Deb­bie Ja­cob

Crime, gang­sters, gangs and a se­cret po­lice unit hid­den from politi­cians and the gen­er­al pub­lic are the fo­cus of our next Sun­day Arts Sec­tion (SAS) Book Club choice, Gang­ster Squad: Covert Cops, the Mob, and the Bat­tle for Los An­ge­les by Paul Lieber­man. In my book, a great read is a sto­ry that un­folds in an ex­cit­ing, un­ex­pect­ed way while giv­ing some in­sights in­to the world around us. In this case, Gang­ster Squad de­liv­ers big time.

To un­der­stand crime, the prob­lem with fight­ing crime, the grip that gangs and gang­sters have on so­ci­ety, you need a book like Gang­ster Squad that of­fers an in-depth look at a world we're on­ly see­ing on the sur­face.It takes some­one knowl­edge­able about that seedy un­der­world to give read­ers a clear­er pic­ture of crime, and Lieber­man de­liv­ers the goods. For 24 years, Lieber­man worked as a writer and ed­i­tor at the Los An­ge­les Times, where he won many jour­nal­ism awards and the Amer­i­can So­ci­ety of News­pa­per Ed­i­tors Award. He was part of two Pulitzer Prize, award-win­ning teams for the Los An­ge­les Times.

In Gang­ster Squad Lieber­man ex­pos­es a se­cre­tive po­lice unit formed in the Los An­ge­les po­lice de­part­ment in 1949. The pur­pose of the Gang­ster Squad was to deal with the chang­ing land­scape of Los An­ge­les af­ter World War II. An in­flux of gang­sters from the east prey­ing on a small town go­ing through a growth spurt af­ter World War II forced the Gang­ster Squad in­to ac­tion.The Gang­ster Squad shows how crime in­fil­trates, grows and fes­ters in a cho­sen lo­ca­tion. Crime is nev­er a prob­lem that de­vel­ops overnight. In the case of Los An­ge­les, the prob­lem stretched back to 1876 when the South­ern Pa­cif­ic rail­road linked the re­mote city with north­ern Cal­i­for­nia. Los An­ge­les soon de­vel­oped in­to a sprawl­ing, com­mu­ni­ty of 65,000 res­i­dents with a po­lice force of 75 that in­clud­ed clerks and oth­er ad­min­is­tra­tive per­son­nel. Gam­bling and oth­er il­le­gal ac­tiv­i­ty de­vel­oped over time, and even­tu­al­ly the town be­came a hang­out for gang­sters from Chica­go and the East Coast who were look­ing for a lit­tle ac­tion-packed va­ca­tion. By World War II, Los An­ge­les seemed to be spin­ning out of con­trol. Gang­sters had tak­en over town.

Gang­ster Squad doc­u­ments how crime turns in­to a war be­tween the po­lice and the crim­i­nals. Mick­ey Co­hen be­came one of the low-life char­ac­ters on the Gang­ster Squad's radar. Born in Brook­lyn, Co­hen had been brought west by his moth­er as a child. He grew up in a poor Los An­ge­les neigh­bour­hood and grad­u­at­ed from claim­ing ter­ri­to­ry and stand­ing his ground as a news­boy to a big-time gang­ster–thanks to his men­tor, Bugsy Siegel, an­oth­er in­fa­mous gang­ster.The movie ver­sion of the book stars Sean Penn as the gang­ster Mick­ey Co­hen; Josh Brolin as Sgt John O'Mara, Nick Nolte as Chief Bill Park­er, who puts the covert unit to­geth­er, and Ryan Gosling as Sgt Jer­ry Woot­ers. The movie slipped in and out of Movi­eTowne over the Car­ni­val pe­ri­od, but it will soon be avail­able on DVD.You can buy the book Gang­ster Squad at your favourite book stores. Join the SAS Book Club on Face­book to give us your views on Gang­ster Squad.