Why did Federal Law enforcement simply assassinate its enemies in the 1920s? How was this considered acceptable for a brief 10 year period?
>Wanted dead or alivethey really meant it
>>18290926It was really easy to get away with shit for a while, so LE had to make examples out of people when they did find them.
Police procedures as we know them today evolved a lot because of various court decisions over the years starting with Brown v. Mississippi.
Local cops were getting totally punked by Tommy gun wielding, state line crossing bank robbers. Up until then federal law enforcement wasn’t really a thing, but J Edgar Hoover bigged up what had been a minor agency and through PR and action created the myth of the stoic ruthless G man. Extrajudicial killing had always been a thing with lynching, trigger happy sheriffs and strikebreaking goon squads, but this was seen a a needed countermeasure to a new breed of supervillain criminals.
>>18291682and a myth it was, the FBI have always been incompetent desk jockies who can't solve crimes unless they get someone to snitch. they finally went hellofamonkey on the Mafia and dismantled them, although it took spending nearly all their resources to do so and ignoring numerous other criminal activities taking place at the time
>>18290926Harding was pretty clearly assassinated and Calvin Coolidge was evidently in bed with the criminal organizations. It was a decade of criminal activity on all sides, corruption and abuse of power. People forget that our image of the 1920s is now almost exclusively informed by illegal and improprietous behavior.
>>18290926Dillinger was killed in ‘34 but it really was an assassination. Not a single G-man identified themselves or told Dillinger he was under arrest, they just shot him. I believe the same thing happened to Van Meter.As has been said already ITT though, it was a time of corruption and incompetence, and a lot of official rules of engagement were made after this era.
