"If you cleaned this city up, we'd all have to go on welfare 'cause none of us could live on our salary."
-- A standard joke within the Seattle Police Department

"Seattle historically has viewed its vice transgressions with a certain avid disinterest."
-- Jim Faber

"A Seattle visitor asks a policeman where he can get a drink -- 'See that building on the corner?' says the man in blue. 'That's the Methodist church. It's probably one of the few places in town you can't get a drink.'"
-- Johnny Reddin

"Confusing prudence with intolerance, vice with artistic expression, these measures slowed the cultural progress of [Seattle]."
-- Paul de Barros

Willie Mak's plan had its advantages.

If he and his accomplices could stroll into the Wah Mee Club, rob -- and then kill -- its occupants, the three men would surely walk away wealthy. $60,000 split three ways....not unreasonable to expect, Mak considered. The house bank often reached $100,000, and there would be anywhere from $10,000 to $50,000 on the Club's members combined. And they would rob the Club late Saturday night -- prime gambling hours -- when the restaurant owners would come to the tables with their week's earnings. The three men could divide as much as $200,000 among them -- a fortune for three young men, used to toiling long hours at low-wage jobs.

Another advantage for Mak was that gambling club robberies often remained unreported: why report a robbery when it would only lead to scrutiny by the local press and, in turn, law enforcement? Around the time Mak was planning to rob the Wah Mee, someone walked into another illegal gambling club, placed a bet and, before the gambling started, pulled out a gun and said, "I win." Without a word, the house paid the man. Reporting the robbery of a gambling club always carried the threat of closing the club altogether. Even if Mak's plan misfired, the entire incident might pass without consequence.

Mak and the others would also strike the Wah Mee during the Chinese New Year -- a time when businesses shut down and citizens celebrated. Club members would be caught off-guard; festive and generous, they would come to the Club to spend lots of money and celebrate the New Year. Furthermore, a gambling club across the alley from the Wah Mee -- operated by the Hop Sing tong -- was to close down for construction during the week the heist would occur. Patrons of the Hop Sing club would simply cross the alley and spend their money at the Wah Mee, essentially raising the amount of money that would change hands at the Club.

But Mak's most significant advantage, ironically, was the Wah Mee Club's infamous history of vice affiliation. Gambling tolerance policies and police corruption kept the Wah Mee Club open for years. A lot of beat cops spent a lot of time at the Wah Mee. No one asked any questions. The cops picked up their kickbacks in exchange for letting the Wah Mee, and other gambling clubs, operate in Chinatown. Seattle writer Clark Humphrey comments, "The [tolerance] policy...meant cops looked the other way at (or were paid off by) hookers and drug dealers."

Writer and historian de Barros comments, "Early on the town had developed a culture of legalized corruption that tolerated vice in exchange for official payoffs....The tolerance policy, while in itself a victimless crime that had allowed people to have a good time, also supported a system in which police officers -- much like organized criminals -- demanded protection money even from owners who had nothing to hide. Those who didn't 'pay to stay,' as the policy came to be called, were simply hounded out of business."

The arrival of Prohibition in Washington State in 1916 only meant more money for corrupt cops and city officials. As de Barros writes, "Bootleg liquor became simply another profit center -- albeit a broader-based one -- for the mayor and police chief to add to the casinos, whorehouses, and Opium dens they already tolerated...stimulating the nightclub business enormously." No resource was ignored for smuggling booze into Washington. The Seattle Times reported, "Booze arrived in Washington in gas tanks of cars, by horse and wagon and airplanes. The illegal stuff was ferried in by ship, dinghies, dories, speedboats, and even by canoe....Since liquor was still an illegal business, to flourish it had to be subsidized by either organized crime or City Hall. In Seattle, there was no 'mob.' The boys in blue were on the take."

When a reporter for McClure's magazine arrived in Seattle during the 1930s, he commented, "The city seems to have been transformed almost magically into one great gambling hell."

