The Washington times., 1921-05-22
Support DryLaw Euen
If You Don't Want To,
Plea of u. c. Official
Assistant District Attorney
Baker Decries Hostility to
Prohibition.

Whether your are in sympathy viii
the national prohibition law or not
you should support I. ana II you ARK
In favor of light wines and beer. yol
Z sshould support the present law and
start working for q modification ol
1t.
This is the advice of Assistant Dts
trict Attorney Charles s. Baker, who
mas been in charge of the prohibition
cases b .fore the District of Columbia
courts.
Mr.. Baker has been attached to the
District Attorneys office only a few
weeks, but his work is being felt
among the bootlegging element of the
city. During the time he has been
In ONCE many cases that have been
hanging fire for several months have
been brought to trial and the grand
jury has heard the stories Of many
persons who have appeared against
the illegal sale of whiskey in the Ma
tional Capital.
SAYS BOOZE IS PLENTIFUL.
There should be as much co-opera-
ton in the prohibition law as in any
other law passed by Congress, he
says. and the bigger the man the
more he should support the law, even
! though he does not agree with 1t.
There are many who believe that the
American people as a whole were not
prepared for sunch drastic legislation
as the prohibition law. he says. and
who believe that total prohibition
Rhould have been brought about grad
daily.
At the present time. he says. most
anyone who has the money can obtain
liquor in ANY quantity he wants, be-
cause the profits are so large that
many men would risk almost any
thing to obtain a supply.
I'VE have been, for some time, ar
resting the small bootlegger and the
small dealer who sells the so-called
extracts and patented drugs" said Mr..
Baker yesterday. This is probably the
right thing to do, but we should go
further and arrest the man who
manufactures the products and so
force them off the market at the
source. If this method were followed,
there would be fewer cases before the
courts. because the products could not
get out throughout the country. 1t
will take hundreds Of more men to
, catch up with these products scatter
ed all over the country in the small
stores, than 1t would IL the supply
were stopped at the source.
Another thing that is to me the
most revolving thing of all Is the
practice Of tipping off boot1eggers
when it is known that they are about
to be arrested. 1 personally know of
a case where the police started out
of the station house to arrest a boot
legger. When they arrived at his
place. they found that the whiskey
had disappeared. A search showed
that the whiskey had few minutes
before they arrived been dumped into
a garbage wagon that was in the
alley in the rear Of his home. This
bootlegger, I am sure, was tipped on
by a member of the police force, who
was in the station house at the time.
PRAISES LIQUOR SQUADS.
"But / am glad to say that cases
like this are rare among the police
force. Every precinct now has .
liquor man, whose duty it Is to keep
the precinct clear of bootleggers.
They have done wonderful work,
but there are instances where they
have gone wrong, either for profit or
from a sense OF pity for the boot
logger, who in every instance was q
personal friend of theirs.
There Is another bootlegger in
Washington who to date has eluded
the clutches of the law. He osten-
sibly conducts an automobile repair
shop. A peculiar feature in his case
is the number of policemen who have
their cars repaired in his shop and
the natural suspicion OF course Is that
they are furnishing protection"
Mr.. Baker says that the biggest
hpotleggers in Washington have never
Deen caught because they have
enough money to operate on a large
scale and are almost immune from
the police and the prohibition agents
because they have never been actual
ly connected up with sale of
whiskey. They employ men, usually
chauffeurs, to sell their illegal prod
ucts, and while their employees have
been arrested time and again. the
real bootlegger has always escaped
the clutches OF the law.
The new assistant District Attorney
has taken up with the judges of the
District courts a plan for getting rid
of some of the liquor which is being
held in the four storehouses in the
District. In one case alone, there Is
almost a carload of liquor which was
captured. but no one claims owner
ship to 1t. Mr.. Baker proposes to In
stitute a libel against the liquor and
after getting a verdict have it destroy
ed. The liquor in question was seized
at the freight yards here concealed
in a shipment of tires. The owner
Of the tires denied ownership Of the
whiskey, but claimed the tires as his
own. The tires are also held by the
Government
ATTORNEY CONDEMNS LAW.
Very little of the whiskey which
mas been seized in recent months was
AT for beverage purposes, Mr.. Baker
says Most of 1t was alcohol with