WILLEMSE, Cornelius W.

Inquire · Offered by Peter Harrington

A Cop Remembers. First edition, presentation copy, inscribed by the author on the frontispiece, "to my friend C. Ray Wagner, Captain Cornelius W. Willemse". Willemse served as a New York police officer and detective from 1900 to 1925. His memoirs, Behind the Green Lights and A Cop Remembers, are among the few reliable firsthand accounts of the criminal gangs and police methods of that time, covering especially the enforcement of prohibition. Willemse is hostile to prohibition: "Prohibition has caused more misery in the United States than any other calamity... I don't believe anybody alive today will live long enough to see the end of the damage done by this prohibition era" (pp. 117, 126). He notes that since prohibition the number of persons killed by police increase by 300 percent, and that "prohibition has lured a young army into the bootlegging racket while an approving public looks on and gets a kick out of it" (p. 239).

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