Sociologist William J. Chambliss, of George Washington University, spent nearly a decade documenting vice corruption in Seattle, commenting, "[Prohibition] created ideal conditions for the emergence of national crime networks. The demand for alcohol was far greater than the U.S. government's willingness to expend the money and energy necessary to stamp it out. There was, nonetheless, a sufficient zealousness to enforce the laws to make it necessary for those who would distribute and sell the 'evil rum' to create criminal enterprises. As a result, different criminal groups specialized in, and monopolized, the smuggling of alcohol from different countries....Prohibition was the impetus for the emergence of organized efforts to provide illegal commodities, namely alcohol, and such associated illegal services as gambling, prostitution, and high interest loans."

And there were no limits to the types of people involved in anti-Prohibition causes. In 1931 the Chinese Gardens speakeasy was busted; Seattle's sergeant of detectives was found working in the speakeasy's hat check room. Also during the Prohibition era, Police Lieutenant Roy Olmstead was caught unloading Canadian booze from a motorboat in a Seattle suburb. He was expelled from the force and, later, busted again when cops discovered his wife was broadcasting cryptic messages to smugglers through her radio program -- "Aunt Vivian's Bedtime Stories for Youngsters. "

As de Barros writes, "By the early part of the century, corruption was so deeply imbedded in local politics that candidates often ran for office on the 'wide open' platform, arguing that Seattle's vice industry generated income and a healthy economy for its more prudent citizenry. Figures such as Police Chief Charles Wappenstein and Mayor Hiram Gill reaped fortunes from the payoffs they received from whorehouses, Opium dens, casinos and later -- when liquor was outlawed, too -- speakeasies."

Seattle's history reveals continued vacillation between severe vice crackdowns and relative tolerance. Particularly illustrative are the platforms of the city's past mayors, many of whom -- to please voters -- changed their stances toward tolerance of bottle clubs and gambling joints. Opportunist Hiram Gill was first elected mayor when he supported a "wide-open" ticket; then the city's attitude changed, and he was re-elected after changing his stance and cracking down on after-hours clubs.

Between 1918 and 1930 an activist named Bertha Landes began a campaign to shut down one bottle club in particular -- the Butler Hotel. She worked to outlaw "taxi dances" -- where men paid money to dance with the club's women -- because such dances attracted the "wrong kind of girl." She received the support of a local judge and, together, they passed the Landes Ordinance, which outlawed taxi dances and required regular dance halls to hire police persons as chaperones. The Butler Hotel persevered -- despite the occasional citation every two months -- partly because the club's operator, John Savage, was able to woo the press into treating the Butler Hotel's activities as harmless fun.

In 1971 King County Prosecutor Christopher Bayley cut his teeth by blowing the lid on police corruption dating back to the 1950s. Bayley handed down an indictment that charged nineteen public officials of profiting from lotteries, prostitution, bribery, extortion, blackmail, and coin-operated gambling devices. He charged police officers with allowing a gambling tolerance policy to exist and, in turn, claimed officers collected as much as $1,000 per month from operators of illegal gambling clubs. He claimed that public officials accepted covert campaign contributions from operators of gambling clubs and other illegal activities in exchange for allowing said activities to operate in the city. Furthermore, Bayley charged that those officers and public officials involved in vice corruption and tolerance policies issued liquor licenses by way of extortion; licenses were, essentially, bought and sold like shares of stock.

Bayley didn't get far with his indictment. Many of the charges were later dismissed and/or the defendants were acquitted. But some officers did resign from the force as a result of Bayley's efforts. Bayley was satisfied, nonetheless, confident that his indictment established that some police were paid to not enforce the law.

Bayley's indictment immediately followed a report compiled by the Investigative Task Force (ITF). The ITF consisted of members of the International Association of Chiefs of Police and was headed up by retired Chief of Police of the Oakland Police Department, E. M. Toothman. Toothman asked for the assistance of ten members of the Seattle Police Department. In late-1967 the ITF investigated the Seattle Police Department and released separate reports based on its findings.

