Florida: Messiah in Open Town

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Among Miami mobsters he is known contemptuously as The Messiah. Boasts one criminal attorney: "He won't change things here." Indeed, E. (for nothing) Wilson ("Bud") Purdy promised no millennium last December when he became Dade County sheriff during a period of flourishing crime in south Florida and blatant corruption in his new command. Nonetheless, he has already changed things considerably.

The Florida sheriffs' bureau reported recently that south Florida is home to at least 40 Mafia members and dozens of affiliated hoods. Scores of Northern gangsters drop in regularly for pleasure as well as business. Miami is known as an "open town"—one in which no single Mafia cell completely controls the action and there is certainly no shortage of lucrative opportunities: narcotics, labor racketeering, organized prostitution, Shylocking, several varieties of gambling. The Mafia has also found legitimate outlets for surplus capital, and is believed to have bought into some 45 hotels and 25 restaurants and bars* in the area.

Airport Reception. One of Bud Purdy's first targets has been the mob's moneybags. Before he arrived, it was customary for the police to arrest only the pawns of the numbers operation, the little bet taker on the street. Under Purdy, the force concentrates on gambling's middle echelon, the men who collect from the street workers. Now a single arrest often yields as much as $5,000 in confiscated cash.

Purdy, 48, has reorganized and expanded his department's criminal-intelligence and vice divisions. His men keep careful watch on the movements of known hoods and are usually at the airport to greet them. Santo Trafficante of Tampa, who is reputedly ambitious to make Miami a closed preserve for his own Mafia "family," objected so profanely to the reception committee that he ended up in handcuffs. Said one detective: "Santo wants to have the confidence of the New York Mafia. But how can he control this town when he can't even get past the airport without being picked up?"

Career Cop. Purdy inherited a dispirited, tainted force. Last spring a grand jury indicted Sheriff Talmadge Buchanan and half a dozen members of the department on a variety of charges including perjury and conspiracy to commit robbery. No one was convicted, but the uproar was sufficient to allow reformers to win a referendum making the sheriff an appointed rather than an elected official. On election night, County Manager Porter Homer fired Buchanan and began a nationwide search for a successor. Purdy's name was repeatedly suggested by top police officials all over the country.