by John Buntin
“A card of membership …”: Johnston, “The Cauliflower King-I,” The New Yorker, April 8, 1933, 24.
Moreover, he wasn’t making: Establishing with any precision when Mickey returned to Cleveland is difficult. Ben Hecht writes that Mickey returned in 1932/3, which would make any meeting with Al Capone himself unlikely, given Capone’s 1931 conviction for income tax evasion. However, a document in the Newberry Library’s Hecht Papers that was apparently prepared by Mickey himself says he returned to Cleveland at age seventeen, which would have been the year 1930.
Unlike New York City: Moe Dalitz had established important relations with the various Italian gangs that held sway over different parts of Cleveland, but he had not yet made Cleveland his primary base of operations.
Great Depression or no: Cohen, In My Own Words, 15-16.
Cohen’s job in Chicago: Ben Hecht presents a somewhat different account of this incident, saying that Mickey was given a “louse book” to operate, one that catered to ten-and twenty-cent horse bettors, on the North Side. Quoting Cohen, Hecht writes, “The first thing I know a Chicago tough guy calls on me where I’m running my little louse book and says he has been engaged for twenty dollars to put the muscle on me. I don’t ask who engaged him but I said, ‘I’m going to give you a chance to prove you’re a tough guy.’ And I pulled my gun. In that time I would of felt undressed if I wasn’t carryin’ a gun. The tough guy ran behind a door and I blasted him through the door which is the last I saw of him.”
“After that meeting,…”: Reid also claims that Mickey didn’t arrive in Chicago until well after Al Capone’s 1931 arrest. However, the volume and detail of Cohen’s recollections from this period make it doubtful that his Chicago recollections were entirely fabricated.
Chapter Six: Comrade Bill
“With few exceptions”: Wickersham Commission, Nos. 1-14, 43.
Hollywood was Los Angeles’s fast: Kooistra, “Angeles for Sale,” 88, quoting Bob Shuler’s Magazine.
“Listen, you stupid fuck,”: Jennings, “Portrait of a Police Chief,” 87.
Despite such obstinacy: In 1930, the written examination accounted for 95 percent of officers’ scores, with marksmanship and seniority accounting for the remaining 5 percent. Memorandum to the general manager civil service, “Subject: Facts on Chief Parker’s Exam Records,” June 1, 1966, William H. Parker Police Foundation archives. This memo provides a comprehensive overview of Parker’s history in the department.
“Take him someplace and …”: Domanick, To Protect and to Serve, 85.
“I got out,”: Stump, “L.A.’s Chief Parker.”
By 1929, Los Angeles: One of the more startling features of this era is the widespread acceptance of the Klan, which permeated 1920s Los Angeles. Throughout this period, the Police Commission, which was responsible for regulating a wide variety of public events, routinely approved a regular Saturday night Ku Klux Klan dance on Santa Monica Boulevard. Palmer, “Porter or Bonelli for City’s Next Mayor,” Los Angeles Times, May 26, 1929, B1.
To block the Klansman: Sitton, John Randolph Haynes, 218. Parrot retired to Santa Barbara and effectively withdrew from politics. In the mid-1930s, the Los Angeles papers would attempt to resurrect the specter of Parrot; Woods, “The Progressives and the Police,” 311.
That the LAPD: In 1919, the Boston police department became the first police force to attempt to affiliate with the American Federation of Labor. When officers went on strike, a week of chaotic looting and rioting ensued. Massachusetts governor Calvin Coolidge called in the National Guard to secure the city. Coolidge then dismissed the eleven hundred officers who had walked off their jobs, a show of resolution that paved the way to his successful run for the White House. Afterward, Boston hired a new police department and granted its officers almost all of the benefits the strikers had originally demanded.
The issue that drew: In 1931, the Fire and Police Protective League tried again and was able to persuade the electorate to amend the charter to specify that officers could only be dismissed for “good cause.” It also gave officers accused of misdeeds a chance to appear before a board of inquiry consisting of three captains, randomly chosen. Again, the practical results were disappointing. Captains were not exactly eager to challenge the chief or his superiors. Town Hall, “A Study of the Los Angeles City Charter,” 116-17, 108-109.