One report was prepared for the public and released to the media. It claimed only minimal payoffs were offered to a few "bad cops." Simply put, the public was told not to worry.

The second report was highly confidential and available only to select members of the Seattle Police Department. This report revealed that there was an extensive payoff system that involved several divisions of the police department -- to include the entire vice division -- and was coordinated by the Assistant Chief of Police, M. E. "Buzz" Cook.

In a letter addressed to Mayor Wes Uhlman and dated September 14, 1970, Toothman briefly synopsized the ITF's findings and included a copy of its report. Toothman wrote, "The information accumulated by the Investigative Task Force indicated that payoffs and the acceptance of bribes and gratuities among certain members of the Seattle Police Department was a practice that had existed for many years." According to the report, a scandal was certain unless the police decided to take action. The way the police department power was organized, too much power was in the hands of Assistant Chief Cook. The ITF's report concluded that the Vice Squad had control over gambling activities -- both licensed cardrooms and private (often covert) gambling clubs (like the Wah Mee) that operated in Seattle. The Vice Squad set a "fee" and the illegal club paid said fee in order to operate without incident. Fees were typically collected on a monthly basis. The fee was then divvied up among members of the Vice Squad and command personnel. It is estimated that the Vice Squad collected as much as $70,000 per year.

Patrol Division officers were involved as well. An officer in, say, the Chinatown area collected money from the operator of a particular gambling club (and, in some instances, from individual gamblers). The officer kept his share -- which was sometimes as much as $600 per month -- and then passed the rest along to his sergeant. The sergeant collected his share -- typically the same amount as the officer collected, maybe a little more -- and then passed the balance to his superior, who received anywhere from $700 to $900 per month. In some instances, a single gambling club might have to pay fees to both the Vice Squad and the Patrol Division.

So, illegal gambling clubs were paying fees to patrol officers and members of the Vice Squad to operate in Seattle. Considering that some of the clubs (like the Wah Mee) were pulling in as much as $10,000 nightly, the fees to cops were small; both law enforcement and club operators should have been satisfied.

Some club owners, though, were not.

The ITF was assembled because one club operator complained to the FBI, the media, and the Chief of Police. The Mayor appointed a committee that investigated the matter. But the committee was a whitewash. It consisted of local businessmen once involved with some of the operations they were now being asked to investigate. The committee interviewed twenty-five tavern owners and twenty-five police officers. Both parties denied any knowledge of any wrongdoing. The committee established a post office box and invited people to anonymously submit letters detailing police or government corruption. The committee reported that they received "very little" mail and, lacking evidence of corruption, encouraged an International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP) investigation.

The IACP spent six months investigating the Seattle Police Department and concluded with a rather critical report. In December 1968 the Police Department was re-organized and Chief F. C. Ramon retired less than a year later. A short time later, a Federal Grand Jury was called and Assistant Chief M. E. Cook was indicted for perjury. Witnesses at Assistant Chief Cook's trial testified that they knew of a payoff system that had existed for more than three decades.

When the ITF investigated the Seattle Police Department, one of its recommendations was that those persons under investigation submit to polygraph tests. Seattle Chief of Police Charles Gain issued a General Order requiring that all officers upon request submit to a polygraph test. Chief Gain's insistence merely re-emphasized the law, as police officers are not exempt from being subjected to polygraph examination, as written in RCW 49.44.120 of the State of Washington. The investigated officers resented the mandatory polygraph tests so, in response, the Seattle Police Officers Guild obtained a temporary restraining order that barred the Chief of Police from enforcing officers to participate in these tests.

Before the ITF could complete its investigation, fourteen members of the police department ended their service with the department. When the ITF did finish its investigation, it presented statements (both written and tape recorded) from witnesses, victims, and suspects, proving that former/active members of the Seattle Police Department and Washington State Liquor Control Board Retail Inspectors had received bribes. The ITF's report recommended that, instead of centralizing power in the hands of Assistant Chief Cook, four separate (and equal) divisions be established. Officers who would report directly to the Chief of Police would head each of these four divisions. The ITF also suggested that Assistant Chief Cook should either resign or be demoted. The ITF then told the media (and, ultimately, the public) that payoffs within the force were minimal, yet simultaneously recommended the Seattle Police Department be re-organized to avoid scandal.

