a "Gashouse district tough guy" and "former labor slugger." Career Broderick joined the NYPD on January 16, 1923, and he became a detective third grade on April 2 of that year, obtaining in less than four months a promotion that would usually take five years. The New York Herald Tribune called his swift appointment as detective "extraordinary luck or influence or both." He continued to rise rapidly in rank. He was promoted to detective second grade in May 1925 and detective first grade in March 1926. The Daily News reported years later that "no few of Detective Broderick's contemporaries [felt] that he plainly had an angel somewhere in the city." In 1934 it was reported that before joining the police department he was a chauffeur for a coal merchant who was close to chief inspector William J. Lahey, who was believed to be Broderick's sponsor in the department. Broderick was put in charge of the Industrial Squad, a plainclothes unit was created in 1917 to monitor the labor movement, to keep it free from political radicals, Communists and racketeers, and to suppress violence during strikes. Broderick "had little patience with labor militants," according to one history of the NYPD in that era, and he led the Industrial Squad in violent confrontations with the fur workers' union, which was led by Communists, and railroad workers insurgents in 1926 and 1927. Strikes in the city's Garment District also turned violent, and in August 1925 Broderick's nose was broken when he tried to disperse a crowd of striking garment workers. In November 1926 the Gangster Squad was absorbed by the Industrial Squad, with Broderick in command. While commander of the Industrial Squad, Broderick received acclaim for his role in quelling an attempted prison break at The Tombs, the Manhattan prison, on November 3, 1926. He faced down two armed convicts, one of them mobster Hyman Amberg, in the Tombs yard after they had already killed two prison officials. Police said that the convicts, who were already wounded, committed suicide as Broderick approached. He remained in charge of the Gangster and Industrial Squad until 1928, when he received what The New York Times described as "lesser assignments." After Fiorello LaGuardia became mayor in 1934, Broderick and other police officers fell out of favor for connections with the Democratic Tammany Hall political machine. In 1934, by then assigned to the Manhattan District Attorney's office, he