DBWI: No night Chicago died

July 13 will be the 80th anniversary of "Unlucky Saturday" or "Black Saturday", renamed "The Night Chicago Died" after the Paper Lace rock ballad of that terrible night. 112 policemen were killed, scores of other police were wounded and 41 gangsters, including Al Capone himself, were killed. What would have happened if Capone and his gang had been peacefully arrested for bootlegging? There would be no Police Monument in Chicago, of course, with its 112 pillars, and no song to commemorate that tragedy. But how would law enforcement have changed, both in Chicago and across the country? How else would society have been altered?
 
Well, the decapitation of the 1920s mob would not have happened. The well-known gangsters like Capone would have stayed at the top for longer.

I wonder if the people who took their place after the battle that night would have taken kindly to having their advancement stymied.
 
I wonder if it's possible that the corruption of the 20s-era Chicago could have infiltrated all of Illinois, instead of dieing out in the mid-40s during World War II. The Night led to a near-complete turning-out of corruption within the city, with the examples of 112 as a powerful symbol of why it needed to end. Given the kinds of things going on there at that time, it wouldn't suprise me to see it leading to govenors even going to jail.
 
Eliot Ness (R-OH) wouldn't have been elected mayor of Cleveland, Ohio in 1941-1948, and he certainly wouldn't have been elected in 1948 to the U.S. Senate, with enough time and tenure to head up the Organized Crime Hearings of 1954. Ness is credited with preventing organized crime from getting past the Sierra Nevada...
 
Well, without the example of brutal urban battles against the Mob, I wonder if the 'War on Gangsters' would have gotten off the ground. Hell, but the kind of mentality that led to the decade-long Bambino bombings that brought Wall Street to a halt, the resulting police raids into Little Italy, the race riots -- it might all be butterflied away.
 
Consider that this would also butterfly away the formation of the Italian-American Civil Rights League (IACRL) and the American-Italian Anti-Defamation Leaague (AIADL) in the 1960s. This might also erase the assassinations of Frank Sinatra (1967) and Joseph Colombo Jr. (1970). Imagine a world without December 12 (12/12) as a Sinatra's Birthday Holiday....
 
The Chicago battles just gave birth to smarter gangsters. Even the Five Families of New York wised up and went underground after that night.

It just made for a lot tougher organized crime to go after, which as mentioned came to a head in the 1960s and 1970s. Chicago was almost matched by what New York often calls Judgement Day for the Mafia in August 1975.
 
It is interesting that, both in Black Saturday and Judgement Day there were no wounded criminals. They all either surrendered or (mostly) died. It is widely held that any crook who did not quickly throw up his hands and screamed "I SURRENDER!" It is likely that wounded "bad guys" got finished off by the cops who had seen so many of their "brothers in blue" die before their eyes.
 
People tend to overlook what it did to the development of body armour. It saved countless of US lifes in WWII. It's hard to predict who would have lived but Will Warren credit his west and his death would have changed a lot...
 
It is interesting that, both in Black Saturday and Judgement Day there were no wounded criminals. They all either surrendered or (mostly) died. It is widely held that any crook who did not quickly throw up his hands and screamed "I SURRENDER!" It is likely that wounded "bad guys" got finished off by the cops who had seen so many of their "brothers in blue" die before their eyes.
Well, according to the latest declassified findings of the Helms Report of 1986, regarding "Judgement Day" (1975), onething that was left out of the reports were the extremely high number of civilian casualties that took place that day. According to the report the New York Post and the New York Times were forced by the Rockefeller administration to censor photographs showing injuries or deaths that featured women and/or children, out of fear that it would "discourage" support for law enforcement. Personally this is a case wherein the police were covering their own reputations...
 
