occasion to bounce around." Pegler said he found that "strange." In July 1926, Broderick and the Industrial Squad were accused by the American Civil Liberties Union of clubbing and beating striking Interborough Rapid Transit Company workers, injuring 20. Broderick denied the charges, saying the police were acting in self-defense. The squad was accused by the Teamsters Union of beating striking drivers, and it was accused of brutality against striking paper-box makers in 1926. The following year, Broderick's squad was accused of attacking fur industry strikers. In 1928, Broderick and officers from his squad were accused of beating two spectators at a Madison Square Garden bicycle race, sending them to the hospital with broken jaws and internal injuries. In this incident Broderick's career was rescued by favorable press coverage. In 1927, a furriers union official, Isidor Shapiro, told a special committee of the American Federation of Labor that his union paid the police $3800 a week in bribes for protection during a 1926 strike. Union officials claimed that non-union workers were beaten while police officers "stood idly by." Shapiro claimed that the "Industrial Squad chief" was paid $100 a week and that ten men in the squad were paid $50 a week. Broderick and the other officers were cleared after an inquiry by a judge. The charges were revived in 1939, when a former Communist, Maurice L. Malkin, accused Broderick and other officers of corruption in testimony before the House Un-American Activities Committee. Malkin testified that the furriers union, which was controlled by Communists in the 1920s, borrowed $1.75 million from racketeer Arnold Rothstein to finance the 1926 strike, and that $110,000 of that went to Broderick and other members of the Industrial Squad, including Barney Ruditsky. The amount that Broderick received was said to be $45,000 and $50,000. No action was taken against Broderick or the other detectives. As a mayoral candidate in 1929, Fiorello LaGuardia accused the Industrial Squad of extorting payoffs from labor and management, and that "instead of preserving order, this agency has done more to create disorder than anything else." The squad was disbanded in 1933. In 1937, a justice of the New York State Supreme Court freed a prisoner who had been arrested for parole violation and beaten by Broderick, saying that "the police of the City of New York beat him so badly that he will be a cripple for life. I think this