Perhaps you're too young to remember the kidnapping of Wash's son. I'm not. There was a very good reason why people gave Walsh the fish-eye: he hung around with a lot of lowlifes at the time (apparently still does), including people who owned casinos off-shore and tended to break peoples' knees if they didn't repay loans on time. A lot of people, newsies included, thought at first maybe this was mob payback. It wasn't, but their suspicions were not entirely unfounded--at least in how he lived his life.
I saw Walsh on TV defending parents that live like the VD's ..saying they are "good " parents..I decided that either he did not know what "good "parents looked like or he was on their payroll