Blind Bookie Caught in Braille Trap

Blind Bookie Caught in Braille Trap

Braille Monitor
April 2015

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Blind Bookie Caught in Braille Trap

From the Editor: Last year we ran an April Fool’s joke about training hawks to serve the blind. It was received with mixed results. Some people thought it was innovative, some thought the Jernigan Institute had no right to start a new program without at least discussing it with the membership, some saw it for the gag it was, and many gingerly asked their friends “What was that thing about the hawk?” So here we are, April once again, and you are no doubt wondering what nod we will make to April fools. No doubt with a little creativity we could try to throw you Monitor readers another curve, but sometimes what they say about fact being funnier than fiction is true. See what you think. This article originally appeared in Inside News, Washington, DC, January 1967 and was reprinted in the April 1967 issue of the Braille Monitor:
The cops had been trying for three years to get the goods on Paul "Big Boy" Pugh, forty-eight, a suspected bookie who was blind. But though they raided his apartment several times over the years, they never found anything upon which to build a case.
Then an alert rookie cop discovered that Pugh—who has been blind since birth—was recording bets in Braille, the written language of the blind.
Arrested with Pugh in a raid on his New York apartment were twenty-eight-year-old Danny Brookes and thirty-year-old Bing Goff. Both of the men were charged as accomplices in what police say was a $100,000-a-year illegal betting operation.
Pugh, police charged, was the mastermind, kingpin, and top dog in the ring. He allegedly took bets on everything from horse races to elections to the weather. The cops had been onto him for years but, without definite physical proof, they were powerless to put him out of circulation. Each time they raided his apartment, all they found were several books with their pages punched in Braille. Thinking these were innocent reading matter, the cops ignored the books, turning the premises inside out in search of recognizable betting slips or other records which could be used as evidence in court. On each occasion, no luck.
Then, Patrolman Frank Stevens, twenty-three, joined the raiding party. Stevens, who had just become a member of the force a year ago, was told that the raid was just a routine harassment procedure. "This guy's too cagey to leave anything lying around," said a veteran officer, "so don't expect to find anything." While the blind bookie sat solemnly by, a sarcastic smile playing on his lips, the cops went through the motions of searching the place, knowing in their hearts they'd leave empty-handed. But this time, thanks to rookie Stevens, they were in for a pleasant surprise. Stevens, who had once been a volunteer worker at the local rehabilitation center for the blind, began rifling through one of the Braille books on Pugh's desk. And his trained fingers, which were able to read the Braille impressions, discovered that the books were full of betting records. Instead of keeping slips in the conventional manner, Pugh simply purchased bound books with blank pages. At the top of each page, in Braille, was the date of the entries. The bets themselves were recorded in Braille below.
Released after posting $5,000 bail, Pugh complained to reporters: "These cops are just picking on me because of my handicap. All I was trying to do was make a decent living. What did they expect me to do—spend the rest of my life selling pencils?"

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