Michael P Duffy was Commissioner of Public safety of Newark up to Jan 1940 when he died, He was a close ally with Zwillman and Mayor Meyer Ellenstein

                           Michael P Duffy was Commissioner of Public safety of Newark up to Jan 1940 when he died, He was a close ally with Zwillman and Mayor Meyer Ellenstein, this picture of a police boat named after him was taken when they retired the boat.
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Excerpts From                                                      

Nazis in Newark

 By Warren Grover

…  1929, THE TOP Bootleggers in the country met at an Atlantic City gathering-allegedly suggested by Zwillman-to determine regions and validate territories. The “Big Six” were in charge of the largest region, New York and New Jersey. Only twenty-for, Longie Zwillman was one of the most powerful crime bosses in the country. The New Minutemen Page 45

   

   …Throughout the rest of the 1930s Arno directed the Minutemen, comprised of a small cadre of regulars and a large bloc of volunteers who were “ready when needed”. Always in the background was longie Zwillman, watching over both his criminal empire and his anti-Nazi force. The Arno-Zwillman team shouldered an important responsibility for Newark’s Jewish community. Page 69

   Chapter 2 The New Minutemen

   Throughout the 1930s the “Minutemen” consistently  and effectively opposed Nazi activities in Newark and northern New Jersey. This fighting force included criminals and boxers who used fists, club, and baseball bates to counter the Nazi threat. Often just a rumor that the Minuteman had been sighted was enough to deter Newark’s Nazis from holding events. The Minutemen were from Newark’s Third Ward and possessed the means to stand up to the Nazis-a Group of boxers and a tightly controlled criminal enterprise that relied on violence. Abner “Longie” Zwillman, Newark’s criminal czar, used his Third Ward Gang to oppose the friends of the new Germany and its successor, the German-American Bund. Zwillman backed the struggle with men, money and political influence from 1933 until the Bund’s demise in 1940

    …Zwillman rose to power at an early age because of intelligence,business acumen, and physical courage. Years later Zwillman explained why he went into crime:

   Sure I was a Bootlegger, and I’d be one again given the same setup-kid brother and sister hungry,no food,bills. I was the oldest boy. There were four boys and three girls. The youngest was six months old when my father died. We didn’t have enough money to bury him. I was just a kid-twelve. I had to get money somehow, I got it bootlegging

   There were many such stories of poverty in the Third Ward. Zwillman never had trouble filling the ranks of his gambling and bootlegging operations with friends from his childhood. His group became the Third Ward Gang, and some of the original members remained with Zwillman until his death forty years later

  

   Throughout his career Zwillman was generous to the poor. When the Depression started in 1929, Zwillman was already a wealthy and influential man. Primarily because of his sympathy for the underdog-but partly out of self interest-he began subsidizing soup 
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kitchens run by the Mount Carmel Guild of the Catholic Charities in Newark’s Military Park in 1932. One source claims that Zwillman provided the kitchen with $1,000 a week until it closed in 1939. Prior to the Depression, Zwillman provided a yearly Christmas carnival at Laurel Gardens for orphans of all colors and creeds through the Third Ward Political Club. For the youngsters at the Daughters of Israel Hebrew Orphanage, Zwillman supplied clothing and gifts each year. These and many other charitable contributions brought Zwillman respect and admiration. Pg 45

End. (You got to Love this Guy “Longie”Zwillman- Kevin Lajiness)