Editing Prohibition Era (section)

== Corruption and Non-Enforcement ==

The [[Political Machine Era|Republican machine]] that controlled Philadelphia made no serious effort to enforce Prohibition. Police officers accepted bribes to ignore speakeasies and protect bootlegging operations. Prohibition agents were too few in number and too easily corrupted to make a significant impact. Mayor W. Freeland Kendrick and the political establishment treated Prohibition as a nuisance to be managed rather than a law to be enforced. When federal agents did make raids, local officials sometimes warned targets in advance. A 1928 investigation found that protection payments flowed from bootleggers through police to politicians in a systematic and predictable manner.<ref name="lerner"/>

The failure of enforcement in Philadelphia was part of a national pattern, but Philadelphia's was particularly brazen. National officials sometimes singled out the city as an example of local resistance to federal law. The Bureau of Prohibition, understaffed and underfunded, could not overcome local non-cooperation. Occasional high-profile raids made headlines but barely disrupted the trade. The gap between law and reality became a daily fact of Philadelphia life—respectable citizens patronized speakeasies, corruption was taken for granted, and Prohibition became an exercise in national hypocrisy that damaged respect for law generally.<ref name="okrent"/>