Indianapolis Times, Volume 42, Number 242, Indianapolis, Marion County, 17 February 1931 — Page 7

FEB. 17, 1931

GOTHAM COPS ; ON TRIAL IN f VICE‘RACKET’ Two Plain Clothes Men Are Accused of ‘Framing’ Innocent Girls. By United Press T'TETW YORK, Feb. 17.—Two plainclothes patrolmen of the New York city vice squad went on trial today on charges of perjury in connection

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with alleged “framing'’ of innocent girls. The men, Daniel Sullivan and Leigh Halpem, were indicted after an Investigation by Chief Magistrate Corrigan of a vice case which was much like those uncovered by the appellate division inquiry, before which astounding revelations of police graft were made Monday. Harry Levey, vice squad stoolpigeon, testified before Referee Samuel Seabury Monday that plainclothesmen James J. Quinlivan and William M. O'Connor of the West 110th street station collected about $7,500 a month from speakeasies on the upper west side. Levey acted as collector, he testified, making regular rounds of about 125 places during the first few days of each month. The large places

paid SIOO and the smaller ones about SSO, he said. Records introduced by Prosecutor Irving Ben Cooper, showed Quinlivan's wife had deposited more t than $58,000 in four banks during I the last four years. On the basis of the figures men- ! tioned by Levy for the speakeasies on the upper west side, the reputed 132.000 speakeasies in New York I City would yield more than $20,000,000 a year in graft. The speakeasy graft was only a part of the extensive “racket” practiced by the two policemen, according to Levey. A profitable source of income to these two, as well as other vice squad men. appeared to have been the “landlady racket” and the “nurse racket.” The cases of Mrs. Elizabeth Parkes and Mrs. Gertrude Bartels

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were given as examples of the former. Unlike most of the victims, however, these women were acquitted after they had gotten in touch with James J. Hines, Tammany leader of the Eleventh assembly district, who happened to know them. The method of procedure, according to Levey, was for a stool pigeon to hire a room in a rooming house, telling the landlady he was expecting his wife to join him. Later, - he would return with a woman, and police would raid the house, arresting the landlady for keeping a disorderly house. The “nurse racket,” according to the witness, provided in some cases large sums of money from physicians who wished to preserve their reputation in the neighborhood. A stoolpigeon would enter a doctor’s office and begin a conversation

with the nurse in attendance. A raid would follow, the nurse being arrested on a charge of prostitution. Both‘the nurse and the doctor would then be told the case could be cleared up on payment of money, which usually happened. , Cleaver Stops Robbery Times Special SOUTH BEND, Ind., Feb. 17. Charles Gard, 40, is in a hospital as a result of injury inflected while trying to rob Samuel Cochrane, a butcher, who struck him on the head with a meat cleaver. Mrs. John Conner, who. entered the shop while Gard was attempting to rob the butcher, slipped out and called police. She and two officers reached the shop just as Cochrane wielded the cleaver. Gard fired twice, neither shot hitting any one.

JOBLESS SHOWN FOR LAST APRIL 10,080 Were Unemployed in City, Report States. Final figures on the unemployment situation in Indianapolis were released Monday by the federal census bureau following compilation of population figures gathered here in April. The report shows that 10,080 Indianapolis persons, able to work, are unemployed. This is 2.8 per cent of the city’s population of 364,161. Os

the unemployed, 8,307 are men and 1,773 women. It also is set out that 2.530 persons. including 2.060 men. were laid off temporarily, without pay. The report showed 874 persons not working because of permanent disability, 1.285 persons with jobs, , but unable to work because of illness, 323 without jobs and not seeking work, 326 voluntarily idle and 310 drawing salaries on vacations. CLASSLESS COLLEGE MAY BE ABANDONED Closing of School Where Students Hobnob With Professors Asked. By United Press MADISON, Wis., Feb. 17.—Discontinuance of the University of Wisconsin's experimental college, where students study without

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classes and hobnob with their professors, was recommended today by Dr. Alexander Meiklejohn. its director. His report was submitted to the university's faculty for action. Dr. Glenn Frank, university president, in commenting a week ago on rumors the college was to be abandoned, said the “more conservative” members of the faculty were ‘antagonistic” toward it.

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