Around the same time the ITF was doing its investigation into police corruption, and the subject began receiving further attention from the Seattle media and prosecutors, Professor Chambliss was conducting his own investigation. Chambliss spent five years -- beginning in the fall of 1962 -- investigating police corruption in Seattle and wrote a book about his findings. The book, On The Take, details how illegal activities, such as bribes through gambling clubs, not only profited cops and politicians, but helped the local economy as well. When Chambliss began work on the book, something he describes as a "study of organized crime," he was told that he had picked the wrong city. "Seattle, I was informed, was blessed not only by a ring of natural beauty and unspoiled wilderness," Chambliss wrote, "it was blessed also by clean government, sturdy law enforcement, and a paucity of organized crime."

Nothing could be further from the truth. Chambliss had been in Seattle less than two days when a cab driver told him, "You can get anything you want in Seattle if you've got the bread." Chambliss reported that gambling, bookmaking, stud-poker games, prostitution, drugs, pornographic literature and devices, high-interest loans, stolen property, and bingo parlors were "available on practically every street corner" in Seattle. He counted at least ten whorehouses, one of which was frequented by a high-ranking police officer who knew the Madam personally and made sure that cops left the place alone.

Chambliss also found clandestine gambling clubs -- lots of clandestine gambling clubs. "Another part of the night scene," he commented, "were the high-stakes poker games that began around midnight. A few dollars of illegal gambling money across a table is one thing, but when fifty to a hundred thousand dollars changes hands every night, players and managers become more discreet." Popular gambling clubs in the 1960s included the New Caledonia Bridge Club on Union Street and the 611 Club on Park Avenue. Between 1956 and 1970 each of the eleven bingo parlors in Seattle grossed over $300,000 per year. The owner of one bingo parlor netted $240,000 a year after expenses -- including payoffs to police and politicians.

These gambling clubs also served as havens for other illegal activities, such as the distribution of drugs, the handling of stolen merchandise, the acquisition of illegal liquor, and the arranging of high-interest loans. And "seedy" Mafia types or society's degenerates did not carry out all of these activities. Rather, Seattle's political- and business-elite oversaw them. "The group that I found managing and profiting from organized crime in Seattle was like crime networks everywhere," Chambliss observed, "in that it was composed of some of the city's and state's leading citizens. Working for, and with, this group of respectable community members was a staff to coordinate activities of prostitution, card games, lottery, bookmaking, pinball machines, the sale and distribution of drugs, usury, pornography, and even systematic robbery and burglary....There were over a thousand people in Seattle who profited directly from the[se] rackets...."

Businessmen visiting Seattle knew it featured many gambling halls and speakeasies. Doing away with these activities would essentially kill a good chunk of tourist revenue; conventions, conferences, and business retreats would, instead, be held in another city that had a reputation for tolerance of illegal operations such as gambling and speakeasies.

Seattle may have been known for its timber mills and Boeing factories, but its truly profitable industry was racketeering. "The total profits of...various illegal businesses exceeded a hundred million dollars a year in Seattle," Chambliss noted, "and this placed gambling, narcotics, fraud, usury, and organized theft among the state's two or three largest industries."

On The Take is thorough, personal, engaging, and informative. I discuss it here at length only because it chronicles the history of Seattle's vice corruption like no other book in print. Chambliss learned first-hand about organized crime networks in Seattle. He learned of enormous drug transactions and rings of professional thieves. He discovered an existence of cooperation between union officials and state politicians to sell large quantities of stolen liquor to the state liquor board. "For six months," Chambliss wrote, commenting on a period in his five-year stay in Seattle, "I went to [Vito's] Cafe....It was indeed interesting to see, week after week, gathered at one table and talking low enough not to be heard by anyone else: the assistant chief of police, an assistant prosecuting attorney, an undersheriff, and an attorney from a firm of lawyers that specialized in criminal law." These men were known by insiders as the "Local Mafia."

