The Shadow Ledger of Tacoma’s Police
A secret cash book reveals how police collected 'fines' from gamblers and protected a slot machine monopoly.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
The mysterious secrecy with which Chief Malony and Mayor Wright are carrying on their dealings with the gamblers and money slot machine operators of Tacoma, which was revealed by The Times Saturday, has proved little less than a sensation. Everybody knew that the city was regularly getting a premium from the gambling houses, but no one except those 'on the inside' suspected that the method of collecting the city's share was anything but open and above board. The cash book shows only that an amount has been collected from a certain individual, who, with the consent of Chief Malony, places a fictitious name on the records. No rate or schedule of 'fines' is made known to anyone except the few officers delegated to assist Malony in making the collections, thus allowing ample opportunity for practicing discrimination. F. H. Baldie, who has the slot machine monopoly in Tacoma, owns nearly 200 machines. So complete is Baldie's monopoly that no other owners of machines have been allowed to operate their slots without paying a 'fine' of $50 per month.
“Everybody knew that the city was regularly getting a premium from the gambling houses, but no one suspected that the method of collecting the city's share was anything but open.”
This investigation into the 'Malony Method' of illicit revenue collection highlights the long history of municipal graft in Tacoma. Today’s struggles for transparency in policing and the oversight of city contracts echo these early 20th-century questions about who really runs the city's bottom line.
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