RAT by BRIAN R. LUNDIN (13 ebook reader TXT) 📖

“Well let’s have a seat and wait,”
The police officers and the junkie got into their vehicle and pulled back to the mouth of the alley. After a fifteen minute wait a black Hondo pulled into the alley, stopped at the garbage can and another man got out. The man went to the garbage can and looked in when Starks blocked him in.
“Looking for this?”
“Who the fuck is you?”
“Police mutherfucker!”
Ringo held up his identification.
“How much this bag worth to you?”
“A lot!”
“Is it worth five grand a piece and a walk away?”
“Yes!”
Starks threw the man the bag and was given ten thousand dollars but what Ringo and his partner didn’t know was the young man and the other man was undercover FBI agents.

FOURTEEN

Policy gambling is a very simple game that was played almost exclusively in the black neighborhoods. In 1885, a young man named Samuel R. Young who was born in Huntsville Alabama brought the game to Chicago. Policy Sam as he was to be known, traveled the south playing with a black baseball team, but in between base-ball games Policy Sam worked his gambling game on the other players and the spectators. After a short stint with the baseball team he started working his game and played poker on the riverboats in New Orleans. In 1885 after marrying Ada miller of Louisville, Kentucky they moved to the southside of Chicago where Sam perfected his game. Sam hustle his game in the neighborhood and most of his time was spent hustling his game in down town Chicago at the corner of State Street and Madison Avenue, which at the time was the busiest street in the world. After explaining how the game was played to the people, black and white, who had stopped to watch, he would take their bets and pull the winning numbers from his hat. The odds were 10-1, in his favor, and he seldom lost. In the late 1890’s Sam went into business with John “Mush Mouth” Johnson, so named because of his fondness for cussing. Johnson was a gambler from St. Louis who had moved to Chicago in 1870 and was a partner in a gambling joint on south Clark Street with two white men. Everyone was welcome, and bets were as small as a nickel. After meeting Sam, Johnson sold his interest in the gambling joint and opened the emporium saloon, where Sam’s game was featured. The first ward bosses, Michael “Hinky Dink” Keno and John “Bathhouse” Coughlin protected the saloon for a monthly fee. By the turn of the century Policy Sam’s game had caught on and everyone was playing it, housewives, young people, the wealthy and the poor. Policy had reached a fever pitch and everyone was chasing the jackpot, but with this popularity there also was crime. Old women and men were being robbed on the street and there were countless knifing and shootings. In 1903 Reverend Reverdy Cassias Ransom, pastor of the international AME church located at 3825 south Dearborn Street begin to attack what he called “The evils of Policy gambling,” from his pulpit. Trying to shut the reverend up someone firebombed his church. The black community backlash resulted in the historic passing of Illinois Senate Bill#30: An Act for the Prevention of Policy Playing: the anti-Policy law of 1905, sending Policy gambling underground. Mush Mouth and Policy Sam got out of the business but Policy still was being played but on a smaller scale. In 1915 Chicago elected a new mayor, William Hale “Big Bill” Thompson and the first black city alderman republican Oscar DePriest. The mayor and DePriest was swamped in corruption and allowed Policy to reinvent itself and flourish free from police in-terference. Mayor Thompson has been called the most corrupt politician in American history. William Hale” Big Bill” Thompson was born may 14th 1868 in Boston, Massachusetts. In the 1870’s his father Colonel William Hale Thompson moved the family to Chicago. “Big bill” entered politics in 1900 when he was elected the 2nd ward alderman as a republican. In 1915, he became the 33rd Mayor of Chicago. In 1923, after learning he was being investigated by the states attorney‘s office for fraud he withdrew from the mayoral race and reform democrat William Dever was elected mayor. Dever was firmly on the side of law and order and fanatically in his enforcement of prohibition, his police department shut down the speakeasies and taverns angering the generally thirsty public but also the Chicago mob ran by Johnnie Torreo and a tough young man from New York City, Al Capone. Dever served as the mayor for only one term and in 1927, “Big Bill” ran for mayor again, promising to reopen the taverns that Dever’s had closed. The citizens of thirsty Chicago elected him to a third term as mayor. Chicago was an open town, he allowed the mob and gamblers free reign over the city and he ignored crime, which was running rampant. The mayor was suspected of being on the mobs payroll, during his reign as mayor, and was kept under surveillance for his anti-war and anti-British stance by the United States Justice Department. “Big bill” depended upon oratory, showmanship and symbols to gain political victories, like when he brought a horse into the city council chambers; in the end this was not enough to sustain “Big Bill’s” power in the face of the depression and the city’s weariness of crime. On April 7th, 1931, Chicago said goodbye to its last Republican Mayor and elected Democrat Anton Cermak. “Big Bill,” lost his bid for governor in 1936 and his fifth campaign for mayor in 1939; he died in the Blackstone hotel in 1944.

