The Police Raid Brookline

Watch any old Hollywood movie about the Prohibition era and you’re bound to see a good old-fashioned police raid. You know the type — officers huddled in hiding spots around a staked-out target, the chief gives the signal…then suddenly a battering ram knocks the door down, police flood in from everywhere, and a half-dozen squad cars pull up with screaming sirens. These days, the police raid — or the “no-knock” warrant at least — usually has some connection to a drug bust. In the Prohibition era, it was used to enforce the Volstead Act, but also to catch criminals in other so-called “moral” crimes relating to alcohol, pornography, gambling — even birth control. Here in Brookline during the Great Depression, Chief of Police H. Allen Rutherford was on the prowl for such violations and the police raid was his favorite tactic.

Prohibition’s days may have been numbered in the early 1930s, but Allen Rutherford was still eager to enforce the law. But the so-called "Baby Volsteads" — state versions of the national Volstead Act that supplied the specific codes to enforce Prohibition — were rapidly being gutted. Essentially the police had to catch a criminal red-handed to have any chance in court. But if “red-handed” was what was needed, then H. Allen Rutherford was ready to get it.

Speakeasys were high on the chief’s hit list. In October 1933, just a couple months before the ratification of the 21st Amendment, Brookline police raided one such members-only club, well-hidden at the top of a two-and-a-half story wooden building at 125 Winchester Street.

The Club Norfolk also seemed right out of a Hollywood movie. According to the Brookline Chronicle, at one in the morning, police “smashed their way into the quarters of the club” finding a surprised group of “twenty men and five women standing at a modernistic circular bar and tables.” Although all exits were blocked, no actual arrests were made. Instead, police seized “considerable serving equipment” and plenty of mixed liquors before completely dismantling the bar. On Monday morning the chief was down at the municipal court, using the confiscated evidence to close down the club, while Philip King, who was operating the speakeasy under the guise of a drug clerk trade organization, was unceremoniously hauled into court. 

The Brookline police found such raids to be effective in more than just the quest to find illegal alcohol. After several weeks of surveillance, in September 1933, officers with rifles and revolvers surrounded a three-story building at 485 Washington Street. Officers crept up the stairs and rang the doorbell and when the door was opened, they burst in, ordering the surprised gamblers up against the walls. In a chaotic scene, Lieutenant Mahoney waved a warrant in hand, shouting above the constant ringing of telephones in the hideaway as the cops discovered numerous loaded revolvers along with gambling operation equipment – three electric adding machines, charts showing lottery ticket distribution, and cash boxes with thousands of dollars on hand. As the twelve suspects were hustled out onto Washington Street, onlookers gawked, tying up traffic. According to the Chronicle, “nearby residents were surprised to learn that such an establishment was operating in their midst.” It was revealed that the lottery pool headquarters was hidden in the two back rooms of an apartment rented to one Salvatore Guarino and his family, who apparently had ties to a larger racketeering operation called the "Victory Pool,” which was doing illegal business in three states.

The police received good marks for their efforts in the Note & Comment section of the next week’s paper which read: “Chief Rutherford and his men deserve high praise for how they dumped a lottery outfit onto the sidewalk recently. There wasn’t a slip and not a fish escaped the dragnet that was laid for the lottery gang.”

However, some raids did not go quite so smoothly. When the Brookline police raided a boarding house with suspected Prohibition violators at 1459 Beacon Street, the suspects used any means to fight back — including their teeth. Liquor officer Harry McNeil of the Brookline Police was painfully bitten on the thumb by suspect James Williams, who was attempting to escape at the time. As the raiding detail burst into the apartment, some of the suspects ran to a back window in an attempt to pour liquor out into the alley below. Along with the alcohol, $500 was seized and Williams and a janitor, James Ingraham, wound up in front of Judge Daniel Rollins under a $2000 bail. As for the bitten thumb, it was taken care of at Peter Bent Brigham Hospital.

Later in 1933, the Chief targeted two more “blind pigs” operating in Brookline but apparently the club owners were too quick this time. Finding two heavily barred doors at the Commonwealth Club at 1018 Comm Ave, police smashed their way through, only to find two men inside but no trace of liquor. It was the same story at the Havard Associates’ Club at 71 Boylston Street. Police barged in past midnight one Saturday night to discover their target had been tipped off — twenty men stood around with no alcohol in sight.

Brookline Police used raids to hunt for more than just alcohol and gambling tickets. In June 1934, it was “obscene material” that cops were looking for when they teamed up with two Boston detectives to bust a basement location on St. Mary’s Street, seizing nearly 500 books and pictures and arresting employee Guido Peracchi.  The police claimed they “nipped in the bud a scheme to flood high and preparatory schools throughout New England with the books and pictures,” however details were scarce on exactly what type of “obscenity” the materials included. 

Birth control clinics were also subject to Brookline Police raids. One 1937 Chronicle article tells of Brookline’s finest barging into the Mother’s Health Office that occupied seven rooms on the first floor of a house at 9 Vernon Street. Police seized contraceptives and birth control literature while a number of young women fled from the waiting room to the exit. A few days later, Dr. Ilia Gallean, the owner of the clinic, was hauled before Judge Phillip Parker in municipal court for violating the state birth control statute.

During the war years and into the 1960s, raids were gradually phased out as a leading tactic among police forces across the nation. However, in the 1980s, as President Reagan ramped up the War on Drugs, no-knock tactics were revived in full force. They continue to be used today, even if suspects are more likely to be flushing white powder down the toilet instead of pouring wine bottles out the window.