by Jack Webb
Exactly one week after the announcement, the badge was placed in his hands, and he announced somewhat deceptively, “It is now time to quiet down the department and get down to policing.” Whereupon, he plunged into the job as though LAPD had been sleeping the previous eighty years of its existence and now had to make up for the long nap.
Down through the years, Chief Parker has tried to live up to the threat-and-promise he made on assuming office. The threat, tireless war on the underworld: “We will not tolerate the many parasites who drain thousands of dollars yearly from the citizens of Los Angeles.” The promise, reasonable and unoppressive law enforcement: “All ills and evils cannot be cured by law, but a great many social evils can be mitigated by proper enforcement.”
The underworld moved first, making four attempts during Parker’s first month in office to “reach” him so that a gambling czar could be set up in Los Angeles. Parker retaliated by exposing the plot before a meeting of Los Angeles County peace officers that included thirty-five chiefs of city police. “Now they’re plotting to frame me because I stand as an obstacle to their plan,” he further charged.
By way of counter-attack, he persuaded the peace officers to pool county-wide resources and form a central intelligence bureau against the threatened invasion of organized gambling. Parker has always had the knack of drawing the issue boldly, and he told his somewhat startled fellow officers:
“This plan goes deeper than a means of saving Los Angeles from the stigma of vice. We are protecting the American philosophy of life. It is known that Russia is hoping we will destroy ourselves as a nation through our own avarice, greed, and corruption in government. Hence, this program has a wider application than in the Los Angeles area alone.”
Parker was convinced that the underworld was making a serious and violent re-alignment in preparation for infiltration of Los Angeles. From a police standpoint, he told p group of businessmen, the city represented “the last white spot among the great cities of America.” But he added bluntly, “I do not know how long this can be continued. There are men here ready to get their tentacles into the city and drain off large sums of money through gambling activities of various kinds.”
To those who thought their new Chief talked grandiloquently on his favorite subject, there were three startling developments within the first six months of the Parker regime.
Sometime late on a December night, a man carrying a cheap, sawed-off, double-barreled shotgun slipped through an unlocked boulevard gate into the rambling grounds of a $50,000 mansion in Laurel Canyon. He made his way up the drive and settled behind a hedge, as heavy impressions in the soft earth later disclosed.
At half past one in the morning, Attorney Samuel R. Rummel returned home. As he walked from the floodlighted garage up the steps of his home, the twelve-gauge shotgun roared, and all the writs of habeas corpus in the world, all the notices of intent to appeal, couldn’t have saved him. He fell dead with seven slugs in his body. He was 46 years old.
By coincidence or deliberate timing, the assassination took place just one day before the county grand jury was to open its investigation into the connection between county law officers and a large bookmaking ring. Parker swore, somewhat rashly, that he would get the killer, and assigned scores of his best plainclothesmen and intelligence aides to the case.
Two days later, LAPD’s Gangster Squad seized eight members of the Jack Dragna mob, but the detectives couldn’t crack their wall of silence. Other leads petered out, too. A year later, twitting Parker on his promise that the murder would be solved “if it takes every man on the force,” the Los Angeles Mirror observed deadpan, “Today, Parker begins the second year of trying to solve the underworld assassination…”
The Rummel case was a defeat.
Somewhat paradoxically, the Los Angeles Breakfast Club was holding a banquet at eight o’clock at night with Parker as the scheduled speaker. A few hours before, Captain Jim Hamilton, commander of the Intelligence Division, received a whispered tip from such a reliable source that plans had to be changed drastically.
At a well-secluded spot on the road between Parker’s home in Silver Lake and the Breakfast Club building, underworld gunners would be waiting to ambush him as he drove by. The area was hastily surrounded by police; and, while Parker went ahead and gave his talk, he remained under continuous guard for forty-eight hours.
Later, police were tipped off on another plot to bomb Parker’s home, and again a sizable cordon of guards frustrated the attempt. For added protection, Parker acquired two giant dogs.
