helpful, reference the Training Day description example in Studio Card #1 for tone and format.)
Now that you’ve begun shaping Officer #1’s background and physical presence, take a moment to define who they are on the inside.
Write down five or more personality traits that you would use to describe your Officer #1 character to a friend or family member.
These can include attitudes, habits, strengths, flaws, or emotional tendencies. Feel free to draw inspiration from Studio Card #1 or from the personality cues you’ve already established in relation to O’Herron or Zomsky.
Think broadly—traits may be:
Use whatever combination best reflects the emerging character and fits the tone of Back of the Yards Comic series.
Now it’s time to get to the core of your “Officer #1” character. Using one of the 12 archetypes presented within Studio Card #1, begin by defining the overarching archetype that best captures who this character is at their core—for example, The Stoic Hero, The Disillusioned Caregiver, The By-the-Book Boss, or The Reluctant Warrior. You may choose one archetype or blend several to create a more nuanced figure.
Once you’ve identified the archetype(s), outline the core values that guide Officer #1’s decisions, behavior, and worldview. You can draw upon their relation to either O’Herron or Zomski, and moreover, these values should reflect both the pressures and responsibilities of policing and the character’s personal moral compass. Consider values such as duty, loyalty, justice, restraint, compassion, integrity, or skepticism of authority—but feel free to propose others that fit your chosen archetype.
Your goal is to create a foundational identity for Officer #1 that can anchor their backstory, motivations, and role within the narrative. Please provide:
Finally, just like in the Studio Card #1 template, it’s time for a “lightning round”! This is your chance to add details to your character’s backstory and explore the traits that make them truly unique. To help guide you, we’ve prepared 100 quick and easy questions, which you can explore in the Google Slide presentation below.
Of course, you don’t have to answer all of them—or even any at all! But we do encourage you to have fun with it and try to answer at least 10 questions to get your creativity flowing.
Here’s your opportunity to share your collaborative ideas with us! Using the form below, you can submit any notes or reflections you’ve developed in response to the prompts above—whether they relate to the “open dialogue” collaboration or the creation of the new “Officer #1” character.
We’ll be reviewing submissions regularly and selecting notable contributions for deeper exploration during our scheduled Zoom workshops.
Thank you again for participating. We look forward to collaborating more directly with some of you as we continue developing Issue 3 of the Back of the Yards comic series!
Some special pieces may be selected to appear in the Back of the Yards comic book. iPad/iPhone users, submit images from FILES (NOT from Photo Library).
Some special pieces may be selected to appear in the Back of the Yards comic book.
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Some special pieces may be selected to appear in the Back of the Yards comic book.
UPLOAD YOUR IMAGES BELOW
Some special pieces may be selected to appear in the Back of the Yards comic book.
UPLOAD YOUR IMAGES BELOW
Some special pieces may be selected to appear in the Back of the Yards comic book.
UPLOAD YOUR IMAGES BELOW
Collaborate with professional artists by contributing some artwork of your own! Some special pieces may be selected to appear in the Back of the Yards comic book.
UPLOAD YOUR IMAGES BELOW
