Messiah in Open Town

Among Miami mobsters he is known contemptuously as The Messiah. Boasts one criminal attorney: "He won't change things here." Indeed, E. (for nothing) Wilson ("Bud") Purdy promised no millennium last December when he became Dade County sheriff during a period of flourishing crime in south Florida and blatant corruption in his new command. Nonetheless, he has already changed things considerably.

The Florida sheriffs' bureau reported recently that south Florida is home to at least 40 Mafia members and dozens of affiliated hoods. Scores of Northern gangsters drop in regularly for pleasure as well as business. Miami is known as an "open town"--one in which no single Mafia cell completely controls the action and there is certainly no shortage of lucrative opportunities: narcotics, labor racketeering, organized prostitution, Shylocking, several varieties of gambling. The Mafia has also found legitimate outlets for surplus capital, and is believed to have bought into some 45 hotels and 25 restaurants and bars* in the area.

Airport Reception. One of Bud Purdy's first targets has been the mob's moneybags. Before he arrived, it was customary for the police to arrest only the pawns of the numbers operation, the little bet taker on the street. Under Purdy, the force concentrates on gambling's middle echelon, the men who collect from the street workers. Now a single arrest often yields as much as $5,000 in confiscated cash.

Purdy, 48, has reorganized and expanded his department's criminal-intelligence and vice divisions. His men keep careful watch on the movements of known hoods and are usually at the airport to greet them. Santo Trafficante of Tampa, who is reputedly ambitious to make Miami a closed preserve for his own Mafia "family," objected so profanely to the reception committee that he ended up in handcuffs. Said one detective: "Santo wants to have the confidence of the New York Mafia. But how can he control this town when he can't even get past the airport without being picked up?"

Career Cop. Purdy inherited a dispirited, tainted force. Last spring a grand jury indicted Sheriff Talmadge Buchanan and half a dozen members of the department on a variety of charges including perjury and conspiracy to commit robbery. No one was convicted, but the uproar was sufficient to allow reformers to win a referendum making the sheriff an appointed rather than an elected official. On election night, County Manager Porter Homer fired Buchanan and began a nationwide search for a successor. Purdy's name was repeatedly suggested by top police officials all over the country.

A Michigan farm boy who still looks the part, Purdy has been a cop almost since childhood. "I can't remember ever wanting to be anything else," he says. At twelve, while working as a part-time school janitor, he helped catch two adult coal thieves. When he went to Michigan State to study police administration, his parents exploded: "Why do you want to go to college to be a dumb cop?" He answered, in effect, that the course would make him a smart cop. During World War II, he served as a military-police officer in the Pacific, later was an FBI agent in New York and Florida, went on to become chief of the St. Petersburg force, then headed Pennsylvania's state police for three years.

Political Pressure. "Our enforcement policy is simple," he has always maintained. "Was a law violated, and was this the guy who did it?" In Pennsylvania's Allegheny County, there had been one gambling arrest the year before Purdy took over; there were 1 ,000 in his last two years there. But his term in Pennsylvania ended in a nonstop hassle with the legislature that began when he refused to fix a legislator's traffic ticket and ended in a controversy over wiretapping. He resigned in 1966, charging that political pressure had been exerted on his office. Governor William Scranton agreed: "The worst kind of politics has won a battle for the lawless element in our society." But Purdy has had little trouble in dealing with fellow law-enforcement officials at all levels. He has restored Dade's liaison with other local police departments and the FBI. Equally important, he has established a sound working relationship with the Miami municipal force. With no friction, his men and the Miami police share jurisdiction in the city.

A strict teetotaler with a tame social life restricted largely to bridge, golf and movies, Purdy imposes strict moral and professional standards on his men. Last week he fired two officers suspected of taking favors from bail bondsmen. A policeman "involved with women, liquor and gambling can't do an effective job," he insists. Neither can a dumb cop. Purdy has made in-service training mandatory for veteran officers and has broadened the existing 14-week course for recruits to include courses in sociology and community relations. He also requires that supervisory personnel take extended training at the FBI National Academy or similar schools.

Purdy is now seeking a 25% boost in the department's $8.6 million budget that would increase the 1,101-man force by 223 and raise salaries. Part of the expansion would provide for a planning-and-research unit to map long-range improvements. Purdy, who is not given to spouting grandiose designs, says that all he wants for Dade County is a "damn good" department, which he defines as "the best trained, best equipped, most efficient and most honest anywhere."

*Which, along with uninfiltrated establishments, will greatly benefit if the area attracts the national political conventions next year. Both the Republican and Democratic National Committees are leaning toward Miami Beach, which has offered to put up $800,000 for each convention.

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