POLICE RUSE TRAPS 10 IN MARIJUANA RAID

Password to Apartment Learned by Detectives in Hiding -- They Find Narcotic Cigarettes.

New York Times, October 28, 1936

Hidden behind a basement door at 57 West Seventy-third Street early yesterday morning, Detectives Timothy J. Hegarty and Patrick Harty heard a man knock at a panel and say:

"Okay. This is solid."

They used the same password to get into the basement apartment and arrested Patrick Devereaux, 23 years old, who said he came to New York six months ago from New Orleans, and Willard Allen, 22, of 526 East Twenty-eigth Street, Brooklyn.

In the apartment they found 100 marijuana cigarettes which they said had been sold at the apartment at the rate of nine for $1. They also found some unrolled marijuana.

The detectives remained in the place an hour. In that time they arrested eight more men who entered singly or in pairs. The last two -- Sidney Sherman, 24 years old, of 2,321 Bay Parkway and Allen Schwartzberg, 25, of 93 East Forty-second Street, both of Brooklyn -- were booked on charges of violating the Sullivan law. The detectives said one of them dropped a loaded revolver.

Devereaux was held on a charge of possessing narcotics, Allen on a charge of disorderly conduct. All the others, with the exception of Sherman and Schwartzberg, were released by Magistrate Brough in West Side Court, for lack of evidence.

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