Random Thinking

Satan’s Circus: Murder, Vice, Police Corruption, and New York’s Trial of the Century
by Mike Dash

In February, 1894, Charley Becker put on the uniform of a New York City police officer. Twenty one years later, the state of New York executed him for murder. In 1894 the NYC police department was completely corrupt. The department was designed to make it impossible for a police officer to live on his salary, forcing him to accept bribes. Officers who gave trouble to their superiors were sent to outlying parts of the city where access to bribes from gamblers, pimps, and prostitutes was hard to find. Officers who maximized their bribes and passed a percentage of the money up the line to their superiors found themselves in the best parts of the city. Charley Becker found himself in the Tenderloin District of the city, an area called Satan’s Circus because of the gambling, prostitution, and all-night bars that provided plenty of money to a corrupt police officer. Becker maximized his money and slowly moved up the line, eventually becoming the head of the Strong Arm Squad responsible for raiding gambling houses. Becker filled his bank accounts using his position to protect those who paid him off.

This part of the book was amazing to me as I was unaware of how corrupt the New York City Police Department was even less than 100 years ago. Dash does a good job of showing what the city was like and how a police officer could make a fortune in this world. He keeps the story flowing well as we near the murder of Herman Rosenthal, the gambler who was the partner of Charley Becker. But it is with the murder that the story starts to drag and become unfocused. Dash does a poor job of describing the two trials of Becker and relating it to what was going on in the city at the time. The description of the trials is confusing as he fails to focus on the key witnesses or give a good description of how the trials unfolded. He doesn’t make it easy on us as he uses the first name, last name, and nickname of the same character sometimes on the same page. The last 80 pages of the book seem almost tacked on. Since we know how the story ends, Dash needs to find other ways to make the end of the book interesting but he isn’t able to do it.

Overall, the book is a fairly good read although it does drag in parts and the end could have used some help. If you are interested in the story of Charley Becker and the NYC police department and want to find out if he really was guilty (at least as well as can be found out 100 years later) then this book is well worth picking up.