But, by telephone, his harassers did get through with almost daily “poison phone” calls aimed particularly at his attractive wife, Helen. Often on weekends women would call, demanding to speak to Parker “as a matter of life or death.” Shrewdly he suspected entrapment. Recording equipment was being used on the other end of the wire in an effort to get his voice after which the conversation could be cut misleadingly. He avoided the pitfall. And Helen Parker, being an ex-policewoman, knew how to handle the anonymous callers who tried to torment her with false information about her husband’s activities. Thoughtfully she continued target practice with her Detective’s Special.
Parker survived, and this was victory. But the phone harassments and even death threats still continue. “They’re coming in by way of Syracuse now,” he said recently.
The third development was a Mirror “exclusive” that representatives of five powerful syndicates had met in a Hollywood hotel suite to “cut up the town” and apportion the various rackets, bookmaking, open gambling, bingo, prostitution, and all the rest, among themselves. The conferees were said to have included the late Sam Rummel; Jimmy Utley, a figure in the old bingo mob and abortion operator; Max Kleiger, bookie and gambler; Robert J. Gans, former slot machine king of Los Angeles County; and C. A. (Curly) Robinson, reportedly active in the coin machine field.
The reason its story was so specific, the Mirror explained, was that the authorities had been able to “bug” the suite ahead of time. The whole conversation, including talk about another recall movement directed against Mayor Bowron, had been relayed to listening detectives from Los Angeles, San Francisco, and the California Crime Commission.
Significantly Chief Parker did not throw off the story. He conceded that such a meeting was possible and confirmed that there certainly had been a plot to “cut up” Los Angeles for the vice rackets.
That was victory, too. Law enforcement had gotten inside the enemy.
The 1-2-3 developments during Parker’s first six months in office amply justified his often colorful language in depicting the shadowy forces of evil that threatened Los Angeles. When a lawyer is murdered, a Chief of Police marked for assassination, and an executive mob conference called to discuss taking over City Hall and splitting the “take,” strong and colorful language seems indicated. More and more through the years, the public has listened respectfully when Parker talks.
Unfortunately, the rackets leaders shine in the usually praiseworthy virtue of stick-to-it-iveness; and, when muscle and corruption fail, they resort to other techniques. Once they knew Parker had them blocked in Los Angeles, they tried a long end run, hoping to ram through a state constitutional amendment which would create a legal gambling setup.
To Parker, purely from a policeman’s point of view, licensed gambling might be even worse. “The proposition is reprehensible,” he cried to an investigating committee of the State Senate, “and will lead to other crimes involving narcotics, alcoholism, and juvenile delinquency. The police department is not equipped to handle the attendant crimes with the opening of licensed gambling establishments.”
Already, he disclosed, Eastern mobsters had penetrated as far West as Las Vegas; and “the Cleveland mob,” was poised specifically for an invasion of Los Angeles. Dryly he added, “Our department is trying desperately to dissuade these individuals from enjoying our climate.”
By now, most Californians realized that when Parker cried wolf, the wolf was so
mewhere nearby, but nevertheless he was forced to read a letter which the committee had received from an assistant police chief in Las Vegas. The communication praised Nevada’s fine gambling laws.
“Of course he’s for it,” Parker snapped. “He works in Nevada—for Las Vegas! But I’ll tell you about crime in Nevada!
“The last time I was in Reno, someone pulled fire alarm boxes all through the city and turned in a lot of fake police calls. While police and firemen were all answering the false alarms, bandits swept through the gambling district and robbed five or six casinos before anyone was the wiser!”
And then, with a sudden turn of phrase that a philosopher could not have polished, Chief Parker said:
“No social structure founded on the weakness of its people can hope to survive.”
The amendment proposal died.
