Canada: BRITISH COLUMBIA: Insurance Trouble

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As Vancouver's new-broom mayor, rambunctious Gerry McGeer had started his sweeping by firing 23 policemen for letting gambling dens and brothels run wide open. Last week, as chairman of the city's Police Commission, he sat in judgment on their appeals. Vancouverites were shaken by the unorthodox McGeer way of running a hearing: he paid no attention to traditional rules of evidence banning hearsay, opinion or conjecture. But they were fascinated by the dirt this method dredged up, particularly from a stocky gambler named Louis Tisman.

Tisman sounded exactly like an irate taxpayer. He told how he had run poker and dice games in Vancouver since 1937. To do so, he had paid off Vancouver police in chocolates, whiskey, racehorse tickets and cash up to $250 a month.

"For that kind of money," he complained blandly, "we weren't getting the kind of protection we were paying for."

What really made Tisman sore was that the police discriminated against him in favor of other gamblers. Police made token raids against small fry, which was "like raiding a bank and arresting the janitor." But they had closed him up tight a few times and caused him to lose a lot of business. His-brother Harry Tisman gravely corroborated this. "You had to pay to stay in business," he said. "It was just like the B.C. Electric—you had to pay your bill or you were cut off."