Chief Askew's Diary: April 23, 1930

A quiet day for the Newnan police; Chicago names Capone Public Enemy No. 1

“We are having some fine weather,” Chief Askew wrote today. “Just cool enough to be pleasant. Everything very quiet in our line, haven’t heard anything from John Upshaw [the man accused of the Easter weekend murder].”

While things were quieting down in Newnan, the opposite was going on in Chicago, where a citizen’s commission had labeled 28 of the city’s gangsters as “public enemies.” Leading the list at No. 1 was Al Capone. Paid subscribers can read on about this remarkable commission and how it slowly turned the tide against crime.

The mug shot of Capone, accessed via Wikimedia Commons, was taken in May 1930 by the Miami Police Department. By then he was living in a well-fortified mansion on Palm Island, with the biggest private swimming pool in the state in his backyard. At the time, Florida authorities were trying to oust him as a resident of the state. I write extensively about Capone in Florida in my book Baptists and Bootleggers: A Prohibition Expedition Through the South…with Cocktail Recipes. I even rented a motorboat and drove by his house!