Big Mike: Useless Justice

I've been poring over a couple of books about the Chicago crime syndicate: "The Outfit: The Role of Chicago's Underworld in the Shaping of Modern America," by Gus Russo; and "Captive City," by Ovid Demaris.

Reading them has left me horrified by the cozy relationship between the underworld and the upperworld. Crooks and sadists like Al Capone, Frank Nitti, Tony Accardo, Paul Ricca, Murray Humphreys, Sam Giancana and a slew of succeeding crime bosses were essentially business partners with assorted mayors, police commanders, judges, state senators and members of some of the city's most prestigious boards of directors. It was all an open secret that most Chicagoans chose to ignore.

I see no reason to believe the dynamic has changed now that organized crime is run by younger, more ethnically and racially diverse goons. Any accomplished office-holder has to be aware of the long reach of drug dealing, pimping and burgling gangs into City Hall, the circuit courts and the state house.

It seems crazy, but many of us celebrate these slobs. Take the whole Godfather-Sopranos-Rat Pack mania that's been going on for years. Countless lunkheads titter at "Goodfellas" lines and listen to Louie Prima disks because that's what Wise Guys listened to. Oh, what a guy the Don was, making people offers they couldn't refuse! And Giancana and Sinatra were as thick as, well, thieves - isn't that a riot?

I once did a story about Mike North, at the time, the king of Chicago sports talk radio. He brought me into his northwest suburban home and proudly showed off his basement den on which he'd spent a mint recreating precisely the office of Vito Corleone, right down to the cherry wood blinds.

After reading Russo and Demaris, I'd equate North's interior decorating choices with those of someone who elects to reproduce John Gacy's bedroom or Osama bin Laden's cave in his home.

Organized crime depends in large part on the labors of little men who jimmy car trunks, break into homes or knock over jewelers. Some of these penny-ante crooks even become local heroes of a sort. The Panczko boys - Pops, Butch and Peanuts - for instance, were compulsive burglars who were lovingly profiled in numerous Sunday newspaper magazine sections.

We laugh at and secretly cherish these chestnuts of Chicago's colorful history: Hey, our petty criminals and smart and entertaining! And our Mob is ten times better than New York's Five Families, the Cleveland and Detroit guys or those flamboyant LA kingpins. Hell, they almost bumped off Castro! They got Kennedy elected and then they killed him for two-timing them! Our monsters are better than your monsters!

I've had a couple of run ins with home burglars. In 1980, I was awakened by strange noises in the middle of a hot July night. I got up to investigate and discovered a treasure trove of my belongings piled on the back porch, waiting to be lugged down the stairs. I dashed to my roommate's bedroom to alert her. As I knocked on her door, I glanced toward the back door and saw the burglar coming back in for more swag.

I shouted and ran at him. When he saw me, his eyes became wide as saucers. He turned and flew down the stairs. I chased him only as far as the back porch because, well, I was naked. No wonder his eyes had grown so wide!

A dozen years later, in another apartment, I came home one afternoon to find my TV, VCR and stereo piled neatly near the front door. I found a note from my next door neighbor who said she'd happened to glance into my living room window and seen a stranger prowling around so she called the cops. The burglar was nabbed while hiding in the basement stairway under my back porch.

I also found several clean socks, taken from my sock drawer, scattered around the areas where the valuables had been. Later, I found a couple of socks in the basement stairway. I figured the burglar had used them to wipe stray fingerprints off the surrounding surfaces. Pretty smart.

Anyway, I showed up at the punk's trial a couple of months later. Before the proceeding, I sat in an ante-room with a couple of harried, distracted Assistant State's Attorneys. They told me they were certain this punk had been responsible for a rash of similar burglaries in my neighborhood. They thanked me, profusely and hurriedly, for showing up.

I went back out into the courtroom and sat next to the punk, whose picture I'd seen when the prosecutors had opened their file in front of me. As we rose for the judge to enter the court, I took advantage of the rustling and whispered to him, "I better never see you around my house again." The punk, maybe 19 or 20 years old, looked at me with panic on his face.

The case was called and the two of us marched up to the bench as if we'd come to court together. This elicited a surprised look from the judge. Then he fell back into his previous bored visage, thumbed through the case file and addressed me.

"Mr. Glab, did you find anything missing from your house?"

Now I panicked. None of my valuables were missing, of course. But if I answered no, he might decide there was no case here. I thought quickly. Aha! There was something missing!

"Yes, your honor. I found two socks - one white and one gray - in the basement stairway under my back porch."

