Editorial

Chicago Crime: Then and Now

David A. Lombardo

I grew up in River Forest in the 50s and 60s. It was the first suburb west of Chicago and home to the well-heeled. The River Forest telephone directory read like a Who's Who of Chicago's elite. One neighbor was vice president of a major international candy company. Radio personality Paul Harvey lived a block away, and in between us were doctors, lawyers and corporate chieftains. River Forest was also the bastion of the Chicago Outfit's top echelon. 

Unlike New York, Chicago didn't have the Mafia; it had the Chicago Outfit which coalesced out of various nefarious characters dating as far back as the early 1900s. Leadership passed from such famous names as Johnny Torrio to Al Capone to Frank Nitti and eventually Tony Accardo in 1947. Joe Batters, as he was known to those who really knew him, would maintain a firm grip over the Chicago Outfit until his death of natural causes in 1972.

As the Outfit grew, so too did the fortunes of those at the top. Accardo moved to River Forest, first in a huge mansion on Franklin, then later a block away from our house. So too did Paul "The Waiter" Ricca, another boss. Believe me when I say there was no crime in River Forest. Well, there was one residential burglary. Some idiots robbed Accardo's house; it didn't go well for them. Within a couple of months, all of them turned up as trunk music in various locations around Illinois and Indiana. No, crime was pretty much non-existent in River Forest.

One of Accardo's sons was the projectionist at our local movie house, the Mercury Theater; it was a union gig, of course. Another of the boss' sons played on our high school football team, and another classmate was the son of an Outfit doctor. A good friend of my family was a realtor; his job was to take Outfit money and invest it in the ubiquitous two-flats all over Chicago-a mob attempt to legitimize earnings.

I would visit Johnny's office from time to time and rub elbows with some of Chicago's top players when I was in my early teens. It always turned out to be a lucrative adventure as they'd peel off a hundred from a roll of bills and tell me to go get an ice cream while they talked business. It was the early 60s. You could almost buy the store for a hundred bucks.

Accardo would occasionally walk by our house talking quietly with someone. He'd look up, nod his head and say "good morning" as I was cutting the lawn. George Murray, a columnist for the Chicago American, once commented that an unnamed mob boss had told him, "Accardo has more brains before breakfast than Al Capone ever had all day." This may rankle some, but I believe it; for all his shortcomings, Joe Batters was a gentleman and a good neighbor.

In the 50s and 60s, the Chicago Outfit was woven into the fabric of society. It didn't operate on the fringe; it was part of Chicagoans' daily lives. They owned the barber shop I went to on Rush Street. They served the food at restaurants where we ate. And they hauled our trash and built our homes.

Don't get me wrong-I'm not an apologist for the mob. Assuredly they were bad guys, but they were also family men: they showed up for school functions to see their kid play ball or be in a school play. They had, for the most part, a strict code, and the penalty for breaking it was harsh. By anyone's standards the code was enigmatic and convoluted, but there was a code. The Outfit didn't mess with the paying public unless you happened to be a provider of certain services.

Restaurant and bar owners, for instance, had to play or face dire consequences. But if you were a civilian, just John Q. Public, you really didn't have to worry about tangling with the Outfit. You were the guy who paid the bills by buying bootleg liquor, frequenting prostitutes and laying down a bet with your local bookie. There were rules, and there was an order to things, albeit a somewhat screwy, self-serving order.

Contrast that with today's sociopathic gang members. We are living in a time when a rite of passage for a gang member might be to randomly kill a stranger or simply shoot a cop-no rhyme, no reason, not even profit-motivated, just random killing. It isn't a business to them; they don't fear consequences, and they have no real bonds to anyone.

Gang members are a cancer on society, an ever-growing group of terrorists plaguing our streets, out-of-control and getting worse by the day. Socially and legally acceptable methods of dealing with them only exacerbate the problem. Mark my words: eventually the public will get fed up with them-as we will with the world terrorist movement-and social and legal methods be damned, we will set about exterminating them like the roaches they are. But given crime will always exist, I'll take the old Chicago Outfit any day over what we have today.

 Hitler survivor condemns gun control

Katie Worthman, who was born in Austria and lived under Hitler's rule, spoke to a group and dispelled the myth that Hitler's army marched into Austria under arms and took over. Worthman lived there for seven years under Hitler's brutal regime; then after World War II, she lived another three years under Soviet communist occupation. Worthman not only says that the media was wrong about how Hitler came to power, but she says that, "In the beginning, Hitler didn't look like, or talk like a monster at all. He talked like an American politician." She says that the story of Hitler overthrowing governments and people in order to come to power just simply isn't true, but rather the Austrian people elected Hitler with 98% of the vote at the ballot box. Worthman says that the dictatorship "didn't happen overnight, but it took five years, gradually, little by little, to escalate to a dictatorship." Worthman then goes on to say that the Austrian people had guns, but the government began to say that they were dangerous, so they began to implement gun registration. Then she said this was followed by turning in their weapons to the police station in order to cut down on crime, and if citizens didn't...there would be capital punishment. As a Nazi survivor, what is her advice to us? "Keep your guns, keep your guns and buy more guns." 

63% of Americans:  

Gun control doesn't prevent crime

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