In 1934, Parker got: Leadership of the union was divided evenly between the police department, which named two police representatives, a sergeant representative, a lieutenant representative, and a captain or higher representative to the organization’s board, and the fire department, which named two firemen, an engineer, a captain, and a chief representative to the board. These elections were not exactly democratic exercises. According to former Deputy Chief Harold Sullivan, the lieutenants exercised great control over police activities on the board, which makes Parker’s election all the more mysterious. Author interview with Harold Sullivan, July 7, 2007, Los Angeles, CA.
In the summer of 1934: See City Council Minutes, August 14, 1934, pp. 234-35.
The city council seems: City Council Meetings, vol. 248, August 14, 1934, pp. 235-36; City Council Minutes, August 15, 1934, p. 269, for the final text of Amendment No. 12-A. The city council also debated an amendment to abolish the Police Commission that day. It narrowly lost.
The public was not: Carte and Carte, Police Reform in the United States, 105.
Some observers did pick: City Council Minutes, vol. 249 (October 5, 1934), 18. The Los Angeles Times misreports the vote count as 83,521 ayes to 83,244 nayes. “Complete Vote Received for Thursday’s Election,” Los Angeles Times, September 30, 1934, 5.
For further discussions of Section 202, see also Escobar, “Bloody Christmas,” 176-77.
Union activism is not: Domanick, To Protect and to Serve, 22-23. The quote comes from the Harold Story Papers, Special Collections, UCLA, Los Angeles, CA.
Even at the time: Nathan, “‘Rousting’ System Earns Curses of the Rum-Runners, Chief Davis’s Raids Keep Whiskey Ring in Harried State,” Los Angeles Times, August 22, 1926, B6.
Nor were regular citizens: LAPD officers were deputized by the counties in question and thus authorized to make arrests. Woods, “The Progressives and the Police,” 342; Bass and Donovan, “The Los Angeles Police Department” in The Development of Los Angeles City Government: An Institutional History, 1850-2000, 154.
“It is an axiom with …”: Domanick, To Protect and to Serve, 53; Henstell, Sunshine and Wealth, 50. Both may well be quoting Gerald Woods, who in turn is almost certainly quoting an unidentified article in the L.A. Record.
But as implausible as: Woods, “The Progressives and the Police,” 322, 259.
In 1934, Chief Davis: See “Facts on Chief Parker’s Exam Records,” Assistant General Manager Civil Service, June 1, 1966, William H. Parker Police Foundation archives, Los Angeles, CA.
Then, suddenly, his career: See Deputy Chief B. R. Caldwell’s letter to HQ, Los Angeles Procurement District, February 23, 1943, for a detailed (if occasionally opaque) discussion of Parker’s career from 1933 through 1943. William H. Parker Police Foundation, Los Angeles, CA. See also Domanick, To Protect and to Serve, 28.
In 1933, voters had: Woods, “The Progressives and the Police,” 316-17; Sitton, Los Angeles Transformed, 12-13.
During the 1920s, Kent: Kooistra, “Angeles for Sale,” provides an excellent account of McAfee’s activities throughout the 1930s. See also the October 9, 1953, FBI memo on Jack Dragna (Dragna FBI file 94-250); Weinstock, My L.A., 56; and Woods, “The Progressives and the Police,” 335.
The key to it all: Donner, The Age of Surveillance, 59-64.
Chapter Seven: Bugsy
“Booze barons;” “Are Gangsters Building Another Chicago Here?” Los Angeles Times, March 29,1931, A1.
By 1937, Bugsy Siegel: Jennings, We Only Kill Each Other, 29-31. Readers interested in a more sober assessment of Siegel should consult Robert Lacey’s Little Man: Meyer Lansky and the Gangste
r Life.
Siegel first visited Los Angeles: In addition to appearing as a dancer in vaudeville shows and on Broadway, Raft was also a regular presence at Jimmy Durante’s Club Durante and at Texas Guinan’s El Fey. This did not mean that Raft himself was in any way fey. In addition to being a sometime prizefighter, he was a close associate of Manhattan beer king Owney Madden. Such tough guy-showbiz connections were quite common in the 1920s. Bootlegger Waxey Gordon was an enthusiastic backer of such Broadway musicals as Strike Me Pink, even going so far as to order his gunmen to turn out in tuxedos for opening night. (Wisely, he also had them check their guns at the coat check.) Muir, Headline Happy, 159.
