Wednesday, October 22, 1997

Cheering a civil servant like gangbusters

By Bob Greene

WILLIAMSTOWN, W. Va. -- If a person really wants to make it big in this country today -- bigger than a movie star, bigger than a rock singer, bigger than a professional athlete -- then there's a job that's just waiting to be filled.

To become that big, the person should pattern himself not after the traditional national icons -- not after a president or a senator or a network anchorman. To be like Bill Clinton or Trent Lott or Peter Jennings is not the assured path to public acclaim. Not in 1997.

No, the job that's sitting there, guaranteed to make a person a national hero, is one that was once held by a man who is long dead.

That man was Eliot Ness.

What brings Ness to mind is a story that occurred just down the road from here, in the West Virginia town of Parkersburg. Five teen-agers -- three boys and two girls -- were arrested and charged with being part of a murder-for-hire plot. The intended victim -- a Monroe County, Ohio, resident -- was the new boyfriend of a woman whose old boyfriend was jealous. The old boyfriend allegedly hired the five teen-agers -- said to be part of a Parkersburg gang -- to kill the new boyfriend.

The alleged murder-for-hire was botched. But when gangs, and the gang culture, reach this far into the country and become this mindlessly deadly yet stupidly mundane -- when gangs reach into the world of West Virginia teen-agers -- then it's time to think about what a new Ness might be able to do. Not just for the country, but for himself.

The old Ness -- the real Ness -- did, basically, two things: went after Al Capone in Chicago and then moved to Cleveland. The only reason most of us know his name today is that his authorized biography, The Untouchables, became one of the most famous television series of all time. Ness died in 1957, before the book was even published; he never saw Robert Stack portray him week after week on network TV, never heard the straining-with-tension theme song that introduced the show each week, never listened to Walter Winchell's staccato narration of every episode.

Indeed, after Ness had brought Capone's gang down in Chicago, the rest of his career was hardly the stuff of screaming headlines. He became public safety director of the city of Cleveland, resigned after being involved in an accident involving an automobile he was driving after a night of drinking, then ran unsuccessfully for mayor of Cleveland. Author Paul W. Heimel, in a new biography called Eliot Ness: The Real Story, prints one of the 1957 eulogies of Ness:

"What kind of man was this amiable, gray-eyed six-footer with the soft voice, who walked from side to side as he hurried along the street? Eliot Ness was kind of a walking contradiction, an understatement, a giggler, a 'man you knew from somewhere,' a man you'd pick out if you were looking for a fellow elbow-bender, a face in the crowd."

We're living in a far different era; a new Ness -- were he to be successful against today's gangs -- would be no face in the crowd, would probably be accorded much more adulation and respect in his own lifetime than the old Ness evidently was. The people are ahead of the politicians on the issue of gangs; gangs can't be dismissed as merely moronic -- not when they've got the kind of firepower and the vacant-eyed willingness to kill that they do -- and society's apparent inability to stop them is infuriating and saddening the public. A recent Chicago Tribune story documented how gangs are infiltrating the American workplace -- taking jobs not to earn a living, but to commit crimes inside corporations.

A new Ness -- a person on the national level charged with defeating the new gangs -- would have the potential to capture the imagination of the country like few public servants in recent years. The new Ness would not have to be flamboyant -- in fact, the squarer the better. America has always been enthusiastic about elevating the quiet straight arrow who is unafraid to stand up to lawless power, whether Gary Cooper in "High Noon" or Eliot Ness on the streets of Capone's Chicago.

The new Ness, were he to show results while being unquestionably fair, would have the potential to become the most talked-about and cheered-for public worker in the land.

Is there anyone -- especially the mothers, fathers and children in gang neighborhoods -- who doesn't want the gangs defeated? Whether in Chicago or Los Angeles or West Virginia? Voters usually say that they want the federal government to be shrunk. But it's likely few citizens would object if one new federal job were to be created.

Qualification sought?

To be newly untouchable.

Chicago Tribune