Chambliss heard countless stories of police payoffs and corrupt politicians who profited from various rackets in Seattle. He was even approached, on several occasions, by prostitutes planted by members of Seattle's crime networks -- all in the effort of hoping to nab and discredit Chambliss.

"Among those wanting illegal goods and services to be available are important and powerful sectors of every local community," Chambliss wrote. "Professional people want to gamble, consume drugs, engage in prostitutes, and invest in profitable enterprises. Hotels and restaurants do not want a 'clean city' or conventions will go elsewhere. Business and professional people do not want gambling stamped out, they want it controlled....The police are thus embedded in a morass of contradictions. They are supposed to enforce the laws that are unenforceable and that many powerful interests do not want enforced. What they want is not enforcement, but control. In essence, they want the police to manage the illegal enterprises so that people who do not want to participate in them will not know they are present and those who do want to can find them relatively easily."

The fact that the city ordinances and state laws were written in such a way to promote vice corruption didn't help matters either. The laws and ordinances were created in such a way that it was impossible for a club not to violate at least one or more of these rules. Now, technically, gambling was allowed in Seattle -- but only on wagers of no more than one dollar. Gamblers weren't enticed by such low wagers, so gambling clubs couldn't legally survive. If you were the manager of a gambling club, though, and systematically paid off the cop who patrolled your area, you could be assured that law enforcement would leave you alone and wagers could jump from one dollar to thousands of dollars.

Cops were savvy to such an arrangement, and Chambliss described how new cops were introduced to corruption and payoffs by veteran officers: "A new police officer is taken out on the First Avenue patrol. After a couple of nights his partner goes into a place that has gambling or into a cabaret that operates on the edge of legality and comes out with a bottle of whiskey and ten dollars. The new patrolman is informed that 'from time to time these guys give us something -- here you take the whiskey; I've got plenty at home.' If the young recruit accepts it, then it builds from there up to regular payoffs, depending of course on the beat and how important his job. If he refuses the 'gratuity,' then the senior patrolman will tell the sergeant that 'Joe ain't gonna play; we're gonna have trouble with him.' The next day Joe receives a notice that he has been transferred to a patrol car that works out of Wallingford, the North End, or Georgetown, middle-class neighborhoods where the vices are not so prevalent."

Similar ordinances applied to gambling clubs were applied to cabarets in Seattle. These ordinances required that every cabaret have a restaurant attached. The restaurant, according to the ordinance, had to constitute at least 75 percent of the total floor space of the cabaret and restaurant combined. Furthermore, the ordinance required that any entertainer at the cabaret be at least twenty-five feet from the nearest customer during her act. For a one-hundred-square-foot cabaret, an attached three-hundred-square-foot restaurant was required. In addition, more space had to be allotted so as not to violate the twenty-five foot buffer zone between the entertainer and the patron. Simply put, the cabaret had to be enormous. And the restaurants at cabarets never made money; they were simply there to meet the ordinance requirement. Cabaret patrons went downtown to drink booze and look at women, not to eat dinner.

As Chambliss quickly learned and, subsequently, wrote, "In effect, such ordinances gave the police and the prosecuting attorney complete discretion to choose who should operate gambling rooms, cabarets, and restaurants. This discretion was used to force payoffs to the police....[The ordinances] produce...a neat mechanism by which the police, politicians, and other law enforcement agencies can shake down the owners and operators of nightclubs." Moreover, business licenses were "dealt" to those proprietors willing to cooperate with Seattle's rampantly corrupt licensing division. Chambliss explains, "To operate a tavern, a cabaret, a cardroom, a taxicab, or even a tow-truck company, it was necessary to have a license issued by the city's licensing division. These licenses were no less than a piece of very valuable property."

