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mT RYO urn Shae Ee gf CHOKE CRIME BY (TS PURSE NESS URGES Gambling Taboo Because It Gives Gangs Revenue, He Tells College Class. “CORRUPTION FUND” HIT Thugs Rally if Police Are “on Take,” He Asserts. Strict suppression of vice and gam- bling 5s a pressing necessity in Cleve- land toe help achieve control over cri +, racketeering and other faw- Jessness, Safety Director Elot Ness eaid in a speech last night at Cleve- land Colleze. Ness sald he had ordered the be- ginning of a suppression campaign by police because gambling and vice joints were manned by criminals and racketeers, attracted. criminals and | racketeers froin out of town, put a! large sum of money into the hande' of criminals te be used for the -cor- ruption of puliie officals and potter. men and demoratized policemen be- causa alnce grainbllig ran with of- ficial protection they did nat Jenow whom tney could arrest and whom they could not. “Experience has shown that cities which have the lid most tightly on have the least erime;” he sald. “My opinion atso is that when you deal with gamblers and vice joint oper- ators you area dealing with all kinds of crime, since men who Hve by lawless means at some time or other perpetrate all Kinds of jJawlessness or permit its perpetration.” The safety director apoke before a class at the college on probleme af his department. Hina addrese was the first of a series by Cleveland public men. on municipal probleme. we Tan Diaclaitma Moral Grounds. ' _ Ness disctaimed the usual moral | grounds on which safety directors and mayors have based sporadic crusades against gambling. vice and crime. “Tt Ia debatable, for instance, whether gambling ts morally wrong, Lut from the policing standpoint you have an entirely different picture.” he said. “EL am inclined to ba lb- eral in my views of amusements ; and I do net want to intrude my j opinions on others. but as a safety director I must revognize every thing which contributes to a faw- jess situation. By that. I.mean major erime. i “Gambling brings inte financial’ power citizens recognized as law | vinlafors, They collect. large sums’ lof money, which must be distributed ‘among many persons, some of them ; public officials, perhaps. . “We find the law-breakers growing tin power, Gradually, with use of their money, fhey get. inrcaada inta the svatema of public protection, perhans a. anfety department, per- ‘paps the courts. Other law-breakers ‘gather under their protection, anid you hate & situation in which the policeman on the beat, and perhaps | ig captain, doesn’t know what lawa . to enforce, what persona to arrest and what persons to avoid, "Since his advancement depends on his making no mistakes, he be- comes cautious and gradually we tind ourselves: a. city growing more desir- able to law-breeakers. That stuff travels, “A policeman. must be able to de. police work without having to find out the family background, the con: | rfections, of every Individual he comes across in his work. His job is complicated. enaugh without that.’* Neéas «ald gambling and vice aup- pression was a particular necessity in Cleveland because of the small- ness of the police force. Every member of the departient was need- ed more than in other cities where forces are greater, he said. Aa an Instance sf corruption at work ina nuinieipality, Nose told of | Vat ting in an a tetephone to lnsfritce tlona from the headquarters of Ralph ; Capone, brother of Al Capone, in a jsmali town outside Chicago. He j found that Capone was working with ‘two candidates: for office, although one was backed By reform forces And one Was an out-and-out Capone erndioate, Nesa also: said Cleveland was “not in bad shape as far as one kind of ,¢rime is concerned, robberies and holdups and things like that.’ ! Speaking of racketeering, “the kind of crime that doesn't get on’ police records and in crime statistics because victims are afraid to re- port,” he said he found that a ‘cer- taln amount of that is. going on here." Many of the police problems were organizational and could be. changed (Vv 4 Ni. 70-3