Mugshot of Charles Luciano, alias Lucky, April 18, Lucky Luciano left enters police headquarters with detective on arrival from Little Rock, April 18, He had managed to escape prosecution for mob-related murders that had made him the reigning boss in the late s and s, but in , Thomas Dewey, then a federally-appointed special prosecutor for Manhattan, and his team of investigators and lawyers developed what would become a sensational prostitution case that riveted the city.
Investigators conducted simultaneous raids on some 40 brothels and eventually built a case against him using about three-dozen witnesses, including a slew of prostitutes and madams. Amazingly, Luciano took the witness stand, confident he could charm the jury. He likely would have died in prison, but he cooperated with the war effort in after the sinking of the SS Normandie on the Brooklyn waterfront raised fears of sabotage and longshoremen threatened to strike.
While in Italy, he continued to coordinate with fellow mobsters on international drug trafficking. Prostitution burst back into the headlines in , with a dramatic two-part series in the New York Times , contained in the Municipal Library files.
The Times series prompted the State Assembly to toughen prostitution laws over the objections of some, like then-Assembly member Charles Rangel, who wanted to decriminalize it. As the city began its slide toward an ugly, wide-open Times Squareβas later depicted in movies like Taxi Driver and the television series The Deuce βan NYPD press release in the archives dated February said prostitution arrests had increased 13 percent from to Public pressure pushed the Lindsay administration to crack down on prostitution.
On the contrary, they prosper in a milieu of thieves, degenerates and undesirables. There was also some violence when three cops were injured in a melee with hookers resisting arrest; one pimp was arrested for trying to stab a cop. That brought mixed results, at best. In one of its first reports for the period of April to June of , officials reported about arrests for prostitution and obscenity, including live sex shows.