Seattle's network of corruption was not limited to cops and politicians. Firemen from the city cooperated with crime interests by inspecting and harassing businesses that refused to cooperate with payoff arrangements. A sheriff appointed to the state parole board manipulated prison terms for members of this network of corruption -- and even doled out harsher sentences to persons whom had a history of non-cooperation with said network. The network even branched out nationally. As Chambliss reported, "When Seattle's crime network was in full swing, on the fifteenth of every month an official of the state House of Representatives flew from Seattle to San Francisco carrying a satchel full of one-hundred-dollar bills. This was 'laundered money,' from gambling profits. The amount in the satchel varied each month depending on how much the Seattle bookmakers, gamblers, and narcotics dealers owed investors in other parts of the United States. It also depended on how much Seattle's people wanted to either launder through banks into secret accounts or invest in enterprises in other parts of the country."

A city with a reputation for vice tolerance meant more money would be spent in that city by outsiders -- money spent on booze, gambling, whores, and drugs. "There are good reasons in the legitimate business community for a crime network," Chambliss noted. "Many of the city's legal businesses thrive or decline to the extent that goods and services provided by a crime network are available. One such industry is tourism. Hotels, restaurants, and taverns profit and thrive on vice....Men who come to conventions are attracted to cities where gambling, prostitution, pornography, and various other 'pleasures' are readily available."

As one of Chambliss' subjects explained, "[E]verybody [knows] that a decent city that is growing has to have whores, has to have accessible liquor, prohibition or not, has to have a place where a guy can go and shoot craps, either for penny ante or high stakes, has to have a place where a guy can go and play cards. There's no reason putting somebody in jail for it, because it is what all good, righteous Christians do."

All of these vice transgressions would eventually lead to profits for cops, mayors, and leading city officials. Between 1956 and 1970 illegal business was controlled by a King County prosecutor, a Seattle city council president, an assistant chief of police, city police captains, the King County sheriff, the King County jail chief, undersheriffs, a Seattle police major, and an official of the Teamsters Union. Chambliss observed, "[O]rganized crime really consists of a coalition of politicians, law-enforcement people, businessmen, union leaders, and (in some ways least important of all) racketeers. Who dominates the coalition varies from city to city and from time to time."

Crime networks in Seattle represented big business and, historically, when those networks were threatened, things got nasty. In the late-1960s a rather unfortunate photograph was published on the front page of the Seattle P-I. Pinball czar and crook Ben Cichy was photographed entering the home of King County Prosecutor Charles O. Carroll. It seems the two men met every month to discuss "business." Cichy and Carroll claimed they shared an interest in classical music and met to discuss this interest. No one believed this, of course, and the exposure of such a relationship between two key public figures supposedly at opposite ends of the legal spectrum posed a threat to the crime network. In May 1969 Cichy's body was found floating in front of his lakeside estate. One person close to the situation reported that Cichy was an "excellent swimmer" and told Chambliss, "When Ben Cichy was killed they sent someone out from downtown to burglarize his place. Three black dudes went out and tore up the floor looking for where he kept the monthly payoff money hidden. They left twenty thousand dollars worth of jewelry just sitting on the table. They were obviously not burglars, but people sent out from downtown. They terrorized Cichy's wife to death."

Another informant told Chambliss, "Murder is the easiest crime of all to get away with. There are one hundred and one ways to commit murder that are guaranteed to let you get away with it."

During the 1960s Seattle's crime network faced some real threats. The first were journalists savvy to corruption and eager to earn the reputation as the journalist who opened the lid on the illegal activities of major public figures.

What they found, instead, was indifference.

When the Seattle P-I ran the front-page photograph of crook Cichy leaving the King County Prosecutor's home, the editors were met with derision. The same citizens who had sat on the mayor's blue-ribbon council to look into allegations of police corruption criticized the P-I, accusing the paper of engaging in "yellow journalism." Prosecutor Carroll threatened a lawsuit. The newspaper's editor resigned shortly after the incident.

