A Well-Organized Operation
St. Paul’s Union Depot was constantly bustling with people coming to St. Paul. Happy people greeting loved ones, sad people seeing someone board their train for distant destinations. Among these throngs of people coming through Union Depot were gang members from Boston, New York, Chicago, all of the other criminal hotspots around the country.
One of O’Connor’s men, trained to recognize specific criminals or to look for potential signs of underworld connections (an early form of profiling) waited at the inbound train platforms. If he identified someone of interest, he would discreetly go up to them and tell them if they planned to stay in St. Paul, they needed to go see a specific person at a specific place. This new arrival was an underworld luminary who was close to the police and could transfer the bribe to the appropriate officials.
