Eliot Ness with Oscar Fraley

Widespread police corruption in big cities like Chicago was not uncommon during Prohibition. It became standard practice for bootleggers to factor payoffs into their overhead. Everyone from the lowly cop on the beat to the police commissioner demanded a cut. For crime bosses like Al Capone, who ran a citywide operation, payoffs to government officials amounted to millions of dollars.

A few dedicated agents and policemen like Eliot Ness could not be bought for any price. Ness's Prohibition unit had been dubbed "untouchable" by the press because of their incorruptibility. The following selection is taken from Ness's biography. In it he describes one of many raids his unit would make that would cripple Capone's bootlegging business in Chicago. Despite their success as a unit, the Untouchables were disbanded after repeal. Ness became the director of public safety...