The One Man Riot Squad Serving with the NYPD between 1923 and 1947,
for over two decades John “Johnny” Broderick struck fear into the hearts of New York’s
deadliest criminals working as a no-nonsense detective who wasn’t afraid to throw hands
and kick bad guys through windows (literally). Over his long and controversial career, Broderick
earned over half a dozen medals for valor, a nod from the president of the United States
and the begrudging respect of the criminal underworld who, when they weren’t referring
to him by various expletives, referred to him as “the one man riot squad”. Born in 1896 in the Gashouse District of Manhattan,
New York, Broderick had a hard, unforgiving early life, quitting school at just age 12
when his father died so that he could drive trucks to earn money for his family. When WW1 rolled around, Broderick dutifully
enlisted in the Navy and took part in his only known official pugilistic bout, ironically
enough given his later reputation, being summarily knocked out in the first round by an unknown
seaman. At the close of the WW1, Broderick used the
connections he’d made driving coal trucks to secure a job in the Teamsters union, where
he eventually came to the attention of labor leader, Samuel Gompers. Gompers hired the 5 foot 10 inch, 170 pound
Broderick to serve as his personal bodyguard after hearing stories about Broderick’s
skills with his fists. Broderick grew tired of being a bodyguard
and in 1922 he applied to become a New York City fireman, passing the physical exam with
flying colors. However, he soon became disillusioned with
the nature of the work which he described as “boring”. Somewhat ironically, after quitting the fire
department and enlisting as a police officer in 1923, the first thing Broderick did was
rescue two children from a burning building hours into his first shift. Heroics like these saw Broderick promoted
from beat cop to detective third grade just three months after joining the NYPD. This was an impressive, almost unheard of
feat that Broderick topped not long after by being promoted again, and then the year
after that was promoted a final time to detective first grade in 1926. To put this in perspective, in just three
years Broderick earned three promotions that often took regular officers their entire career
to achieve. The New York Herald Tribune noted that his
rapid rise must have been the result of “extraordinary luck or influence or both”. While rumors of backroom deals and connections
from his time as a union man dogged Broderick’s meteoric rise through the ranks of the NYPD,
stories of his penchant for doling out justice with his fists in an era when criminals often
openly skirted the law earned him a great deal of goodwill with the public and his fellow
officers. The newspapers particularly ate up Broderick’s
exploits, gleefully reported stories about him attacking various criminals just because
he could, whether he caught them doing anything wrong or not. For example, Broderick became infamous for
his habit of slapping known criminals upside the head with a rolled up newspaper. If that doesn’t sound so bad, it should
be noted that the newspapers in question generally had an iron bar hidden inside, allowing him
to beat suspects unconscious in broad daylight, but later still able to claim in court that
he had only given them a playful whack with a newspaper. Broderick was seemingly unafraid of even the
most fearsome gangsters and was known to respond to the threats on his life by driving over
to the gangster who made the threat’s house and attacking him. The most famous occasion of this was when
high-profile mobster Legs Diamond was drinking one night with his cohorts and, after calling
Broderick various uncouth names, stated he was going to “take Broderick for a ride
tonight”. Diamond and crew then began to hunt for Broderick
to make good on the promise. Other lowlifes who heard about it joined the
entourage, eager to see the spectacle. Unfortunately for Diamond, Broderick also
heard about it and began hunting Diamond in turn. Newspapers later reported that soon enough
Broderick found him at the corner of 46th and Broadway. Broderick approached Diamond and co. stating, “I understand you are looking to
take me for a ride”. At this point, Diamond’s bodyguard fled,
leaving Diamond to face Broderick alone. With his wingman out of the picture and a
whole crowd of underworld types looking on, Diamond tried to play the whole thing off,
reportedly stating, “Ah, listen Johnny, can’t you take a joke?” It was at this point that Broderick punched
him in the face and then unceremoniously dumped him headfirst into a nearby garbage can. With so many criminals witnessing the mob-boss
humiliated, and Diamond’s subsequent fall from underworld influence, the mayor of New
York, Jimmy Walker, credited this incident as ending Diamond’s criminal career: “Broderick
as good as killed Diamond with that garbage can stunt. It finished him as a leader.” (Afterwards Diamond found himself the victim
of several assassination attempts, often ending up in the hospital with bullet wounds. After an incident in late 1931, while Diamond
was in the hospital, police raided his house and found hard evidence he’d been bootlegging. He was subsequently given a four year prison
