 This is a businessman. His business is organized crime. His products include gambling, narcotics, vise, loan sharking, stolen goods, labor racketeering, and goons for hire. Illegal gambling brings in his biggest profits, working capital to finance other criminal activities. Bribery and corruption of public officials, including some police officers, almost always accompany large-scale illegal gambling. The law enforcement officer must avoid any such involvement. Besides corrupting the community he is sworn to protect, involvement puts him in personal jeopardy, from local statutes and from the Organized Crime Control Act of 1970. This provides federal penalties for public officials who conspire to obstruct enforcement of local laws against gambling. Besides protection, Organized Crime provides layoff service for bookmakers and numbers operators, two of the largest illegal gambling activities. This call comes from the office of a numbers operation. The office manager may be called a controller, the office a drop, checkup, or counting house, the clerk's inside men, varying with the locality. Here numbers bets are received and tallied, necessary records kept. Numbers operations take bets on number groups, usually three, in a given order. Digits are determined by drawing, as in policy and belita, or by daily published figures such as perimutual payoffs, treasury balances, or stock exchange action. A lookout guards the outer door to the numbers office. But this and the other elaborate security precautions are no match for good police work. A stakeout team has had the building which houses the numbers office under visual observation. Binoculars pick up significant details of visitors and their cars. A telephoto camera records any suspicious activity to be later used as evidence. From this command post, the officer in charge maintains radio contact with other police units, prepared to coordinate the coming raid with city-wide arrests of numbers salesman. The numbers salesman is usually called a writer. He may work a regular route or from a fixed place of business. Most of the bets are small, but the day's total will be surprisingly large. The marker lists the three-digit number and the amount bet. Markers are prepared for secure delivery to the pickup man or runner. But numbers sellers need customers. They cannot long remain unknown to the police. Winning numbers are called hits. The writer pays off his few lucky winners. The pay off on a straight three-number bet runs from 400 to 600 to 1. Smaller odds are paid on cut numbers, those heavily played because of superstition or other reasons. Correct odds should be 999 to 1. This differential leaves a small percentage for the writer. Huge profits for the numbers operation. The temporarily happy winner is not the target. The stakeout waits for bigger gain. The runner works for the office or bank that owns the numbers operation. He controls as many writers as he can handle. He makes his pickup like an ordinary customer to avoid detection. This time it doesn't work. His departure is noted and the command post watching the numbers office is alerted for his arrival. The runner reaches the innocent seeming outer door of the numbers office. The lookout signal clears him through the secured door inside. Unit five take the lookout as planned. It is the last free action the lookout will make for some time. The heavy door with its alarm system is open for the runner bringing in the last of the day's bets. The cash has probably been routed separately to another location called the bank headquarters or clearing house. The clerks have run up the totals and the controller is ready to make any necessary layoffs on heavily played numbers through an agency of organized crime. A perimutual payoff at a distant track determines the final digit of the winning number. Unit three look out neutralized move on in. Open up. Open up when we're coming in. Judicial approval may authorize immediate entry without waiting for permission. Know what method of entry is authorized in your case. All surveillance units proceed with preplanned arrest. When there is no longer danger of premature tip off the small fry of the numbers operation are arrested. With the subjects from the numbers office on their way detectives are collecting identifying and preserving the evidence. Some of it partially burned but salvageable by good laboratory work. The patrolman guarding the rear exit during the raid brings in the important records that literally fell into his hands. Usable evidence results from good police work. Planning the raid for maximum evidence and for swift entry to prevent its destruction. Effective uncompromising law enforcement can make numbers operations increasingly hazardous and unprofitable. Illegal dice or card games and gambling casinos are often linked with organized crime and the corruption which is its trademark. Gaming may be found in the plush legalized gambling casinos of Las Vegas. It may also be found in illegal floating dice games often set up in hotel or motel rooms or their one night stands. The equipment can be transported in a suitcase. Every part of it from the layout to the dice is suspect. So are the operator and his assistant. Some players are regulars informed of the floating location. Many are transients looking for action and are easy to cheat safely. To find these marks the operator uses stirrers taxi drivers bartenders bellman. This driver is kept posted on the game location and will get a fee or percentage for the apparently half drunk well healed sucker he brings to the scene of the action. A confederate keeps watch in a separate room ready to signal an alarm. He may also double a strong arm man in case a loser starts trouble. It is to the lookouts room that the stirrer has sent his passenger to the cold and experienced eye of the lookout. This half drunk sucker looks ripe for picking. He gives him the room number the floating crap game and signals the operator to expect him. This time they have the wrong sucker a suddenly sober undercover detective. His concealed mic gets word to the team waiting below. Unit five this is T one the lookout in five fourteen has an alarm buzzer in the door frame. I'm proceeding to the game in five nineteen monitor me and execute the plan when gambling is established. Unit five to all units proceed as planned. Yeah. About some chips chips. What's that we're out twenty dollars about twenty take a big twenty