How Prohibition Corrupted The Entire Police Force #history #globalfinancialsystem #facts #didyouknow

Added: 2026-05-28

[00:00:00]The enforcement side of this story is perhaps the darkest economic dimension of prohibition because it demonstrates how completely a suppressed market corrupts the institutions assigned to control it. The Volstead Act creates a federal prohibition bureau with approximately 1,500 agents to enforce alcohol laws across 3.8 million square miles of country. The agents are underpaid, under-trained, and operating against a criminal industry that by 1925 is generating more annual revenue than the entire federal government spends.

[00:00:30]The corruption is not exceptional. It is structural. A Chicago police captain in 1924 earns about $2,500 a year. A bootlegging operation pays him $75 a week in cash to look the other way. That is three times his salary for doing nothing illegal himself, just choosing not to notice what is happening on his beat. By 1928, the Chicago Police Department is so thoroughly penetrated by Capone's organization that the department's own records are being used to tip off bootleggers before raids.