Hey, let's not be so alarmist:
Chicago - Chicago's former top cop is coming out strong against the state's new gambling bill, which would expand gambling across Illinois and bring a new casino to Chicago. Gov. Pat Quinn has yet to sign the bill into law, and Jody Weis is hoping that won't happen.
Weis, the former superintendent of Chicago Police, is now the deputy director of the Chicago Crime Commission, which says the gambling bill will be a benefit to organized crime in Chicago.
Weis said the main concern is the legislation increases gambling without increasing the regulatory body and resources that keep an eye on it.
I mean, come on, you just have to look at Indiana to see how silly this is. Are gangsters overruning Anderson or French Lick or Gary?
Well, never mind that last one. Gary is right around the lake from Chicago, and all the best gangsters use to summer on Lake Michigan in northwest Indiana and just up the road in Berrien County, Mich. "Al Capone stayed here" is that region's "George Washington slept here."
Comments
Leo:
It all depends on whether you call them GANGSTERS...or GANGSTAS...lol.
Because of ONE isn't overruning an area, the OTHER most certainly WILL.
(either way...not a good thing)
Chicago had Capone, but we had Dillinger. He didn't pull jobs too close to Fort Wayne, but he spent a lot of time here.
I mentioned an item in Smithsonian magazine about John Dillinger. Apparently the most common question the guards hear at the museum has to do with his pickled pepper, which the museum claims not to have. Whether or not they have it, my mother said the legends about Dillinger were true.
Yes, I said? And how do you know this? She said that John D. cut a fairly wide swath in and around the City of Churches, and one of her friends had, uh, testified to friends as to the evidence, and then two others investigated and corroborated the claims. Dillinger not only had size, but he was apparently skillful as well.
There's only so much a guy asks his mother about sex, and we were well past my comfort level, so I didn't ask for any more details.
There are probably multiple people in their 70s and 80s today in the Fort Wayne trade area who are related to John Dillinger. Who knows? Maybe they grew up to be banksters?