As J. Edgar Hoover has demonstrated so brilliantly, a top enforcement authority must be more than just Superman with a badge. Somehow, in a nation weaned on traditional Anglo-Saxon dislike of police authority, the policeman must communicate a sense of urgent mission. And the more honest and unreachable he is, the more necessary is his task. Even to many law-abiding citizens, blindly impartial authority that cannot be influenced by a friend at City Hall is a little frightening.
Before Kiwanians, Legionnaires, any other group who would listen, Chief Parker has been LAPD’s best press agent. As he once ruefully observed, Los Angeles “is probably more conscious of its constitutional rights than any other place in the nation. They are constantly indicting policemen. Our men are instructed not to tap wires even if the place is running wild with criminals.”
Against this particular symptom of public distrust— fear of electronic eavesdropping by the police—Parker has argued for years. In big crime or little, the phone is indispensable to the criminal—and listening in is almost indispensable to the policeman. Big mobsters transact most of their business by long-distance. Punks work out of comer phone booths. Bookies and prostitutes couldn’t operate without the help of Alexander Graham Bell’s invention. Both to obtain leads and evidence, the policeman must ran taps on them. Parker cites the case of a notorious confidence man who, his detectives knew, was in the process of fleecing a new victim. Without listening devices which recorded their conversations, there would have been no evidence against him.
Yet the use of such machines is curtailed in spite of Parker’s campaign, and he says ruefully: “The police organization, heavily shackled by legal restrictions, is little match for a well-organized and extensive underworld.” He has carried this fight up to the California State Supreme Court and sooner or later, he thinks, he will achieve victory through court rulings or new laws.
In his book now is the time for a critical re-evaluation of the statutes protecting individual rights which the underworld has distorted into legal licenses to steal. “Since internal crime is jeopardizing American freedom,” he argues, “we must re-examine the balance between the criminal army and society, lest a misconception of individual liberty result in the destruction of all liberty.”
It is this kind of talk which distresses civil liberties defenders and makes them fear that, in a blind dedication to law enforcement, Parker would repress traditional rights. No such thing, the Chief argues back. He merely thinks the policeman should get as much help and comfort from the law and the courts as the criminal now does.
Inevitably, between the cop who has to do the dirty work and the legal scholars who sit back in quiet prosecutors’ offices and more quiet courtrooms to ponder guilt and justice, there is this clash of opinion. Having brought in a mug at the risk of his own life, the policeman is outraged when the case dissolves in seeming legal involvements and quibbles. He sees the specific—the quick shakedown that did disclose the gun or the heroin—and why all the big talk now? The court sees the general—the precedent that may allow the police to start searching everybody—and where is the Bill of Rights then?
Temperamentally, Parker is not the man to submit quietly. Largely on their contrary views about methods of obtaining evidence, the Chief and his own district attorney, the late S. Ernest Roll, broke openly. Roll wanted policemen to sign “rejection of complaint” slips when the DA felt that there was no ground for prosecution. Parker ordered his men not to sign the slips, and for a long time Los Angeles law enforcement went forward in a curious atmosphere. Police and prosecutors were almost as cool to each other as both were to criminals.
The worst blow to Parker—and to date all his vigorous pleading has not been able to change the situation—is the adoption of the “exclusionary evidence” rule in California courts. In a bit of irony which the Chief does not at all relish, the decision grew out of his own total war on Los Angeles bookies.
Charles H. Cahan, known as the “boy bookie,” was among fifteen asserted gamblers rounded up by police and convicted largely on evidence obtained by the planting of secret microphones.
Cahan appealed, and the California State Supreme Court ruled that the “bugging” had violated the Fourth Amendment guaranteeing “the right of people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects against unreasonable searches and seizures.” The four-to-three decision exonerated Cahan and upheld the “exclusionary evidence” rule. In practice, this meant the police could not break down a door to arrest a bookie because if he were subjected to illegal search or seizure, the case would be thrown out. Suspected dope peddlers or even child molesters could not be jailed on suspicion; they would have to be caught in the act.
