monkeylizard

Thu Apr 12, 8:27 PM ET

CLEVELAND - Famed crime-fighter Eliot Ness' plaque is missing, stolen right from the Cleveland police headquarters.

Ness, who earned his tough-on-crime reputation by taking on the mob and successfully prosecuting gangster Al Capone in Chicago, came to Cleveland in the 1930s to be the city's public safety director.

His plaque, worth about $225, was in the police museum on the first floor of the city's Justice Center. There's no security check to get into the museum, operated by the Cleveland Police Historical Society. The only thing securing the plaque was the screw that it hung on.

Volunteers staff the museum and guide visitors through antique police uniforms, photographs and relics of policing technology past.

When museum volunteers first noticed that the bronze on walnut plaque was missing from the Wall of Fame, they didn't report it stolen. They thought perhaps someone had borrowed it because the museum lends out its materials.

A blurb asking for help finding the plaque recently ran in the Vindicator, the newsletter of the Fraternal Order of Police.

A replacement plaque is in the works.