When policy kings ruled
Numbers game made fortunes for underworld bosses, helped shape Chicago's fabled Democratic machine
March 10, 2013|By Ron Grossman | Chicago Tribune reporter
Long before the state of Illinois figured out how to make big money from gambling, mobsters devised "a 50 million dollar a year business in nickels and dimes," as the Tribune reported in 1950.

Called "policy" — the game took bets for as little as a penny — it was the Monte Carlo of the working class, the Las Vegas of the down and out. Especially popular in the African-American community, the game was decried by preachers and beloved of politicians, who could depend on hefty campaign contributions from the policy kings. The men who ran the policy wheels were some of the wealthiest in the black community when the corporate suites were off-limits to people of color.

Runners, as the game's street-level vendors were known, often doubled as precinct captains, and the game helped shape the fabled Chicago machine. Because of the obscene amounts of money involved, policy corrupted officeholders and police alike, while making fortunes for underworld types and providing crime reporters with a steady stream of colorful tales.

Despite the name, they weren't like a casino's roulette wheel, but a cylinder from which numbered balls were drawn, similar to what Illinois adopted when it created its lottery in 1974. Last week, Gov. Pat Quinn again vetoed a gambling expansion bill, though lawmakers already have new legislation in the pipeline, which will no doubt spark debate on all sides of the thorny issue.

The old-time policy bosses attacked questions like market share and division of profits with a simple set of tools: guns and dynamite. They had little patience for the argument that gambling is, at best, a vice, and at worst, an addiction.

In 1903, a black pastor, the Rev. R.C. Ransom sermonized on the evils of policy, whereupon his church was bombed. Ransom said he wouldn't be intimidated, the Tribune reported: "Nevertheless he announced he would carry the revolver which lay beneath his bible when he was preaching on Sunday night."

Yet for all their muscle, the gangsters who ran betting operations with intriguing names like the Spaulding-Silver-Dunlap wheel confronted business expenses that the operators of today's licensed casinos don't face, as Theodore Roe explained to a federal investigating committee in 1950. Roe testified that the wheel he operated with a partner grossed $1 million a year, but that it all wasn't gravy.

"Every time you turn around you have to spend something," said Roe, a big shot in the policy rackets. "And then for courts, lawyers, fines, all kinds of raids."

Raids there certainly were. "Policy Men See Writing On Wall" read the headline for a 1903 Tribune story of the cops shutting down 150 policy wheels. "Police Raid Swank Policy Depot" was the headline for a 1949 story of a rare, upscale betting parlor. There were grand jury investigations galore. "Indict 3 Policy Kingpins!" a 1951 Tribune headline proclaimed. Under virtually the same headline 11 years before, the Tribune had reported a previous indictment of the same three racketeers.

Indeed, there were so many raids and grand jury probes, you might think the cops and prosecutors weren't really trying that hard. When police Capt. John Golen was asked by a City Council committee in 1945 to assess the war on policy, the Tribune reported: "'We are trying to get the first conviction,' Golden replied. He said he did not recall anyone being convicted on a policy arrest."

No sooner would a policy boss be taken into custody than a lawyer would show up to bail him out. One mob mouthpiece even brought with him an obliging jurist, Judge George Lancelot Quilici, to demand the release of his client, Tony Accardo, who was moving in on the policy rackets in 1951 while making himself "capo di tutti capi," boss of all the bosses, of Chicago's mafia.

That same year, the Tribune editorialized on the slim chances of stamping out numbers betting: "It isn't likely to happen while it is a reasonable supposition that police officers work as body guards for policy kings, and other officers in the areas concerned have incomes many times their salaries."

Policy's corrupting influence was greatest on the South and West sides, the numbers being especially popular in black neighborhoods where residents bore the double burden of poverty and discrimination. The odds against winning were considerable — even if the wheel was honest — but buying a policy ticket from a runner who made the rounds of newsstands and barbershops offered a modicum of hope where it was a rare commodity. Case in point: Getting caught was no deterrent. Arrested bettors would jot down the cop's badge number for future wagers.

Policy also provided thousands of jobs where employment opportunities were scarce, and inspired at least one spinoff industry — the publication of "dream books" that were touted for providing clues to a winning number.