controlled most sectors of New York’s local government departments, where corruption spread, like dry rot, to the highest echelons, including the office of New York’s Tammany-elected Mayor and the city’s police. Crime was seen to pay – and handsomely. Now that millionaire gangsters like Dutch Schultz, Lucky Luciano and Frank Costello, dubbed the “Prime Minister of the Underworld”, were the new overlords of New York, everyone had their price, from politicians and public prosecutors to the lowliest civil servant. The emergence of the new robber barons was only possible because of the “fixers” in their pay, politicians whose power and apparent respectability afforded the mafia dons immunity from the law. The mob infiltrated major businesses from rubbish collection, construction, funeral services and kosher butchers to restaurants and entertainments, the garment and textile industries and, famously, the Fulton fish market; they controlled the labour unions, notably trucking and long shore workers, while demanding protection money from bosses in return for agreeing not to sabotage their businesses. Virtually no aspect of city life was untouched: in order to manufacture or sell anything in New York, someone had to be paid off. “Tribute” payments represented a major hidden cost, since any company hoping to secure business contracts in the city had to inflate its prices and kick back a percentage of its income to the mob. Profits were squeezed, but few took action against the mob, which by then had grown too powerful and deadly – and too rich.
As crime soared and racketeering became a fact of life, prosecutions and conviction rates plummeted. These were dark days for New York’s judiciary. Financial crookery was rife in law enforcement and penal institutions. From the city’s police department to the Manhattan District Attorney’s office, magistrates’ courts and the State Supreme Court, extortion and bribes were commonplace. Police officers in the city’s vice squad framed the poor and innocent – especially women – while helping well connected criminals and repeat offenders beat the rap. Ambitious police officers routinely gained promotion by paying thousands of dollars to their superiors or to a local Tammany leader while also pocketing so-called “ice” or protection money from racketeers. Conversely, diligent police officers who refused bribes and routinely cautioned or arrested gang members, were reported to the mob’s local Tammany protectors, who complained to the police commissioner. Soon these “clean” officers were demoted to pounding New York’s notoriously dead end beats such as Staten Island, far from the mob. Magistrates, who on a nod and a wink from a Tammany leader repeatedly acquitted known thugs, such as Joe Rao and his cousin Vincent, had often bought their seat on the bench for around $10.000 to a Tammany “fixer”, usually a senior district leader like Jimmy Hines who had the power to submit to the state governor the name of an ambitious lawyer for appointment to the bench. Judgeships, whether for general sessions or the State Supreme Court, went to the highest bidder: the going “fee” was anywhere between $25,000 and $50,000, handed over in crisp new currency.
By 1929, Republican New York State congressman Fiorello La Guardia became a candidate for the office of New York Mayor. His main opponent was the incumbent Mayor, debonair playboy James Walker, Tammany “Boss” Murphy’s golden protégée, who was elected in 1925 and whose natty tailoring, showgirl mistresses and jet setting lifestyle amused the press, entertained the public and enraged social reformers in equal measure. In a thinly veiled attack on Jimmy Walker’s hedonistic style and laissez - faire attitude to crime, La Guardia inveighed against the spread of lawlessness in the city and conjured up the spectre of an earlier dark age of Tammany misrule. “The present administration is the most wasteful and
As crime soared and racketeering became a fact of life, prosecutions and conviction rates plummeted. These were dark days for New York’s judiciary. Financial crookery was rife in law enforcement and penal institutions. From the city’s police department to the Manhattan District Attorney’s office, magistrates’ courts and the State Supreme Court, extortion and bribes were commonplace. Police officers in the city’s vice squad framed the poor and innocent – especially women – while helping well connected criminals and repeat offenders beat the rap. Ambitious police officers routinely gained promotion by paying thousands of dollars to their superiors or to a local Tammany leader while also pocketing so-called “ice” or protection money from racketeers. Conversely, diligent police officers who refused bribes and routinely cautioned or arrested gang members, were reported to the mob’s local Tammany protectors, who complained to the police commissioner. Soon these “clean” officers were demoted to pounding New York’s notoriously dead end beats such as Staten Island, far from the mob. Magistrates, who on a nod and a wink from a Tammany leader repeatedly acquitted known thugs, such as Joe Rao and his cousin Vincent, had often bought their seat on the bench for around $10.000 to a Tammany “fixer”, usually a senior district leader like Jimmy Hines who had the power to submit to the state governor the name of an ambitious lawyer for appointment to the bench. Judgeships, whether for general sessions or the State Supreme Court, went to the highest bidder: the going “fee” was anywhere between $25,000 and $50,000, handed over in crisp new currency.
By 1929, Republican New York State congressman Fiorello La Guardia became a candidate for the office of New York Mayor. His main opponent was the incumbent Mayor, debonair playboy James Walker, Tammany “Boss” Murphy’s golden protégée, who was elected in 1925 and whose natty tailoring, showgirl mistresses and jet setting lifestyle amused the press, entertained the public and enraged social reformers in equal measure. In a thinly veiled attack on Jimmy Walker’s hedonistic style and laissez - faire attitude to crime, La Guardia inveighed against the spread of lawlessness in the city and conjured up the spectre of an earlier dark age of Tammany misrule. “The present administration is the most wasteful and
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