The safety of St. Paul's streets in the 1920's

[Seismic Sam]

HammAR's hilarious article about the Brit sheeple newsperson getting the gun pointed at her made me think about a rather unique chapter in St. Paul history that occurred in the 1920's. At some point an agreement was reached between the Irish DA of St. Paul, along with the Irish Chief of police, and John Dillinger, Alvin Karpis, and Ma Barker among others. The agreement was faily simple, and as long as there was no significant crime in St. Paul, Dillinger and the rest could live there safely and they would not be arrested. The one exception was that they could cross the line over into Hennepin County and do whatever they wanted. (The old rivalry between the two cities was pretty bitter.) The beauty of this scheme was that if some idiot punk decided to stick up a store, it wasn't the St. Paul police he had to worry about, it was Dillinger or Karpis themselves, and justice would be served at the muzzle velocity of a 45 coming out the barrel of a Thompson SMG. For years the city of St. Paul was essentially crimeless except for purse snatchings. At some point the agreement went sour, and this is what most likely prompted the famous Hamm kidnapping.

I got all this information from the late Bill Grier, whose last job was Editor of the St. Paul Dispatch, and when he was 18 years old in the 1920's he was given the police beat as a cub reporter, because there wasn't much to write about. Occasionally John Dillinger would give Bill a ride over to the University of Minnesota where he was going to college, and Bill once had luch with Bonnie Parker.

No judges, no juries, no ridiculous sentencing guidelines - If you did the crime in St. Paul, you would be hunted down and shot on the spot, and every low-life in St. Paul behaved themselves because of that.

[ttousi]

the good old days

[Rip Van Winkle]

According to my Dear ol' Dad, Saint Paul declared itself an "open city". All mobsters were welcome as long as they behaved themselves and spent their money here. The problem was, mobsters being low lives, brought their troubles with them.

John Dillinger lived on Lincoln Ave. by Lexington Pkwy, only blocks from where I grew up.

[David]

I wonder how this gells with the Barker gang's hold-up of the South St. Paul Post Office in 1933, during which they killed a police officer? Was the truce over by then? Or did this event precipitate its demise?

[cobb]

A lot of this is also covered in a book call, "John Dillinger Slept Here", A Crooks' Tour of Crime and Corruption in St. Paul, by Paul Maccabee.
Which now makes me mad, I just went to the closet shelf where is should be, I thought I would do some spot reading in it and it's not there.

Probably another one I loaned out and never got back.

[justaguy]

I like how you old guys are trying to play off that you have to get this information from other people, or that you have to get it out of books. Isn’t 1920 the year some of you graduated high school?

[selurcspi]

Cobb, you can replace your book here.

http://www3.addall.com/New/compare.cgi?dispCurr=USD&id=199973&isbn=0873513169&location=10000&thetime=20080131064516&author=&title=&state=AK

[Seismic Sam]

I like how you old guys are trying to play off that you have to get this information from other people, or that you have to get it out of books. Isn’t 1920 the year some of you graduated high school?

Yeah, and considering what cigarette smoke does to the age of your face, you realize that you look like a short, bearded version of Keith Richards in a fishing vest??

[Srigs]

Great post Sam. Sound like interesting times!