sentence, but appealed the ruling and was let walk free. This didn’t work out for him. Yet another assassination attempt was carried
out, this time successfully as they put the bullets through his brain rather than his
body in December of 1931. Rumor had it that Democratic Party Chairman
Dan O’Connell was behind the hit and that it was the police who carried it out.) Such brazen tactics became Broderick’s calling
card. For instance, during one of his more widely
reported exploits, in 1931 Broderick boldly faced down Two Gun Crowley who had been trapped
by several hundred policemen in an apartment. A firefight soon erupted between the police
and Crowley. When Broderick arrived, with a crowd that
newspapers reported swelled to nearly 15,000 looking on, he simply strolled across the
street with no cover and knocked on the door, reportedly with the following exchange, Broderick: Hey, they got you, Crowley. Why don’t you give up? Crowley: You know me good enough, Johnny. You know the only way I’ll come out of here
is shootin’ Broderick: Aw you’re nutty, Tell you what
I’ll do: I’ll go around the corner for two hours. If you ain’t out by then I’ll come in
and get you. Later, after firing an estimated 700 rounds
at the building and lobbing tear gas in, Broderick and co. ran back to the door and knocked it down. They found an injured Crowley (shot four times)
inside. He pointed his gun at Broderick, but rather
than try to get out of the line of fire, Broderick simply approached stating, “Drop that gun,
y’runt, and keep your hands in the air”. When he got close enough, he punched the injured
Crowley in the face and disarmed him. Another of his widely reported exploits occurred
five years previous, in November of 1926, when he put an end to a standoff at The Tombs
prison in Manhattan. In an attempted prison break, three prisoners,
Hymie Amberg, Bobbie Berg, and Red McKenna, killed a guard and the warden and ended up
trapped behind a coal pile. When Broderick arrived, rather than duck for
cover as the rest of the police were doing, he grabbed a metal garbage can lid as a shield
and sprinted towards the shooting criminals. From here, the news report that came out directly
after the event stated the criminals in question saw it was Broderick coming at them and simply
committed suicide instead of face him… However, the truth seems to be that once Broderick
got to them and started firing at close range, they fled the coal pile and, now without cover,
were gunned down by the police. Yet another tale of this John McClane style,
Hollywood-esque policeman reported in the news was an instance where he did a very un-Hollywood
thing that resulted in a car containing five armed gangsters flipping over during a high
speed chase. How? He leaned out of a police car travelling at
high-speed and, instead of aiming at the occupants as is generally the moronic strategy in movies,
he simply shot out one of the tires. Broderick’s exploits didn’t go unnoticed
by celebrities who began requesting Broderick’s services as a bodyguard when they visited
New York. This culminated in Broderick being personally
asked by President Franklin Roosevelt to lead his protection detail when he attended the
1936 World Series. Similar requests were made by the Queen of
Romania and the King of Belgium when they were in town. Despite his fearsome reputation, somewhat
questionable crime fighting tactics, and how famous Broderick was nationwide at the time,
Broderick was known to be a generally humble, down to earth guy when he wasn’t on the
job. He almost never talked to the press about
any of his heroic acts, except through official police reports. He also refrained wholly from smoking and
drinking and typically spent his free time at home with his wife or exercising at the
gym. This not drinking or smoking bit was an important
one to him, as told by one of his friends, Toots Shor, who owned a pub in town. One night Shor claimed he called Broderick
up as actor Edward G. Robinson was in his pub and wanted to meet Broderick in person. You see, Robinson had played Broderick in
the 1936 movie Bullets or Ballots. Far from being excited to meet the actor,
Shor stated Broderick told him, “Tell him I don’t want to meet him. Tell him I oughta flatten him.” Confused, Shor responded, “What’s eating
you? Robinson’s a fine guy.” To which Broderick said, “Yeah? Suppose I had let my kids go see that picture-
and they had seen him, playing the part of me, actually taking a drink and smoking a
cigar?” Broderick was also a complete teddy bear when
it came to women and children, never hesitating to walk young women home at night if they
felt unsafe and offering his services as a bodyguard, free of charge, to women who’d
been victims of domestic assault, occasionally visiting their former partners to “teach
them a lesson”. In one instance, the New York papers reported
that Broderick beat up several young men who had been harassing women on the street. Then, for good measure, Broderick tossed them
each through windows so that he could arrest them for malicious destruction of property. It was reported that they all got 30 days
in jail for the charge of destruction of property. If you’re guessing from all this that Broderick’s
career was marred by controversy, you’re correct. However, it should be noted that his abusive
