Tale of Depression-era bank robbery carries echoes of today’s news

Photo: Minneapolis Journal, MHS

The winter issue of Hennepin History magazine recounts a notorious Great Depression-era bank robbery in Minneapolis, with story lines seemingly ripped from today’s newspapers: A murderous attack on a street-corner business in a city so broke it can’t pay police, inspiring the formation of what sounds like the first Metro Gang Strike Force.

The Barker gang killed three men on Dec. 16, 1932: two police officers in the course of robbing the Third Northwestern National Bank and, while parked in St. Paul to divide their take, a Good Samaritan.

The officers, it turns out, were working for free:

At 2:43 p.m., a police cruiser carrying two experienced officers — Ira Evans and Leo Gorski — pulled up to the bank. Evans and Gorski were not on duty when they received the police-radio message …

Nor were Evans and Gorski even on the Minneapolis police payroll — none of the force was: In the depression-era economy, the department had run of money at midnight on December 11. Policemen had received their last checks on December 13, with pay two days short and agreed to work from December 11 to January 1 without pay, the lost wages never to be made up. When Gorski and Evans answered the call, they were working overtime and without compensation.

Gorski and Evans were outgunned, with only revolvers against the gangsters’ machine guns and shotguns. After their deaths, Mayor William A. Anderson pleaded for:

… a spirit of cooperation among our best and wealthiest citizens, a determination to provide not only adequate wages for their protectors but modern equipment, machine guns, armored cars, with which to combat clever and ruthless thieves. If this result is accomplished, it will be an example for other cities to follow, and perhaps the lives of Evans and Gorski will not have been given in vain.

Author Robert C. Rasmussen writes that Anderson’s plea was answered within City Hall:

The Minneapolis City Council responded by appropriating funds to buy the latest weaponry and police vehicles. This led to the creation of special assault teams trained to deal with the most dangerous situations in the Twin Cities.

Hennepin History magazine is not available online. You can get a copy at the Hennepin History Museum.