Federal Enforcement Officer Robert Samardick, accompanied by four assistants, traveling in two cars, drove from Omaha to O’Neill Saturday and began collecting violators of the Volstead law for whom warrants had been previously issued. At the conclusion of the raid Sunday afternoon eleven citizens were resting in the county jail and two O’Neill men and three Spencerites for whom warrants had been issued could not be located.
All of the men were arrested upon evidence furnished by stool pigeons who have been working in this territory for the past two months or more. It is reported that there are yet a number upon whom warrants have not been issued on whom the stool pigeons have several “buys.”
By special agreement Officer Samardick allowed those taken in the clean up to give bond in the sum of $2,000 to the County Judge for their appearance in federal court in Norfolk on September 15th. Wednesday Federal Officer Davis came up and accompanied the “boys” to Norfolk where they furnished bonds in federal court.
Those who made the trip to Norfolk Wednesday accompanied by their bondsmen were:
Clair Cannon and Gene Bauman, of Ewing.
Frank Mohr and Thomas Strong, of Emmet.
George Janaszak and John G. Kelkowski, of Atkinson.
James Rosengren, of Spencer.
George Parker, of Stuart.
Frank Summers, Bert Gunn, Joel Parker, Hugh McKenna, Buz Bowden and Wm. Pinkerman, of O’Neill.
A number of the men taken in the clean-up have been under arrest on liquor charges before. Some have paid fines in county court and others have cases pending in the district court and also in the federal court. Joel Parker and Hugh McKenna were arrested in the raid made by the state officers about three weeks ago.
The Frontier, O’Neill City, NB, September 4, 1924
Robert Samardick
During the 1920s, the man chiefly responsible for the enforcement of the Prohibition laws in Nebraska was Robert Samardick. An immigrant from Montenegro in the Balkans, he worked in the iron mines of northern Minnesota in his youth before making his way to South Omaha’s growing Serbian community. He was a “spy chaser” in the counterintelligence service during the war and then returned to Nebraska in 1919, where he joined the Omaha Police Department and “quickly gained a reputation as a tough officer on the morals squad” before resigning to become a federal Prohibition agent in 1920. With a teetotaler’s zeal for punishing immorality and an apparently sincere belief in the need to vigorously and impartially enforce the nation’s new liquor laws, Samardick quickly gained renown as “Raiding Bob,” both admired and feared for his aggressive and frequent raids against bootleggers, still operators, and retailers of illicit liquor. His calling cards were a swinging ax and rubber boots, as he and his agents frequently burst through doors and chopped up stills, before pouring thousands of gallons of whiskey, beer, and wine into streets, sewers, or creeks. Samardick’s investigations and raids often tested the limits of the Fourth and Fifth Amendments, as he routinely smashed his way into suspects’ homes and businesses, often without warrants and armed only with debatable degrees of “probable cause.” (From Echo of its Time: The History of the Federal District Court of Nebraska, 1867-1933 by John R. Wunder and Mark. R. Scherer (University of Nebraska Press, February 2019).