National Affairs: Turmoil in Detroit

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When Detroit's successful mayorality candidate Charles Bowles entered office he delighted businessmen by drafting Businessman Harold H. Emmons to be police commissioner. But some businessmen withdrew their support from the Mayor because, among his appointees was John Gillespie, onetime police commissioner, old-line politician, to be Commissioner of Public Works. Friction arose quickly between Commissioners Emmons and Gillespie. Mr. Emmons now charges that during a business trip he took shortly after his installation, the Mayor permitted the opening of long-closed big gambling dens. He also now charges that he was forced to surrender to the Mayor the control and reorganization of the vice squad.

Vice in Detroit grew greater, became the subject of wholesale graft accusations by Judge Edward J. Jeffries, presiding jurist of the Recorder's Court. The Mayor and Commissioner Gillespie went to the Kentucky Derby. While they were gone, Commissioner Emmons had many a gambling den raided. Wroth, the Mayor returned, heard a deputation of citizens demand the dismissal of Gillespie, the support of Emmons' raids. His answer was the dismissal of Commissioner Emmons.

Last week, another large citizens' deputation subscribed $30,000 to distribute petitions to recall Mayor Bowles. Detroit law provides that a poll on the Mayor's dismissal may be taken if signatures are obtained from 25% of the number of people voting in the last gubernatorial election, in this case 89,497. Four hundred young lawyers and others went forth, petition blanks in hand. Two, having garnered many signatures, had them snatched away by the police, now under Bowles-appointed Thomas C. Wilcox, long No. 1 Department of Justice agent in Detroit, who said of the snatching: "I won't stand for it."