Around the same time, a group of young, ambitious journalists started a local magazine with financial help from a major Seattle broadcaster. The magazine, Seattle, was attempting to make an impact on the Pacific Northwest and tackled huge stories, one of which was vice corruption. An early issue contained an article by Chambliss, a feature article on the tolerance policy, and a front-page editorial calling for Prosecutor Carroll's resignation. Instead of succeeding as an investigative magazine, advertisers cancelled their contracts, newsstands refused to sell the magazine, the broadcasting company which financed the magazine pressured the editor, revenues declined, Prosecutor Carroll threatened suit, the business community attacked the magazine, and the magazine eventually folded.

Journalists were beating a dead horse. Everyone knew Seattle was corrupt. The grand ambitions of journalists "exposing" vice corruption in the city were moot: citizens already knew Seattle cops and politicians were on the take. As Chambliss noted, "[T]he only real threat to an association of illegal businessmen comes from competitive forces amassing sufficient power to overthrow them, not from public exposure."

Chambliss was right. Yet, when the network was finally brought down, it was not at the hands of "competitive forces amassing sufficient power" but, rather, by one of their own. Tony Gustin was a respected police officer who spent more than twenty years on the force -- mostly in bureaus uninvolved in the payoff system. He was a clean cop, respected and untouched. While other cops took part in payoffs from the tolerance policy, Gustin went about his own business.

When the state attorney general began a war against the crime network, Gustin (along with three other clean cops) was appointed to head up one of four bureaus that would investigate police corruption. Gustin started out by transferring officers whom he believed were part of the payoff system. He replaced them with cops much like himself, interested in cracking down on gambling and prostitution. Gustin was also smart, and when he began to receive threats, he allied himself with a handful of journalists -- a move that made it difficult for Gustin to be ousted because, as the attorney general noted and the journalists reported, he was only doing his job.

Gustin sensed he was merely scratching the surface and might eventually have to pursue suspected politicians and policemen. One bingo club in particular he knew was frequented by many top officers and elected officials. He knew some records there could be traced to these top officials -- cancelled checks, receipts. He thus obtained a warrant. Shortly before the raid, Gustin intentionally leaked word of the plan to a member of the payoff system. Gustin -- along with thirty-five police officers, an assistant from the attorney general's office, and a reporter -- then raided the bingo club. Of course, no crime-network members were at the club (in fact, there were only a few senior citizens playing ten-cent bingo) but that didn't matter to Gustin. He was after the records, which would eventually lead to arrests.

The system was cracked, and members were scrambling. Prosecutors, businessmen, and city council members were screaming at the police chief to get things under control. Gustin, along with his posse, met with the police chief. Gustin briefed him on his findings, all of which were nothing new to the chief. He was well aware of corruption; he was an integral part of the corruption. "What do you want from me?" the Chief pleaded.

One officer accompanying Gustin replied, "What we're saying is that you are either a thief, a liar, or a fool. And I think you know which one of them you are."

Gustin said, "I want you out." While many of the others on Gustin's team leaned toward a thorough cleansing of the city's corruption, Gustin knew better. The cleaning-up would simply be a publicity ploy and, if the chief were still in power, things would eventually return to normal.

The chief retired.

The attorney general convened a federal grand jury and indictments were handed down to the former county prosecutor, the former chief of police, two former assistant chiefs of police, the president of the city council, the county sheriff, the head of the county jail, and a former sheriff (to list only a few).

Gustin had cracked the system, but ultimately he did not defeat it. In the end, many of those indicted were found not guilty or their cases were dropped. The acting Police Chief, Buzz Cook, served a total of six months. One of his assistants served a one-year county jail sentence. A former sheriff was given a three-year suspended sentence. A racketeer/tavern owner served two years in federal prison.

Shortly before the Wah Mee killings, Seattle Police Chief Patrick Fitzsimons denied allegations made by a defense attorney in a separate case, wherein Fitzsimons was accused of tolerating gambling in Chinatown. Fitzsimons argued that most of the clubs were private and the people who went into them were well known. "Most of them have double-doors with buzzer arrangements," Fitzsimons said. "They station a person at the doors to screen out persons they don't know."