treatment of those he felt were criminals (whether they were or not) wasn’t that uncommon
at the time for police. It wouldn’t be until a couple decades after
he retired that the New York police force would try to curb this type of behavior, starting
to give training courses for their officers in respecting people’s civil rights. But during Broderick’s time, gangsters were
often able to flaunt their crimes with little risk of actually being punished in any meaningful
way due to paying off the right officials. This left some members of the police seeing
it as their duty to dole out justice when the justice system wouldn’t. As former assistant chief inspector Walter
Henning noted in 1966, “They had rather be locked up than to meet Johnny.” Nevertheless, Broderick took excessive force
to a whole new level. In one instance in 1937, the New York Supreme
Court even had to step in, freeing a prisoner long before his sentence was complete. Why? Think Captain Hadley / Bogs in Shawshank Redemption. They stated in their ruling that Broderick
had “beat him so badly that he will be a cripple for life. I think this man has more than expiated his
crime.” On top of the severe beating, the man was
given no medical attention while in police custody. Yet again, Broderick got off scot-free. On top of this, the Industrial Squad (later
repurposed as the Gangster Squad) of plainclothes officers Broderick led for a time was frequently
cited for excessive force- not against trying to break up crowds of strikers by breaking
various parts of said strikers’ bodies. In one instance in 1926, the American Civil
Liberties Union accused the Industrial Squad of attacking the Interborough Rapid Transit
Company workers, seriously injuring 20 of them, for no reason. Broderick claimed it was self defence, as
he did in many other such instances. Of course, the Industrial Squad didn’t always
intervene in strikes and there were several accusations over his career that Broderick
and his fellow officers on the squad often offered to “protect” the strikers from
such beatings (and look the other way when strikers attacked scabs) if the union officials
would pay them for it. In each instance, however, Broderick and his
crew were cleared of all charges or in other cases no action was taken to investigate the
accusations. It should be noted here that Broderick was
known to walk around wearing thousand dollars suits, drove a Cadillac and owned a luxurious
apartment in Queens he somehow maintained on a $4000 a year salary ($70,000 today). He was also known to have many connections
with the controversial Democratic Tammany Hall political machine. Beyond that, journalist Francis James Westbrook
Pegler noted that while Broderick didn’t hesitate to beat up many known criminals he
encountered on the streets, other times, he casually looked the other way for no apparent
reason, “there were many low characters in the city, notorious for their activity
in the rackets, who were walking right past Detective Broderick on the street and in the
lobby of [Madison Square] Garden, whom he did not find any occasion to bounce around.” However, due to the public perception of his
unflinching dedication to duty (whether an accurate portrayal or not), Broderick was
seldom reprimanded for his actions and the numerous complaints filed against him for
assault and excessive force were largely swept under the rug. Even lawsuits against him, which weren’t
that uncommon, were typically thrown out by judges who were friendly with, or juries who
admired, Broderick and his efforts to clean up the streets of New York. But there are always limits, and after years
of these complaints piling up, Broderick was demoted in 1934 to the rank of patrolman. It was reported by journalist Westbrook Peglar
that the demotion was because Broderick “has enjoyed for some years the endorsement and
assistance of some of the most pernicious Tammany politicians in the city.” Within a few years of this, he was reinstated
to detective but the problems didn’t go away and by 1947 he was very quietly forcibly
retired from the police force by Mayor William O’Dwyer amidst accusations that Broderick
was in cahoots with gangsters. You see, it was discovered that in November
of 1946, Broderick had accompanied ex-convict Ben Kaye to Hot Springs, Arkansas, where the
pair met up with mobster Owney Madden for undisclosed reasons. Broderick later denied that there was anything
fishy about this, stating that he frequently associated with various gangsters and other
criminals to keep tabs on what was going on with the criminal underworld in New York;
it was just part of his job. After retirement, Broderick made an unsuccessful
bid for political office in 1949, but the aforementioned reason why he retired came
to public light and his political aspirations went down the toilet. He then sold the rights to his life story
to RKO Pictures for $75,000 (about $753,000 today). A script was made, tentatively called “Broadway’s
One-Man Riot Squad”, and actors hired, but they never got around to making a film based
on his life due to budget concerns. Broderick took the money and retired to a
farm where he raised horses and dogs. He died in 1966 at the age of 70 with newspapers
across the nation hailing him as “The Toughest Cop in the World”.