there for you. Hey here we go here we go here we go. What's what's the point what's the point here. Eight okay baby okay okay. Come on there. Six all right I think the man statutes concerning players in an illegal game vary from jurisdiction to jurisdiction. There's no question anywhere about the arrest of the operator and his confederates. Besides police testimony the case will depend upon the considerable amount of physical evidence and its nature. It will be carefully identified marked and preserved for the trial. Good police work by an undercover detective has put this illegal gambling operation out of business. Bookmaking is a most profitable enterprise for organized crime which provides two essential services to the individual bookmaker laying off his bets and furnishing the information he needs to calculate his odds. The largest amounts of money are bet on sports events football basketball ice hockey and baseball. Horse betting once the bookmaker stand by is next in volume. A successful bookmaking operation depends upon rapid relay of odds line information and results. Expert sports handicappers often employed by organized crime provide the analysis upon which odds are based. Team and player records and condition location of the game probable weather. The bookmaker uses long distance phone to get this information fast and frequently. He also makes out of town calls to the bankers of organized crime to lay off his bets and keep the book in balance. So that these incriminating toll calls are not charged to the apartment he rents for a few hours each day. He has attached to the telephone an electronic device the blue box like all evasive devices it violates telephone company regulations. The blue box circuitry permits the user to make toll free unrecorded and untraceable calls wherever direct distance dialing is available. Through the blue box phone the bookmaker gets the latest point spreads on the college games he is booking. On football or basketball the better usually wagers $11 on a pick them basis to win 10. Point spreads reflect the handicapper estimate of the competing teams. Baseball bets are usually placed at varying odds based upon the pitchers for the day as well as the team record. To receive the incoming calls from betters on which his livelihood depends the bookmaker relies on several devices which may keep his location or private phone secret. One is the backstrap a simple circuit which connects the bookmaker's unauthorized extension to an authorized and listed telephone at a nearby but separate and clean location. Another way to prevent his incoming calls being traced or his location revealed is by installing a black box a somewhat more complex electronic device. It absorbs the electrical impulses on incoming calls so that they do not record at the telephone company's central billing equipment. This bookmaker however uses the more sophisticated cheese box to conceal his location and private telephone number. He maintains a private phone elsewhere than the apartment from which he works with a number known only to him. He keeps an open line from his apartment to this phone at prearranged hours known to his customers. They have a different number to call connecting them with still another phone which may be in an empty room or other clean location. This call is switched through the cheese box to the bookmaker's private phone also in a clean location. Then during the hours that he monitors this phone from his apartment he can converse with the customer who has called an entirely different number to reach him. Other elements in the elaborate screen of deception may be markers or records on instantly disposable water soluble or flash paper. But even the tightest screen will not shield against vigorous and uncompromising police work. Informants are a prime source for discovery of illegal gambling. They may be on a police payroll, regular betters, competitors or disgruntled employees. This is a housewife who has discovered where most of her husband's paychecks are going, betting on sports. She gives the detectives the accommodation number that she knows her husband calls to make wagers. Even then it is not easy to find the bookmaker's actual location. The telephone company will aid in tracing it through the maze of electronic evasion. Having located the apartment that the bookmaker works from a few hours each day they keep it under surveillance. They learn the daily routine and plan for a legal yet fast entry when the action is heaviest. Evidence most plentiful. The bookmaker is off the cheese box open line. With all bets in for that day he finds that to balance his book and ensure a profit he must lay off some heavily played teams. It is time to call the bookmaker's bookmaker, almost always an agent of organized crime. Lay off his big business. Without it few bookmakers could operate. His heavy work over he waits expectantly for delivery of his daily sandwich. Information leads to investigation. Investigation to surveillance. Surveillance to apprehension. It pays off. Armed with a warrant police plan their raid when the maximum evidence would be on hand and with minimum chance for its destruction. There is no cooperation from the bookmaker but their continuing investigation will uncover other evidence. The unauthorized electronic equipment. The testimony of the not so innocent owners of the apartment. They find the water soluble paper on which the bets were written and a little black notebook listing the bookmaker's layoff and line odd sources. They lead directly to organized crime. Without organized crime to bank numbers layoff bets protect gaming and bribe some officials and police officers illegal gambling could be stopped. Two gentlemen from the FBI to see you sir. You the officer must be aware of the connection between illegal gambling and organized crime. Only honest aware and informed law enforcement officers can bring the organized criminal before the bar of justice. Only incorruptible impartial and stern justice can make him pay for his crime. You must be informed on the major types of illegal gambling. Their M.O.'s and the applicable gambling statutes in your jurisdiction. You must be trained in effective techniques to discover the illegal gambling operation through informants observation and investigation to follow the operation as close to the top as possible to plan the arrests so as to acquire and preserve the necessary evidence for conviction.