At 2 o’clock on the morning of July 16, 1912, Rosenthal was summoned out from the doorway of the Hotel Metropole at Broadway and Forty-third street, and shot to death by four “gunmen” from within an automobile, which immediately after the shooting sped away with the murderers.
Arrests of suspects quickly followed. By July 29, 1912, District Attorney Whitman held four men, all of whom had become informers. These four were “Bald Jack” Rose, “Bridgie” Webber, Harry Vallon, and Sam Schepps—two of whom, Rose and Vallon, had voluntarily surrendered. On statements made by Rose and Vallon, the Grand Jury returned an indictment against Becker charging murder in the first degree. A few days later, Becker was re-indicted, and indictments were handed in against the four “gunmen”—Louis Rosenberg, alias “Lefty Louie,” 23 years old; Harry Horowitz, alias “Gyp the Blood,” 26 years old; Jacob Seidenshner, alias “Whitey Lewis,” 26 years old, and Frank Cirofici, alias “Dago Frank,” 29 years old. These “gunmen” were variously arrested at different places.
Stirred by this brutal murder, a mass meeting of citizens was held at Cooper Union on August 14, 1912. Resolutions were adopted part of which approved a proposal for an appropriation by the city of $25,000 for an investigation into police conditions and a thorough inquiry into the causes and possible remedies of systems of blackmail and graft. A Citizens’ Committee was appointed by this mass meeting to report on these conditions.
Of the police force this committee reported on February 26, 1913, that:
“The corruption is so ingrained that the man of ordinary decent character entering the force and not possessed of extraordinary moral fiber may easily succumb. About him are the evidences of graft and the enjoyment of irregular incomes substantially increasing the patrolman’s salary. Inadequate condemnation is shown by his associates in the force for such practises; on the contrary, there is much indirect pressure which induces him to break his oath of office; the families of grafting policemen live better than his own, and the urgencies of his family and of his own social needs tempt him to thrive as do his corrupt associates. Such a system makes for too many of the police an organized school of crime. The improvement of recent years—and there is some—is not great enough to satisfy an aroused public.
“But not resting with this general knowledge of the existence of such matters, this Committee has made an intensive examination of the conditions in a number of police precincts. We know that the connection between members of the police force and crime or commercialized vice is continuous, profitable and so much a matter of course that explicit bargains do not have to be made; naturally this “honor among thieves” is occasionally violated, as is customary among thieves, both the keeping and the breaking of faith being determined by these policemen for their own profit.
“Well knowing this police ‘system,’ grand juries will not on police testimony indict violators of the law, lest they [the grand juries] be lending themselves to police persecution of a selected criminal who had refused tribute, and so be helping the police ‘system.’ For the same reason petit juries will acquit, and judges will discharge, and crime increases and goes unpunished, while honest policemen are discredited and discouraged.
“Evil thus breeds new maggots of evil. The sums collected by the police excite the greed of certain politicians; they demand their shares, and in their turn they protect the criminal breaches of the law and the police in corruption. The presence of ‘politics’ brings strength and complexity to the ‘system’ and makes it harder to break up. The city, we believe, is convinced that it is time for more radical efforts at improvement.”[1]
A Committee of the Board of Aldermen, appointed to inquire into matters connected with the Police Department, held eighty public sessions, took 4,800 pages of testimony and records, handed in certain conclusions, and made recommendations for further laws. “We have received shocking evidence of a widespread corrupt alliance between the police and gamblers and disorderly house keepers,” this committee reported in part.[2] During the same time, District Attorney Whitman was vigorously prosecuting public offenders. In a single year four police inspectors were convicted of conspiracy and were also under indictment for bribery, one police captain was convicted of extortion, one lieutenant was convicted of extortion, one patrolman of perjury, and two patrolmen were convicted of extortion. In addition, there were various indictments of patrolmen for extortion. Of the convicted, the captain and one patrolman confessed; an attorney and a citizen indicted for bribery in connection with police matters, also confessed.