Interesting too that "Black Saturday" is what most people think about when mob-police wars are mentioned. It is like everybody knows about Jack the Ripper, but fewer people know about the "Torso Killer" or "Mad Butcher of Kingsbury Run" in my hometown of Cleveland (which very nearly cost Eliot Ness the election. btw). One reason is that Chicago was first, like the Ripper was the first unsolved serial killer. Another is that Judgement Day only killed 89 police, a (somewhat) smaller fraction of a larger Police force (Chicago's loss of killed and severely wounded put law enforcement into near paralysis for months)...of course, here the analogy breaks down because the Butcher had more "canonical" victims than the Ripper. Yet another is the coverup that Mr_ Bondoc mentioned. Hmm..LA has a lot of mob activity now. I hope that history does not repeat itself.
 
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Interesting too that "Black Saturday" is what most people think about when mob-police wars are mentioned. It is like everybody knows about Jack the Ripper, but fewer people know about the "Torso Killer" or "Mad Butcher of Kingsbury Run" in my hometown of Cleveland (which very nearly cost Eliot Ness the election. btw). One reason is that Chicago was first, like the Ripper was the first unsolved serial killer. Another is that Judgement Day only killed 89 police, a (somewhat) smaller fraction of a larger Police force (Chicago's loss of killed and severely wounded put law enforcement into near paralysis for months)...of course, here the analogy breaks down because the Butcher had more "canonical" victims than the Ripper. Yet another is the coverup that Mr_ Bondoc mentioned. Hmm..LA has a lot of mob activity now. I hope that history does not repeat itself.
If Mayor Darryl Gates (R-CA) gets his way, it will most certainly turn into a massive bloodbath. Already there are reports by the ACLU and Human Rights Watch of the LAPD launching "preemptive strikes" into the South Central and East Los Angeles areas with the "Earth Angels" division. Already there are members of the UN Security Council who are comparing the situation to the Soviet actions in Chechnya, or the Chinese crackdown on the Falun Gong....
 
as a New Englander, the Day Southie Burned comes to mind first when i'm asked about Police on Gang Violence, though much smaller then Black Saturday or Judgement Day (only 64 Police kill and 34 of the Irish Mob) it lasted much longer (2 weeks or off on riots in Boston) and really help cement the Anti-Catholic feelings stirred up by Black Saturday 3 years before, Milwaukee's Polish Riots 8 years latter made it even worse
 
as a New Englander, the Day Southie Burned comes to mind first when i'm asked about Police on Gang Violence, though much smaller then Black Saturday or Judgement Day (only 64 Police kill and 34 of the Irish Mob) it lasted much longer (2 weeks or off on riots in Boston) and really help cement the Anti-Catholic feelings stirred up by Black Saturday 3 years before, Milwaukee's Polish Riots 8 years latter made it even worse
Well for many, the anti-Catholic sentiment continues. Just remember that Rudy Guliani (D-NY) wouldn't have been elected President of the United States in 2004, if it wasn't for his strong anti-crime credentials, along with his handling of the UN bombing in 2002. The Democrats shot themselves in the 1960, when they had the son of an alleged Irish mobster as their candidate. I believe it was John Kennedy (D-MA). They seemed to shoot themselves in the foot when they proposed Mayor Joseph Alioto (D-CA) in 1972 for the Vice-Presidential nomination...
 
As a Catholic in Ohio, I get a lot of that, especially from "conservative" Protestants.
 
As a Chicagoan I tend to look at the brighter side of this. Because of the mob being decapitated, Illinois has remained a fairly decent state when it comes to corruption.
 
Bugs Moran and the North Side gang probably would not have been able to unite with the Purple Gang, illegal liquor sales wouldn't have tripled, and prohibition probably wouldn't have ended as early as it did.
 
Bugs Moran and the North Side gang probably would not have been able to unite with the Purple Gang, illegal liquor sales wouldn't have tripled, and prohibition probably wouldn't have ended as early as it did.
One thing that also has to be considered is whether or not the "War on Narcotics" that began in 1964 would have been launched. Many people claim that the prohibition on narcotics like marijuana and heroin was racially motivated, often with Negro-American, Latino-Chicano American, and Chinese-American leaders being indicted and convicted, while WASP dealers and users are often referred to "halfway-houses" and "treatment programs"....
 
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