ILLICIT LIQUOR

Taranaki Daily News, 14 November 1934, Page 6

ILLICIT LIQUOR

VICE AND GAMBLING DENS. GANGSTER’S NEW ACTIVITIES. With “Scarface” Al Capone safely transferred to the “escape-proof” Alcatraz Prison, in San Francisco Bay, the police here attempted to put an end to Chicago’s most notorious gang by arresting Ralph “Bottles” Capone, brother of “Scarface,” states the Chicago correspondent of the Manchester Guardian. “Bottles” has been detained by the police for questioning in connection with reports that he has reorganised the gang previously led by his more notorious brother. A specific charge has been brought against him that he and his gang have endeavoured by threats to force saloon-keepers in certain Chicago districts to buy their stocks of beer from a particular brewery. One of the reasons reported for the sudden removal of Al Capone from the Atlanta (Georgia) Federal penitentiary to his new island prison was that he was too effectively ruling the underworld from his cell at Atlanta. It was also reported that tools were found in the convicts’ quarters there, indicating a planned escape. ; Capone’s new cell has tear gas “laid on” in the walls and has patent steel doors. He will probably stay there for another nine years, the remainder of his 11-year sentence, given him for non-pay-ment of income tax. He is said to be very angry at his removal to the “Devil’s Island” of the Californian coast. He was reported by the warders of the Atlanta prison to have been a “model prisoner” there, and he was doubtless counting on this record to lessen his imprisonment. Although the end of prohibition killed the “bootleg beer racket,” which was the most profitable field of Al Capone’s activities, his gang has controlled various “vice rackets,” such as disorderly houses and gambling dens. They also started legal breweries after the repeal of prohibition, and developed a “racket” of persuading saloon-keepers to buy from them, which is the charge now made against “Bottles” Capone. In addition there is the “prbtection racket,” in which blackmail is levied on small shop proprietors by gangsters on pain of having their premises wrecked by a “pineapple” bomb tossed through a window at night from a passing car, or their goods ruined by acid or stinkbombs. The end of prohibition, instead of killing criminal “racketeering,” has merely diverted the energies of gangsters into other channels. It was admitted by Federal officials that “Scarface” had been transferred to Alcatraz Island prison. He and fortytwo others were roused in the middle of the night and ordered to dress in readiness for moving. They were then taken to a special railway coach equipped with barred windows, under a heavy guard armed with repeating shotguns. At San Francisco the coach was run on board a ferry and taken over the bay to Alcatraz Island, where the prisoners were received by the warden and a score of heavily armed guards.