Mayor Cermak worked his way up in politics and his mentors were IST Ward bosses Bathhouse Coughlin and Hinky Dink Kenna. He was elected twice as the President of the Cook County Board and held that seat until elected as mayor. Policy became the biggest black-owned business in the world with combined annual sales sometimes reaching the $100 million mark and employed thousands of black people. In Bronzeville, Policy was a major catalyst by which the black economy was driven. The Policy wheels employed blacks that were denied legal jobs. It was reported in one national magazine “Blacks in Chicago drive bigger cars have more money and are better dresses than any other city in the country. Chicago became the Policy Capital of the world and home of the 5th Police District; the Wabash Station located at 48th South Wabash Avenue and the 28th Municipal Circuit Court, commonly known as Branch #38. Mayor Cermak, like all the other politicians was on the mobs payroll and he ran his administration with an iron fist and he completely reorganized how gambling was going to run. He appointed new bosses, loyal to him, to oversee gambling on the north, west, south and east sides of the city and appointed Captain Dan “Tubbo” Gilbert, one his long time cronies as the commander of the 5th District.

Meanwhile Policy continued to strive with two to four daily drawings, seven days a week. There were scores of writers taking bets on the street and in apartments. In the black neighborhoods, bettors were lined up outside of the Policy Stations waiting to bet their nickel or dime on their kid’s birthday or some number they dreamed about. The mayor was incensed, Policy was running wide-opened in his town and he wasn’t getting a cut. What the mayor didn’t know was that Policy Wheel owners had cut deals with the Captain Gilbert and the police officers in the district. Every police officer in town wanted to be transferred to the 5th District to get in on this cash cow. There were pre-arranged “Setup Raids,” where a station was raided so that Gilbert could show the Police Commissioner statistic that he could present to the mayor. Mayor Cermak was determined to get control over Policy gambling, he organized a “Special Police Detail,” known as Squad #12, led by Sergeant Mirtell Parker of the 5th District, who reported directly to the mayor. Parkers mandate was to shake up Policy and bring them into his fold. Squad #12 began a mission of terror in the 5th District, snatching not only Policy men off the streets, but innocent people that had nothing to do with Policy whatsoever were harassed too, especially women. They broke into private homes and shook down innocent people on the streets, all in the name of controlling Policy gambling. Cermak persuaded State’s Attorney John Swanson to unleash a special squad of State’s Attorney cops to investigate Policy. Squad #12 and the State’s Attorney cops made numerous raids on the Policy stations in the district and arrested scores of people, mainly old men and women, but all of the cases were thrown out because of faulty search warrants. The Chicago Defender, a black newspaper, prominent black business and civic leaders demanded that the mayor bring the police situation under control. Eventually greed prevailed and the police and the State’s Attorney’s cops chose money over the mayor and submitted false police reports to the mayor claiming that Policy had been shut down. Mayor Cermak went public, praising his police and the States Attorney police for putting Policy out of business in the 5th District, but later that year he took an unannounced personal tour of the district in an unassuming car to see for himself the fine job his police had done, what he saw shocked him; Policy writers were operating openly on the streets, lines of people were lined up outside known Policy Stations, and Policy runners were throwing the Policy drawings from their car. The mayor was furious, everyone including his Police Commissioner had lied to him, Policy wasn’t dead, and it was still as strong as ever. He called Police Commissioner Alcock and Sergeant Parker on the carpet, hell-bent on finding out what happened. What Cermak didn’t know was that Parker was indifferent to Policy, he saw it as a business that helped blacks in the community, he was quoted as saying,” I wondered when the Moses of and for the colored people will make his appearance. When will they have a man with brains, integrity and sheer guts to stand on his own feet and direct and demand that these thousands of colored people be given their proper representation, their rightful place in the economy and social structure in the only country they ever knew.

FIFTEEN

Only the policy stations rivaled the churches in the black community. The policy station is to the black community what the racehorse bookie is to the white community. In these mysterious little shops, tucked away in basements or in the rear rooms of stores, one may place a dime bet and hope to win $20.00 if his “gig” came out.” The stations were everywhere. The stations were technically illegal, but tolerated by the police. In December 1954, Lucy Flowers rented a vacant basement apartment at 4323 South Indiana Avenue and launched her first policy station. She printed up handbills advertising her station as being honest with guarantied payouts and hired Edwinna Johnson an attractive black woman in her late forties and always neatly dressed. Her hair and makeup was always perfect and she had written for some of the largest policy stations on the southside and she knew all the ins and outs of the game. Lucy hired her as his policy writer and manager and she taught the game to her. Edwinna explained how the station made its money and how to keep the customers