Bribery
“[Prohibition] agents earned a salary of two thousand dollars a year… These low-paying agency positions could be a license to steal for anybody who didn’t mind breaking a law he was sworn to uphold.” - Linda Jacobs Altman, The Decade That Roared, 1997
"Vehicles and guns alone weren't enough to ensure the gangster's success. They needed one more thing: corrupt government officials. To keep their illegal businesses running smoothly, bootleggers paid off cops, sheriffs, and judges. In Cincinnati, nearly the entire police force was on the payroll of bootlegger George Remus. Overworked, underpaid Coast Guardsman and Prohibition enforcement agents were also quick to take bribes from bootleggers." - Edmund Lindop & Margaret J. Goldstein, American in the 1920's, 2010
"Chicago belonged entirely to Al Capone. The collective force of 3,000 police officers and 300 prohibition agents failed to bring down Capone's empire. The lack of prohibition convictions in a city as "wet" as Chicago only cemented the fact that Capone was buying protection from law enforcement" - Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, 2016
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"Every speakeasy had to make some arrangements with the cops to survive... We would slip the captain a $50 bill from time to time and a box of cigars to the cops on the beat" - Charlie Burns recalls running a speakeasy, from John Kobler's Ardent Spirits. Defining Moments: Prohibition, 2004
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"The greatest offenses of...cops were apathy and carelessness. The average patrolmen was sloppy in his appearance. Some were known to drop in at bars along their beat for a couple of quick ones. It was no surprise the public had lost confidence in the police" - Steven Nickel, Torso: The Story of Eliot Ness and the Search for a Psychopathic Killer, 1989
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Civilian Safety Alcohol still where Prohibitionist agent was shot, 1931, New York World-Telegram and the Sun Newspaper Photograph Collection.
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Agents faced many health risks:
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Because of the danger mobsters presented to civilians, preventing corruption became even more of a necessity. In the case of violence from a gang, officials would have to take action instead of overlooking the affair, as they would if they had been bribed to not interfere. Eliot Ness had begun his stand against corruption to protect the public.