This dinner was the start of a new blatancy in the relationship between the gangs and the politicians , which, prior to 1924, says Pasley , "had been maintained with more or less stealth ", but which henceforth was marked by these ostentatious gatherings , denounced by a clergyman as "Belshazzar feasts", at which "politicians fraternized cheek by jowl with gangsters , openly , in the big downtown hotels ".