LAW ENFORCEMENT

Law enforcement was especially important during the last years of prohibition and the first half of the Great Depression, a period that saw a wave of violence and well-publicized criminal activity. Homer Cummings, Franklin D. Roosevelt's attorney general from 1933 to 1939, declared that, "We are now engaged in a war that threatens the safety of our country—a war with the organized forces of crime."

The 18th Amendment, which was passed by Congress in 1917 and went into effect in 1920, prohibited the manufacture, sale, and transportation of alcoholic beverages. Prohibition was expected to reduce the consumption of alcohol and thereby reduce crime and poverty, and improve the quality of life. In fact, prohibition led to an explosive growth of crime. The Great Depression compounded the problem as some poor Americans resorted to crime as a way to provide food, clothing, and other necessities.

The crime rate at the end of the 1920s nearly doubled from that of the pre-Prohibition period. Serious crimes, such as homicide and assault, increased nearly 13 percent during the Prohibition era. According to Mark Thornton's "Policy Analysis: Alcohol Prohibition was a Failure" (1991) the crime rate increased because prohibition destroyed legal jobs, created black-market violence, diverted resources from enforcement of other laws, and increased the prices people had to pay for prohibited goods. In large cities the homicide rate went from 5.6 percent (per 100,000 population) in the pre-Prohibition period to nearly 10 percent during Prohibition. By 1932, banks were being robbed at a rate of twelve to sixteen each month across the country, and during the earlier two years kidnappings and extortions had increased to what was considered epidemic proportions. Nearly three hundred kidnappings were reported nationally in 1931.

State and local law enforcement officials, who were insufficient in number, poorly trained, and poorly paid and equipped, were unable to deal with the increasing illegal activities that occurred during the Depression years. They were further restricted by laws that prohibited them from chasing suspects across city, county, and state lines, and from inconsistencies in federal and states laws that prevented federal agents from helping local officials track criminals.

Beginning in 1925, the new director of the Bureau of Investigation (the word Federal was added in 1935), J. Edgar Hoover, began to reform the problem-plagued agency. He searched for talented, honest men, hired the best of them, and put them through a rigorous orientation program in order to assemble an elite group of specialized in law enforcement agents. The bureau made positive advances at strengthening its crime-fighting capabilities, by, for example, conducting surveys of banks and bank robberies, using laboratories and scientific methods to examine crime evidence, and training police officers in modern investigative methods.

As American citizens grew increasingly alarmed at the epidemic of lawlessness and after local law enforcement officials proved unable to deal with it, the Bureau of Investigation was called to "go to war" against crime. In May 1934 Congress approved an anti-crime package that included the Anti-Racketeering Act, which prohibited extortion through the mail or telephone; the Fugitive Felon Act, which prohibited suspected criminals from crossing state lines to escape prosecution; and the National Firearms Act, which gave the FBI the right to collect taxes on weapons, restrict weapons importation, and require firearms registration. By 1935 Roosevelt had signed seven new crime bills that provided the FBI with comprehensive crime-fighting powers.

During this time, the U.S. attorney general promoted a nationwide public relations campaign to glorify the G-man, or government-man, and to undermine criminal activity. Soon, Americans were reading newspaper articles describing the daring exploits of Hoover's G-men as they battled with gangsters. Children all over the country began wearing tin G-Man badges and playing with toy Tommy guns. Hollywood even produced a movie called G-Man (1935) that starred James Cagney, previously noted for his roles as gangsters, as federal agent James "Brick" Davis. By 1935, federal agents had succeeded in arresting or killing a number of notorious criminals, including John Dillinger, "Baby Face" Nelson (Lester Gillis), George "Machine Gun" Kelly, Bonnie and Clyde (Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker), Charles Arthur "Pretty Boy" Floyd, and Al Capone.

LAW ENFORCEMENT

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