thought,” Paulo said. “Hey, Vito. We’re all going to be at the bar at the Warwick a little after midnight. Why don’t you come by, and we’ll have a shooter or two?”
“Jees, that’s nice, but when I get off work, I’m kind of beat. And I went up to the Poconos last night. I think I’m just going to tuck it in tonight. Let me have a raincheck.”
“Absolutely. I understand. But if you change your mind, the Warwick Bar. On the house. We like to take care of our good customers. ”
Paulo punched Vito in a friendly manner on the arm, smiled warmly at him, and walked out of his house.
He stood on the curb for almost five minutes until his Jaguar came around the block and pulled to the curb.
The relationship between the Federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms and local law enforcement agencies has rarely been a glowing example of intergovernmental cooperation.
This is not a new development, but goes back to the earliest days of the Republic when Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton convinced the Congress to pass a tax on distilled spirits. Some of the very first federal revenue officers were tarred and feathered when they tried to collect the tax, more than once as local sheriffs and constables stood by looking in the opposite direction.
In July, 1794, five hundred armed men attacked the home of General John Neville, the regional tax collector for Pennsylvania, and burned it to the ground. Since local law enforcement officers seemed more than reluctant to arrest the arsonists, President George Washington was forced to mobilize the militia in Virginia, Maryland, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania to put the Whiskey Rebellion down.
During Prohibition, the New Jersey Pine Barrens served both as a convenient place to conceal illegally imported intoxicants from the federal government, prior to shipment to Philadelphia and New York, and as a place to manufacture distilled spirits far from prying eyes. And again, local law enforcement officers did not enforce the liquor laws with what the federal government considered appropriate enthusiasm. Part of this was probably because most cops and deputy sheriffs both liked a little nip themselves and thought Prohibition was insane, and part was because, it has been alleged, the makers of illegally distilled intoxicants were prone to make generous gifts, either in cash or in kind, to the law enforcement community as a token of their respect and admiration.
Even with the repeal of Prohibition the problem did not go away. High quality, locally distilled corn whiskey, or grain neutral spirits, it was learned, could be liberally mixed with fully taxed bourbon, blended whiskey, gin, and vodka and most people in Atlantic City bars and saloons could not tell the difference. Except the bartenders and tavern keepers, who could get a gallon or more of untaxed spirits for the price of a quart of the same with a federal tax stamp affixed to the neck of the bottle.
And the illegal distillers still had enough of a profit to be able to comfortably maintain their now traditional generosity toward the local law enforcement community.
While the local law enforcement community did not actively assist the moonshine makers in their illegal enterprise, neither did they drop their other law enforcement obligations to rush to the assistance of what had become the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms in their relentless pursuit of illegal stills.
It boiled down to a definition of crime. If they learned that someone was smuggling firearms to Latin America, the locals would be as cooperative as could be desired. And since the illegal movement of cigarettes from North Carolina, where they were made and hardly taxed at all, to Atlantic City, where they were heavily taxed by both the state and city, cut into New Jersey’s tax revenues, the locals were again as cooperative as could be expected in helping to stamp out this sort of crime.
And if they happened to walk into a still in the Pine Barrens, the operator, if he could be found, would of course be hauled before the bar of justice. It was simply that other aspects of law enforcement normally precluded a vigorous prosecution of illegal distilling.
Additionally, there was—there is—a certain resentment in the local law enforcement community toward neatly dressed young men who had joined ATF right out of college, at a starting salary that almost invariably greatly exceeded that of, for example, a deputy sheriff who had been on the job ten years.