![]() Actually, the Syndicate manipulated the NCA to stifle unwanted competition. The NCA ran successful candidates, who closed many bust-out joints and brothels, with the idea that these establishments gave the area a bad reputation and frightened affluent patrons, on which the economy was allegedly based. A group of gullible but sincere businessmen formed the Newport Civic Association (NCA) and they fielded candidates, who campaigned on a platform of moderation “Clean up, not Close up.” The Cleveland Four gave Red Matterson, a Syndicate enforcer and hit-man, the task of discreetly financing contributions and covertly coaxing on the political level. The Syndicate was highly successful in using subterfuge to create a phony reform group in Newport that operated during the Kefauver Committee investigations. The Kefauver Report showed that public officials knew about gambling and that something had to be done after the national exposure. When Chief Gugel was asked if he was “the only man in the entire vicinity who did not know that any taxi driver could take you to a selection of five or six gambling joints,” he answered, “I never ride in a taxi.” While testifying under oath at the nationally televised hearings, Newport Police Chief Edward Gugel stated that he neither visited a gambling house in the city nor read the Cincinnati newspapers which advertised gambling places in Newport. Newport was nationally criticized for its law enforcement’s hear-no-evil, see-no-evil approach. Newport came to the attention of the Kefauver Committee during hearings in Cleveland, Ohio, when it revealed that the Jewish Cleveland Syndicate had acquired Northern Kentucky casino interests. The vision of reform was not raised in Newport but in Washington, D.C., by Senator Estes Kefauver’s “Committee to Investigate Organized Crime in Interstate Commerce” in 1951. It was only when the benefits started to wane that any type of reform became possible. Rather, the casinos and the brothels provided economic and social opportunities. Gambling, prostitution and other forms of vice flourished, but not because organized crime forced them on the community. The Catholic church was not against moderate forms of gambling, such as bingo. Local Protestant clergymen attempted to organize several times, but there was not much support from Catholic leaders. However, there was not much support from the general populace, because these activities brought money to the region. Since the 1930s, various groups and even a few local elected officials had made attempts to shut down illegal activities. The “Jewish-Cleveland Syndicate” and the “Mayfield Road Mob,” by the way, are the accepted designations used by scholars to refer to two separate organized crime organizations that were based in Cleveland, Ohio, and operated enterprises in Newport, Kentucky. Tenkotte.)įor three decades before 1961, no Campbell County Jury convicted a gambling establishment, except when the Jewish Syndicate needed to acquire more casinos from rival competitors. The Yorkshire Club, at 518 York Street in Newport, was one of the many casino clubs featuring gambling.
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