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The story of Albert Alonzo "Doc" Ames is perhaps the greatest political scandal in Minnesota history. As mayor of Minneapolis, Ames exposed the city to national humiliation-and helped jump-start an era of reform. At the turn of the twentieth century, Minneapolis was moving away from a time of political rings, frontier justice, and old boys' clubs to a more civic-minded way of governing. But in 1901, the affable, degenerate Doc Ames, a former Minneapolis mayor well past his political prime, duped his way back into the office. Ames appointed his brother as chief of police, and together they assembled a rogues' gallery of thieves to squeeze as much money out of the city as quickly as they could. Under Ames's leadership, criminals walked beats wearing policeman's uniforms.