Chicago Whispers: A History of LGBT Chicago before Stonewall

20. Trouble with the Law

230 20 Trouble with the Law The Chicago police force gets its comeuppance when gays fight back for the first time. Dean T. Kolberg and Ralf L. Johnston, owners of the Trip bar, take the city to court after being raided and closed in Mayor Richard J. Daley’s clean­up­vice campaign before the 1968 Democratic Na­ tional Convention. In 1973 Captain Clarence Braasch and twenty­one other police officers are arrested for shaking down gay bars, and John J. Pyne, an ex–Chicago police officer, is jailed for running a blackmail ring. In early 1968 Mayor Richard J. Daley set about cleansing the city of vice in preparation for the Democratic National Convention in August. At the time, the Democrats were in disarray over the Vietnam War, and add to this the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. in April, Robert F. Kennedy in June, and the expected mass protests by Yippies and peaceniks, and the month of August was expected to be hotter than usual in Chicago. It was. The running street battles between antiwar demonstrators and Mayor Daley’s hard-line Chicago police force underscored the gulf between old-style politics and a radical counterculture that embraced women’s and gay rights. While the police turned their nightsticks on Yippies, the protestors chanted “The Whole World Is Watching.” Now the whole world could see what the city’s lesbians and gay men had known for years: that the Chicago police force was out of control. Trouble with the Law 231 On September 8, 1967, Dean T. Kolberg and Ralf L. Johnston opened the elegant Trip restaurant and bar at 27 East Ohio Street. The Trip was raided twice, first on January 28, 1968, when police arrested fourteen men, eight of whom were charged with public indecency, the rest with being employees of a disorderly house. Ralla Klepak, who defended hundreds of cases involving gay men, was attorney for the defense. On March 29 in jury court, the charges were dismissed because the police entered the bar illegally, by impersonating members of the club after illegally obtaining cards. Two months later the bar was raided again, and plainclothes officers arrested an employee and a patron. This time the owners appealed to the City Liquor Board, and the Trip’s license was “temporarily” suspended between May 13 and May 20. In 1968 when a Chicago tavern was raided it was required to stay closed until the case came to court, up to two years, effectively putting the bar out of business. Kolberg and Johnston fought back, and on March 27, 1969, the Illinois Supreme Court decided in their favor, ruling the law allowing Chicago to close taverns until revocations were appealed was unconstitutional. The Trip grand reopening was on June 18, 1969, and the bar thrived until it closed down in November 1976. On June 29, 1986, Johnston died at age fifty-seven. His partner, Kolberg, a World War II veteran, ran the Book Store in Geneseo, Illinois, until his retirement in 1995. He died at home on October 15, 1997. The Arrest of Captain Clarence Braasch It was common knowledge the mob had a stake in Chicago’s gay bars, and that police were shaking them down. But it wasn’t until 1973 that U.S. Attorney James R. Thompson (later governor of Illinois, 1977–91) investigated the problem. In June 1973 the Chicago Gay Crusader reported fortyseven policemen from three districts had been indicted by a federal grand jury for extortion in shaking down taverns, many of them gay-owned or with a gay clientele. The trial of Captain Clarence Braasch and twenty-two other police officers from the East Chicago Avenue Police District began in August 1973. Braasch, charged with extortion and perjury, denied any knowledge of the shakedowns. After Thompson granted four officers immunity in return for giving evidence, the web of corruption began to unravel. One told the court that payoffs were referred to as the “vice package” and tavern Trouble with the Law 232 owners “members of the vice club.” This is how it worked: After a bar was targeted for shakedown, police visited several times in one evening, brandishing shotguns, checking the liquor license, and lining the customers up against a wall to check IDs. Later the owner was invited to join the “vice club” with a promise that harassment would end and police would “slant” reports of any...