graveyard shift down at the port of San Pedro. Not everyone chose the path of virtue.
There were moments when puritanical morals held sway. In 1912, the city council passed legislation prohibiting sexual intercourse with “any person of the opposite sex to whom he or she is not married.” “A platoon of ministers” was sworn in to prowl for vice; parks and public beaches were illuminated and patrolled to prevent hanky-panky. But the reign of the morals police was short-lived. The opening of the Panama Canal in 1914 and the United States’s entry into the First World War flooded Los Angeles with sailors and soldiers—populations renowned for whoring and boozing. Rationing created ample opportunities for black market profits, which in turn led to a surge in the supply of criminals. By the end of the decade, all pretense of enforcing the vice laws had basically come to an end. Los Angeles was run by the business community and the Combination. The LAPD served both as an enforcer.
It took a while for Patrolman Parker to catch on.
One night soon after his rookie probationary period had ended, Parker was leaving Central Division station, an imposing Romanesque building that also served as police headquarters up the block from the
Times
. He had just gotten into his car, ready to head off to an evening of night class at law school, when he saw an automobile weave down the First Street hill and then blow through a red light. The driver of the car was clearly drunk; Parker estimated it was moving at about sixty miles per hour. He took off in pursuit, picking up a madly whistling traffic cop along the way. Eventually, the two policemen succeeded in pulling the driver over. They found a half-empty open bottle in the car. They also discovered that the man they had stopped was John Arrington, a police reporter for the
Los Angeles Daily News
.
Today the police beat is seen as a place where novice reporters go to learn the craft—the bottom of the journalistic food chain. Not so in the 1920s. In those pretelevision days, crime was the sexiest beat in journalism, and the men (and occasionally women) who covered it were important figures. Not only were they star reporters, they also frequently functioned as politicalhatchet men for their publishers (a job greatly facilitated by reporters’ free access to police files). Reporters supplemented their writing and (ahem) “research” with booze, poker, and occasionally extortion (publicity being something that many people were willing to pay to avoid). Veteran officers rarely crossed them. So it was hardly surprising that when Patrolman Parker hauled reporter Arrington into Central Division station and presented him to the desk sergeant for booking, he was not greeted enthusiastically. On the contrary, the sergeant on duty suggested that Parker let the newsman go. That’s when a defining feature of Bill Parker’s personality emerged: his stubbornness.
Infuriated at the idea that press credentials somehow inoculated the bearer from prosecution, Parker insisted that “the law was the law.” Reluctantly, the desk sergeant agreed to book the newspaperman. It soon emerged that the open bottle of liquor Parker had discovered in Arrington’s car was a gift from a police captain pal. Reluctantly, Parker’s superiors allowed the case to go to court, where, after many testimonials to the high character and unshakable sobriety of the newsman, a judge dismissed the case. It was Parker’s first lesson in how policing really worked.
Punishment, the ways in which it was or was not dispensed, provided a compelling introduction to how power was really distributed in Los Angeles. Nowhere were these realities more vivid than inside the dungeon that was the city jail. Every year fifty thousand Angelenos were arrested and passed through its halls—a significant number in a city of a million souls, and a sign that despite widespread corruption, a considerable portion of the department was still
There were moments when puritanical morals held sway. In 1912, the city council passed legislation prohibiting sexual intercourse with “any person of the opposite sex to whom he or she is not married.” “A platoon of ministers” was sworn in to prowl for vice; parks and public beaches were illuminated and patrolled to prevent hanky-panky. But the reign of the morals police was short-lived. The opening of the Panama Canal in 1914 and the United States’s entry into the First World War flooded Los Angeles with sailors and soldiers—populations renowned for whoring and boozing. Rationing created ample opportunities for black market profits, which in turn led to a surge in the supply of criminals. By the end of the decade, all pretense of enforcing the vice laws had basically come to an end. Los Angeles was run by the business community and the Combination. The LAPD served both as an enforcer.
It took a while for Patrolman Parker to catch on.
One night soon after his rookie probationary period had ended, Parker was leaving Central Division station, an imposing Romanesque building that also served as police headquarters up the block from the
Times
. He had just gotten into his car, ready to head off to an evening of night class at law school, when he saw an automobile weave down the First Street hill and then blow through a red light. The driver of the car was clearly drunk; Parker estimated it was moving at about sixty miles per hour. He took off in pursuit, picking up a madly whistling traffic cop along the way. Eventually, the two policemen succeeded in pulling the driver over. They found a half-empty open bottle in the car. They also discovered that the man they had stopped was John Arrington, a police reporter for the
Los Angeles Daily News
.
Today the police beat is seen as a place where novice reporters go to learn the craft—the bottom of the journalistic food chain. Not so in the 1920s. In those pretelevision days, crime was the sexiest beat in journalism, and the men (and occasionally women) who covered it were important figures. Not only were they star reporters, they also frequently functioned as politicalhatchet men for their publishers (a job greatly facilitated by reporters’ free access to police files). Reporters supplemented their writing and (ahem) “research” with booze, poker, and occasionally extortion (publicity being something that many people were willing to pay to avoid). Veteran officers rarely crossed them. So it was hardly surprising that when Patrolman Parker hauled reporter Arrington into Central Division station and presented him to the desk sergeant for booking, he was not greeted enthusiastically. On the contrary, the sergeant on duty suggested that Parker let the newsman go. That’s when a defining feature of Bill Parker’s personality emerged: his stubbornness.
Infuriated at the idea that press credentials somehow inoculated the bearer from prosecution, Parker insisted that “the law was the law.” Reluctantly, the desk sergeant agreed to book the newspaperman. It soon emerged that the open bottle of liquor Parker had discovered in Arrington’s car was a gift from a police captain pal. Reluctantly, Parker’s superiors allowed the case to go to court, where, after many testimonials to the high character and unshakable sobriety of the newsman, a judge dismissed the case. It was Parker’s first lesson in how policing really worked.
Punishment, the ways in which it was or was not dispensed, provided a compelling introduction to how power was really distributed in Los Angeles. Nowhere were these realities more vivid than inside the dungeon that was the city jail. Every year fifty thousand Angelenos were arrested and passed through its halls—a significant number in a city of a million souls, and a sign that despite widespread corruption, a considerable portion of the department was still
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