To Catch a Cop

For five years, the New Orleans Police Department had been deviled by an exceptionally skillful gang of thieves. Their scores totaled a spectacular $500,000 in cash and $1,400,000 in jewels. Their methods were dazzling. In 1966, for example, two members of the gang, masquerading as the crew of an armored car, wheeled up to Schwegmann Bros. Grant supermarket, picked up $186,000 in cash, gave the manager a receipt and disappeared. Eight days later, burglars chopped through the roof of the Coleman E. Adler & Sons jewelry firm and dropped into the store to spend hours burning open the main vault with acetylene torches. They left with $1,000,000 worth of jewels.

It was no wonder that the gang was difficult to catch. Last week the dismayed New Orleans police superintendent, Joseph Giarrusso, announced that charges of burglary had been filed against seven policemen and five former cops. Eight more policemen were suspended for refusing to take lie detector tests. It was the nation's worst police scandal of the decade.

Moving cautiously, Giarrusso charged the gang with only 26 burglaries--for a total of $19,000. But informers connected the police gang with more than 20 other jobs, including the armored car and Adler robberies and thefts in which guests at French Quarter hotels lost $300,000 in jewels and furs. One of the bandits' advantages, of course, was that they were so well equipped. They evidently used a police traffic-survey helicopter as an overhead lookout to scout escape routes. A warning was flashed by walkie-talkie to the thieves on the ground if any honest cops approached.

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