Parker direfully predicted that criminals would run wild, and LAPD’s statistics bore him out. In the eight months following the decision, robbery and auto theft each increased more than thirty per cent, burglary rose almost fourteen per cent, larceny more than eleven per cent. And, despite the rising tide of crime, prosecutors hesitated to issue complaints against known criminals. The courts threw out what formerly were routine cases—all because of the Cahan decision.
In one instance, an LAPD motorcycle officer chased and caught a speeding car containing two youths. He shook down one youth and found a bindle of heroin on him. He arrested him and also turned in a typewriter which he had found in the car. Checking stolen property records, police found an All Points Bulletin from Bakersfield reporting the theft of the typewriter.
So the motorcycle man went to the preliminary court hearing with a pretty good case, he thought; a speeder who had been carrying both heroin and stolen property. What happened next, at least to the officer, was something like a court proceeding in Alice’s Wonderland. The policeman had been justified in making the speeding arrest, the judge said, but that was as far as he should have gone. The cop had not had any probable cause to believe the prisoner had committed a criminal offense, and hence the search of the defendant had been unreasonable, even though it did disclose heroin and a stolen typewriter. Evidence excluded, charges dismissed. The suspect was fined for speeding. Nothing more.
In another instance, “With grave and utmost reluctance,” a judge freed a prisoner whom he himself described as “a dope peddler and smuggler.” The police, he explained, had raided the defendant’s home without warrant or legal reason to believe that a felony had been committed. Hence, under the law, the judge was forced to throw out the case although the search had turned up 140 bindles of heroin and a batch of barbiturates.
Parker was not alone in his distress over the Cahan decision. As he freed the aggrieved owner of the heroin, the judge pleaded for new laws “so that our policemen can effectively and legally perform their duties in apprehending these criminals.”
Under the “exclusionary evidence” rule, Chief Parker says, the plight of the policeman and, more particularly, the society he is protecting boils down to this: “The question of the conduct of the officer in obtaining evidence is paramount to the question of the guilt of the defendant.”
For example, since the first boatload of Chinese disembarked inside the Golden Gate, Oriental gambling dens have flourished in Californ
ia. The Chinese players of piquet, Pi-gow and fan-tan have become exceedingly copwise over the years, and the ancient games of chance are pursued behind modem barred doors guarded by lookouts. Under the most favorable conditions, raiding parties with battering-rams had difficulty gaining access and evidence. Since Cahan, elaborate, expensive, time-consuming undercover surveillance has been forced on LAPD.
Or take the crime in progress, like a juvenile dope party. The police cannot crash in unless they first go for a warrant, by which time the offenders may have fled. On the other hand, if they knock politely on the door to obtain entrance, they hear scurrying feet and a toilet flushing away the evidence.
Twice in a year men died because the police did not make a thorough search for weapons. Policeman Leo Wise, thirty-four, father of four small children, hauled a belligerent, sawed-off cop hater out of a bar near Pico Boulevard and Figueroa Street where he had been causing a disturbance.
Wise didn’t know that his prisoner, Marion Linden, forty-three, had a record of arrests dating back for twenty years, and he searched him only casually. As Wise was asking for prisoner transportation from the nearest callbox, Linden pulled a nickel-plated, .32-calibre revolver and fired twice at point-blank range. His liver and heart pierced, Wise fell, fatally injured.
In the Westlake District, Robbery Detectives Robert Peinado and Jim Brady picked up a tough young hood whose description fitted that of a holdup fugitive. They, too, gave him a casual shake and missed the snub-nosed, .38-calibre pistol tucked into his shorts. As the three started to enter the detectives’ car, the hood suddenly stepped back, pulled out his .38 and pointed it at Peinado.
Brady, who had just opened the car door, spun around and fired twice. His first shot pierced Peinado’s coat sleeve and hit the suspect’s gun arm. The second ripped into the youth’s stomach, and he died a short time later in the Georgia Street Receiving Hospital.