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Dewey's further racket strokes had been less spectacular and conclusive. He had kept his trial record perfect: 52 indictments, 52 convictions. Proceeding with extreme secrecy and caution, refusing to strike until he felt sure he had enough evidence to convict, he had made public beginnings against rackets in the trucking, garment, used-brick and poultry industries. Finding the notorious poultry racket apparently impregnable, he had succeeded in indicting its reputed boss, Arthur ("Tootsie") Herbert, and two of his lieutenants on charges of embezzling from the labor union which they controlled. Policy-Week before last the patient Dewey researches bore fruit in three moves characteristic of his methods and purposes. The policy racket (numbers game), by which small New York City betters are mulcted of some $50,000,000 per year (TIME, Jan. 4), was once a Dutch Schultz monopoly. It passed on his death to Luciano and has since been divided among several large rings, hundreds of small independent "bankers." Setting up temporary headquarters one evening^ in upper Riverside Drive's historic, city-owned Claremont Inn, now closed for the winter, Mr. Dewey sent 70 detectives swarming over Harlem after the city's biggest known policy ring, run by two West Indian Negroes named Pompeii and Ison. Bankers, slip girls, runners, collectors were carted to the Inn for examination in a nightlong stream. By morning 70 of them, including Ison but not Pompeii, were in hand, plus the ring's "take" for the previous day: $14,136.
Except as a huge source of criminal funds and as a possible lead to some su-per-boss like Luciano, Prosecutor Dewey was no more interested in policy gambling than he had been in prostitution. But though he never expected to wipe out prostitution, he did announce that he might abolish policy in the only way it ever could be abolished—by showing betters what a "crooked gyp racket" it is.