I was ready to launch into an explanation of my fingerprint-wiping theory. But the judge cut me off, loudly.

"What?" he hollered. He threw the file toward his clerk. "Get this out of here! Case dismissed."

"Oh, but I...," I began, but he talked over me, directing his ire at the Assistant State's Attorneys. "Don't waste my time with stuff like this. What's the matter with you?"

The prosecutors looked sheepish. Then they looked at me. I shrugged. They shook their heads.

"Next," the judge announced.

The un-convicted burglar walked free. I like to think he kept my warning in mind. Maybe I even scared him straight. Maybe. Then again, he may have aspired to become so good at his occupation that one day some lunkhead might decorate his house the way he had. Or a Sunday newspaper magazine writer would pen a loving profile of him.

Letter From Milo: Legalize This

Back in the good old days when I used to smoke a bit of reefer (I developed glaucoma at a young age), I paid about $40 an ounce for a bag of decent Mexican weed. Out of that forty dollars I figure about $10 went into the pocket of the dealer, another ten went into the dealer's supplier's pocket and the rest of the money found its circuitous way back to Mexico.

At the time, in the early 70s, there was an epidemic of glaucoma in the USA and there were literally millions of folks who had to smoke reefer to gain some relief from the affliction. That meant that there were millions of $40 transactions taking place every week. That also meant that a lot of money was going into the dealers' pockets and a huge amount of money was flowing back to Mexico.

But not one cent went into the coffers of the United States government. In fact, the government was actually losing billions of dollars trying the suppress the marijuana trade.

As I understand it, the price of marijuana has skyrocketed over the years. The same bag that cost me $40 now sells for several hundred. Yet, the government still does not make a penny from this multi-billion dollar business.

It is estimated that marijuana is California's largest cash crop. Yet California - which is in the throes of a terrible budget crisis, and has to borrow money from the feds just to maintain basic civic services - refuses to even consider legalizing and taxing marijuana. This strikes me, and quite a few other commentators, as the height of fiduciary irresponsibility.

The government taxes and regulates tobacco, alcohol and gambling. Why can't they tax and regulate marijuana? Let the potheads help pay the salaries of our city and state employees. Then we might hear conversations like this:

Cop: Did you know you were going the wrong way down a one-way street?

Driver: (giggling) Didn't realize it, officer.

Cop: Young man, are you stoned?

Driver: Chill, dude, who do you think is paying your salary?

Cop: Ah, sorry boss. Didn't mean to inconvenience you.

I won't even try to argue the ethical, moral or health issues of marijuana, but from a strictly economical viewpoint, the continued prohibition on marijuana makes no sense. It is a costly, ineffective program that has proven to be a complete failure. Marijuana is as popular as ever. It is a multi-billion dollar business with the potential to bring in billions of tax dollars. I just don't get it.

While I'm at it, I'd like to propose the legalization of all drugs. Legalize everything - coke, heroin, meth, crack, cough syrup, model airplane glue, banana peels - everything.

Alarmists might say I'm crazy: Milo, are you nuts? The streets would be crawling with depraved junkies.

I say, So fucking what? The streets are already crawling with junkies. I doubt if the number will increase just because drugs become legal. A certain percentage of the population will always be drug addicts. Oh, there might be a spike in useage at first, but once the novelty wears off people will come to their senses.

Besides, there's nothing as harmless as a junkie when he's loaded. They pass their days staring at TV, dozing or picking lint from their belly buttons. Junkies only become dangerous when they don't have any junk. That's when they break into your home, rob you on the street or commit senseless murders.

I say let the junkies register in a national addict program, then they can visit their MD, get a prescription, walk down to their neighborhood Osco and pick up their drug of choice. It works with methadone programs, and it will work with other drug programs.

Besides reaping huge amounts of tax dollars, legalizing drugs will have added benefits.

With the stroke of the legislative pen we could empty our prisons, which are filled with people serving time for drug-related offenses and costing taxpayers billions yearly in upkeep. We could break the power of the narco states in South America and Asia. Terrorists who rely on drug money to finance their schemes will have to get day jobs. The Mexican border gangs, who have created their own mini-states along the Rio Grande, will fade away.

If history has proven anything, it's that vice can't be stopped. Prohibition is the prime example. Did people quit drinking liquor because the government banned it? The only thing Prohibition did was to enrich organized gangs and entrench them in society, so that even now, 90 years after Prohibition was enacted, mobsters are still a force to be reckoned with. Had it not been for Prohibition, mobsters would never have been anything but a historical footnote in American history. No Godfather, no Goodfellas, no Untouchables.

Let the good times roll!