A history of police raids on gambling clubs in Chinatown did exist, though such raids were sporadic and often marred by legal controversy. FBI raids on two Chinatown gambling clubs in 1976 occurred without notifying the Seattle Police Department in advance. In a separate incident three years earlier, Seattle police raided the Heng Association Club and netted seventy-six arrests. But then-Mayor Wes Uhlman publicly apologized a few days later because he believed the people arrested had been treated as "second-class citizens. "

In New York City, many owners of gambling clubs worked directly with the police department when raids occurred -- a practice endemic to many United States Chinatowns. Writer and activist Peter Kwong comments, "Many are convinced that the police have been paid off. According to a persistent rumor, 'inside' cops inform the gambling establishments about plans for raids, so that the owners can be prepared. In fact, there are Chinese reputed to be 'professional prisoners,' i.e., those paid to stay behind when a police raid is anticipated. They are booked, locked up overnight, and released the next day after being admonished by the judge. Two different Chinatown reporters interviewed these prisoners and estimated that they were paid between fifty and one hundred dollars per night. And the police could take credit for 'enforcing' the law."

Similar instances took place in Seattle during the 1940s. Al Hilbert, the assistant manager at the late Basin Street Club on South Jackson Street ordered all his bartenders to be fingerprinted at the police station so that little time was wasted downtown during these "raids." The Seattle Times reported, "It's an old, old story for many of the prisoners. They stand around for a few minutes in the booking office until their regular bondsmen post necessary bail. Then they are freed….Almost without exception -- it is always the same group of men who are defendants. They trot in and out of the jail and in and out of Judge Knott's court with surprising regularity….The addresses at which they operate are usually typed on the complaints." Cops in Seattle regularly staged raids -- informing the club ahead of time so managers could select a designated arrestee to be taken down to the station. These raids misled the public into believing the cops were "cracking down" on illegal clubs in Seattle. In fact they were not.

Seattle writer Jim Faber learned first-hand about the tolerance policy blanketing the city. Faber penned a series of articles for the Seattle P-I -- a Hearst newspaper. His series, formally titled "Seattle After Dark," was a first-person account of betting in illegal gambling clubs in the wee hours of the morning. "It was a dandy assignment for a reporter," Faber remarked. "It included playing my favorite game -- poker -- on company time and on Hearst money, with no need to produce receipts for the expenditures." On the eve of receiving tips of where "the big money was being laid down," Faber's series was abruptly pulled from the newspaper. Later, over a drink with then-Mayor Alan Pomeroy, Faber learned exactly why his series was killed.

"That series of yours was beginning to get annoying," Mayor Pomeroy told the writer. "So I called your boss."

"You called Bernie [the P-I editor]?" Faber asked, surprised.

"No, not Bernie. I called Charlie [the P-I's publisher]. I said, 'Charlie, you want to get this town closed down so tight you can't get a bet down?'"

As it turned out, the P-I's publisher was one of the city's most enthusiastic gamblers. Faber's series was pulled.

Seattle, then, had a long history of corruption. Willie Mak knew this first-hand, by working and spending leisure time in gambling clubs in Chinatown. Because of this first-hand knowledge, Mak grew confident in his plan. Even if the plan backfired, there was the possibility of the entire incident going unreported. Not only would reporting the incident expose the Wah Mee Club to scrutiny and a possible closure, it would again lead to investigations into police corruption and gambling tolerance allegations. The gambling club would shut down, cops would lose a lucrative source of supplemental income, and the Seattle Police Department would be saddled with a publicity problem.

With each passing day moving closer toward the date of the robbery and mass-murder, Mak grew more street-smart, more confident.

The gamblers were operating illegally.

The city was infested with corrupt cops.

Public officials were receiving kickbacks.

Mak's plan was simply a small part of a larger, more corrupt system.

Chapter Four | "Is that all the bullets . . . ?"

This story originally appeared as a serialized feature in Asian Focus newspaper