Big Apple History . Business and Politics . War on Crime and Corruption

On his climb up the steps of City Hall on his first day as mayor, La Guardia shook his fist and said in Italian, "No more free lunch!" The people had witnessed such pledges before. Most often -- since the Tweed Ring of the 1860s -- these promises had been empty, but La Guardia meant what he said. Directly after coming to office, he purged the city government of thousands of workers who had gained jobs in exchange for favors and votes. He replaced the old system of corruption with a new civil service, guided by men of expertise and merit. He also appointed good, tough, honest cops whom Tammany pushed aside. With the city watching, he starved the Tammany machine.


La Guardia throws a confiscated gun into the river.

La Guardia did not just clean house inside his government, he set to work on cleaning the entire city of crime and corruption. He ran for office on a platform that included war on crime, and when he fought against crime he did it publicly. He acted on the media's public stage and, like politicians after him, used radio and television to increase his popularity. He theatrically raced around in squad cars while accompanying the police on official raids.

He focused, in particular, on fighting a public war against racketeers and gamblers, and on seizing their illegal weapons. He went around collecting slot machines, carted them out to barges in the harbor, took his axe, chopped them up, and then threw them overboard into the river. In one old newsreel, he and his deputies lined up slot machines in a row along one side of a barge's deck. The broken machines were poised to fall off the barge's edge but each did not fall until the machine before it had taken its plunge. The image looked as highly choreographed as a performance of synchronized swimmers falling into a pool. Consciously, symbolically, he acted out his government's activities on a stage. The newsreels were always around to shoot his crime-fighting activities, and the radio to record him in action.