the arrest of the man who had been following Eliot and Albert, a hoodlum called Mike Picchi. “George E. Q. Johnson and State’s Attorney John A. Swanson cooperated yesterday in the speedy indictment of an alleged Chicago Heights bootleg gangster, suspected of plotting the assassination of two prohibition agents,” the
Tribune
reported. Jamie and Johnson were setting the scene for what was to come next.
Now, three days after that report, the papers were going to have a much bigger story. Someone arrested in the November raids clearly had talked,despite the best efforts of the area’s Mob enforcers. The caravan of police and federal agents crossed into Chicago Heights shortly before dawn, crunching over the icy back roads where gangsters had been enthusiastically tossing bodies the past two months. The two lead cars, one of them carrying Chicago’s deputy police commissioner, John Stege, split off from the rest and headed for city hall, where police headquarters was located. “It was felt that unless we took over the station,” Eliot wrote, “hoodlums throughout the town would be given the alarm from the police station itself.”
On days like this, Stege truly loved his life. He was a tubby little gray-haired man with round granny glasses and a double chin that swung like a hammock, but he carried himself with flair. He used to write a column for the
Chicago Herald and Examiner
headed by a photo of him holding a tommy gun. Somehow he pulled off the look. Now he told his men to wait on the front steps for a minute so he could enter the Chicago Heights police station alone. With daylight beginning to rub through the morning blackness, he turned and strut-waddled through the station’s front doors. He held his badge above his head so the gold would catch the overhead lights.
“Where are the keys to this joint?” he bellowed, unable to suppress a smile.
Within moments, as Stege’s men began to file through the door, he was unlocking the station’s jail cells. They were empty except for one containing three women. Stege shooed them out.
“We’ll need all the room we have in a few minutes,” he said.
The desk sergeant huffed at this. “Who are you and what do you think you’re doing?”
Stege’s answer: “We’re running the place for a while.”
The outsiders placed everyone in the station house under arrest, except for those actually facing charges—the three women. They sent the women, all freelance prostitutes, out into the streets. Stege happily let news photographers take pictures as he put the Chicago Heights policemen into their own cells. He smiled proudly as the flashbulbs popped. He had been forced to resign from the Chicago Police Department eighteen months before when a newspaper revealed he had been convicted of murder when he was fifteen. He was a good cop, though, a reformed man, and everyone who worked with him knew it. So when the scandal subsided, the city had quietly brought him back into the department. This was his chance to prove to the public that he deserved the second chance.
The feds were happy to give Stege his moment. He was a longtime critic of gangster chic, decrying how smirking, well-dressed hoods “flaunt their badness, boast of their bloody conquests, jeer at the widows of their victims, scoff at the suggestion of retributive justice.” He had shown contempt for the city’s mobsters years before it became socially acceptable to do so.
With the police station under federal control, the hundred or so officers and agents out in the Heights could take their quarry by surprise. The raiders pulled up in front of small clapboard houses, two-story brick apartment buildings, and a warehouse that served as the syndicate’s “distributing depot.” They broke into twenty private residences, pulling men out of their beds, their wives screaming, children crying. Some of the hoodlums managed to take flight, with agents running them down in the street. Agents and officers
Tribune
reported. Jamie and Johnson were setting the scene for what was to come next.
Now, three days after that report, the papers were going to have a much bigger story. Someone arrested in the November raids clearly had talked,despite the best efforts of the area’s Mob enforcers. The caravan of police and federal agents crossed into Chicago Heights shortly before dawn, crunching over the icy back roads where gangsters had been enthusiastically tossing bodies the past two months. The two lead cars, one of them carrying Chicago’s deputy police commissioner, John Stege, split off from the rest and headed for city hall, where police headquarters was located. “It was felt that unless we took over the station,” Eliot wrote, “hoodlums throughout the town would be given the alarm from the police station itself.”
On days like this, Stege truly loved his life. He was a tubby little gray-haired man with round granny glasses and a double chin that swung like a hammock, but he carried himself with flair. He used to write a column for the
Chicago Herald and Examiner
headed by a photo of him holding a tommy gun. Somehow he pulled off the look. Now he told his men to wait on the front steps for a minute so he could enter the Chicago Heights police station alone. With daylight beginning to rub through the morning blackness, he turned and strut-waddled through the station’s front doors. He held his badge above his head so the gold would catch the overhead lights.
“Where are the keys to this joint?” he bellowed, unable to suppress a smile.
Within moments, as Stege’s men began to file through the door, he was unlocking the station’s jail cells. They were empty except for one containing three women. Stege shooed them out.
“We’ll need all the room we have in a few minutes,” he said.
The desk sergeant huffed at this. “Who are you and what do you think you’re doing?”
Stege’s answer: “We’re running the place for a while.”
The outsiders placed everyone in the station house under arrest, except for those actually facing charges—the three women. They sent the women, all freelance prostitutes, out into the streets. Stege happily let news photographers take pictures as he put the Chicago Heights policemen into their own cells. He smiled proudly as the flashbulbs popped. He had been forced to resign from the Chicago Police Department eighteen months before when a newspaper revealed he had been convicted of murder when he was fifteen. He was a good cop, though, a reformed man, and everyone who worked with him knew it. So when the scandal subsided, the city had quietly brought him back into the department. This was his chance to prove to the public that he deserved the second chance.
The feds were happy to give Stege his moment. He was a longtime critic of gangster chic, decrying how smirking, well-dressed hoods “flaunt their badness, boast of their bloody conquests, jeer at the widows of their victims, scoff at the suggestion of retributive justice.” He had shown contempt for the city’s mobsters years before it became socially acceptable to do so.
With the police station under federal control, the hundred or so officers and agents out in the Heights could take their quarry by surprise. The raiders pulled up in front of small clapboard houses, two-story brick apartment buildings, and a warehouse that served as the syndicate’s “distributing depot.” They broke into twenty private residences, pulling men out of their beds, their wives screaming, children crying. Some of the hoodlums managed to take flight, with agents running them down in the street. Agents and officers
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