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Mayor Hatcher and Police Chief Charles Boone are quick to insist that fault lies with the commission and the Lake County courts. Both are largely controlled by the Democratic machine that Hatcher defeated in the 1967 mayoralty election. They have a good point. Several men have been arrested and charged with murder, but there have been no convictions. One judge reduced bail on Godfather Garland's brother Nathaniel, arrested for possession of drugs and a dangerous weapon, from $5,000 to $100; the judge in the case is himself under indictment for income tax evasion. "It's not as if these were first offenders," says Hatcher angrily. "They all have criminal records, and they've all spent a lot of time in jail. But these people are getting back to Gary before the policemen who arrested them can get to court to testify."
On the whole, Boone and his force have been cooperating with the federal authorities. They have made six raids on gang hideouts in the past six months. Each dragnet has rounded up scarifying caches of guns, ammunition and narcotics (one mob squad had reportedly even built a rudimentary tank to repel an anticipated invasion). On one of the raids police uncovered notebooks that included minutes from Family meetings and the gang's bylaws. Said a federal official: "The whole thing seems incredibly childish. They could be Cub Scouts —except that they kill people." Among the club tenets: members donate all earnings to The Family and do not steal from one another.
Above all, they swear allegiance to the Godfather. In fact the books contained a $40 entry for ticket money to the film The Godfather. This particularly incenses Hatcher. Says he: "Any black person who goes to see The Godfather and doesn't come out with some kind of revulsion is the worst sort of Uncle Tom. Remember that line, 'Let the niggers have the drugs, they're animals anyhow'? The Family should get one of the international awards for Tomism." On the side of the crackdown, though, is its support by the majority of the black community, who last week came into the streets to cheer a DALE raiding team.