By Jim Ridings -
President Trump is sending federal agents into Chicago to try to stem the incredible violence that happens on a daily basis. Mayor Lori Lightfoot is crying foul, saying this is unprecedented and a misuse of federal power. She is threatening to sue Trump.
However, this is not without precedent. A president once sent federal agents into Chicago to fight the murderous gangs that were shooting up the city and turning it into a lawless jungle.
It was the 1920s. Prohibition had turned ordinary Americas into a lawbreakers, as citizens tried to find what the government had banned. Alcohol, which had been around since the beginning of time, now was illegal. It also was very popular.
Having a beer or a sip of wine, something that had been acceptable from the beginning of time, now suddenly was a federal crime, a violation of the U.S. Constitution. Federal agents with guns and axes enforced (or tried to enforce) the unpopular law with a vigor not seen in the enforcement of many other laws.
With liquor outlawed, those who would supply it to an eager public made millions of dollars. They became hugely rich and hugely powerful.
And they did not hesitate to kill anyone who got in their way.
Len Small was governor and William Hale Thompson was mayor in the 1920s. Both men were among the most crooked politicians in American history. Both men were in the pocket of Al Capone.
Thompson promised “a wide open city” when he ran for re-election. He promised to reopen speakeasies that had been closed and to open “ten thousand more.” Al Capone contributed heavily to Thompson’s campaign, in money and in manpower.
It was estimated that 65 percent of the Chicago police force was on a gang payroll, not just in looking the other way but also in helping with illegal shipments of liquor.
Governor Small sold thousands of pardons and paroles to gangsters and to anyone else who had the money. Harry Guzik, a top Capone lieutenant, was convicted of forcing a teenage girl into prostitution. Small pardoned Guzik before he spent one day in jail. Ignatz Potz, who shot-gunned a Winthrop Harbor police officer who was in pursuit of a car of Capone bootleggers, was convicted and sentenced to death. Small stopped the execution and later pardoned Potz.
The failure of elected leaders was why Chicago was the worst city in America when it came to gangland warfare.
Thompson’s city police force and Small’s state police force were so corrupt that the federal government decided to intervene. Federal agents were sent to do what city and state law enforcement would not do.
A group of federal agents that could not be corrupted, could not be touched by gang bribery, set up shop in Chicago. They were known as The Untouchables.
A TV series in the late 1950s dramatized their efforts, even though most of the exploits of Eliot Ness and his men was fictional in the series.
