SYNDICATED CRIME

New Zealand Listener, Volume 31, Issue 783, 23 July 1954, Page 12

SYNDICATED CRIME

THE SHAME OF NEW YORK, by Ed Reid; Victor Gollancz, English price 13/6. 2D REID in 1949 was awarded a ~ Pulitzer Prize in journalism for his exposé of a racket shared by the bookies and the police in New York. In The Shame of New York, he writes again of this crime syndicate in the city where the police wete so corrupt that it was necessary to recruit 40 rookie. policemen and segregate them from the main force during their training and the investigations in order to make a clean up. It was at this time that O’Dwyer, Mayor of New York and ex-policeman, was hurriedly appointed Ambassador to Mexico. Reid also claims to reveal the identity of the city’s crime boss; he covers corruption on the Brooklyn waterfront, graft in the building industry and, discussing the Jelke call-girl case, attri- . butes Jelke’s sentence to his not being backed by a crime syndicate, and consequently not being able to keep his witnesses lined up. There is undoubtedly much truth in Reid’s "revelations," particularly when they are a direct transcript of court proceedings or testimony before the Crime Commission. But he often wildly expands proven facts. On Thomas Luchese (Tommy or Three-Finger Brown), he says, "There are perhaps fifty firms in New York City area over which Tommy Brown has influencenot to mention hundreds in the garment centre, whose officials are under Three Finger’s thumb." This bar-room hearsay falls rather flat compared with the brand of crusading journalism introduced around the beginning of this century by another New Yorker, Lincoln Steffens. _

J.R.

C.