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Session:         Page of 617

LBH
Interview # 8
Interviewee: Congressman Edward I. Koch
Interviewer: Ed Edwin
New York City
December 30, 1975

Q:

You made reference yesterday to the corruption of the 6th Police Precinct in the Village. Could you go into any more detail about that?

Koch:

Well, I know of no personal incidents that I could recount with any accuracy. I really can only give you what is scuttle butt, what people say.

The Village being the area of the restaurateurs and the cabarets, and those are the people that are most subject to being extorted by cops, even more so at one time because gay bars were in the Village as opposed to anyplace else in the city, and there were crackdowns on the gays, it was assumed that the Mafia was involved in the gay bars as opposed to their being operated as regular, legitimate establishments, because they then violated the law -- or at least the cops said that they did. And the cops were on the take. At least that's what we understood.

Then also with the coffee houses, the complaints were that the cops would come in and harass and say there wasn't soap in the soap dish -- there are a lot of technical requirements about places of public assembly. So there again we were told -- When I say “we,” I'm talking about the club, Carol and myself -- of shakedowns.












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