He was receptive: Muir, Headline Happy, 160-64, discusses Siegel’s post-Prohibition quasilegitmacy (and stock market troubles). See also Lacey, Little Man, 68, 79-80.
Siegel’s lifestyle reflected his: Jennings, We Only Kill Each Other, 27, 30.
“Caution, fathered by the …”: Muir, Headline Happy, 161.
Los Angeles offered the: Muir, Headline Happy, 157-62. Siegel himself sometimes put the date of his arrival in Los Angeles one year later, in 1935. “Siegel Denies Buchalter Aid: Film Colony Figure Testifies on Removal Fight,” Los Angeles Times, May 27, 1941, A1.
“If I had kept…”: Jennings, We Only Kill Each Other, 36-38; Muir, Headline Happy, 162-65.
Bugsy’s pals back East: See Hecht, “Mickey Notes,” 1, Hecht Papers, New-berry Library; Cohen, In My Own Words, 41.
One who declined to: A 2 percent take would have generated a healthy $200,000 a year in bookie action—not bad for the Great Depression. Hecht, “Mickey Notes,” 4-5, Hecht Papers, Newberry Library.
Cohen had outstayed his: In his autobiography, Cohen claims that he didn’t take a dive (30). In his earlier conversations with Ben Hecht, however, he admitted that he did. Cohen manuscript, 19, Hecht Papers, Newberry Library.
Mickey was living like: Taxi companies routinely employed violence to secure the best stands. Payoffs to police were also common. In Los Angeles, independent cabbies’ frustration with the dominant Yellow Cab company (which was widely believed to have struck a deal with the police) boiled over into full-scale riots on more than one occasion in the 1930s. Cohen manuscript, 21-23, Hecht Papers, Newberry Library.
“I says”: Hecht manuscript, 82-84 Hecht Papers, Newberry Library; Cohen, In My Own Words, 36-37.
The next day Mickey: This account draws heavily on Ben Hecht’s account and is strikingly different from the blustering story Mickey tells in his autobiography. Hecht Papers, Newberry Library.
(Years later, columnist Florabel…): Cohen, In My Own Words, 45.
Cohen hit Neales’s joints: Notes in the Ben Hecht Papers suggest that Siegel paid the sheriff’s department $125,000 on at least one occasion. Hecht, “Mickey Notes,” 4, Hecht Papers, Newberry Library. In the early 1950s, the California Commission on Organized Crime discovered links between Sheriff Biscailuz and Irving Glasser, a notorious bondsman closely associated with Siegel and Cohen. Woods, “The Progressives and the Police,” 402.
Soon after: Cohen manuscript, n.p., Hecht Papers, Newberry Library.
“Ya know, I’m going …”: Cohen, In My Own Words, 41.
“It was a bad …”: Unpublished manuscript, Hecht Papers, Newberry Library.
During his first: Hecht manuscript, 9-10, Hecht Papers, Newberry Library.
This attitude angered Mickey: Cohen, In My Own Words, 41.
Chapter Eight: Dynamite
“We’ve got to get”: Richardson, For the Life of Me, 224.
In a city awash: McWilliams, Southern California, 170.
Clinton had always been: “Penny Money At Cafe: Clinton ‘Caveteria’ Caters to Customers of Lean Purse,” Los Angeles Times, October 14, 1932, A8. See also Starr, The Dream Endures, 165-66.
Clinton’s introduction to politics: Ford, Honest Politics My Theme, 86-87, 90.
The county grand jury: Woods, “The Progressives and the Police,” 339, 351.
Clinton turned to Judge: The case was one of statutory rape; the victim was actually a prostitute supplied by a madam who specialized in underage girls. In the lead-up to Fitts’s decision not to prosecute, one of the developer’s employees arranged to purchase property from the DA’s parents for a strikingly generous price. Fitts’s investigators then prevented the girl in question from testifying by holding her in isolation in a downtown hotel. Richardson, For the Life of Me, 176.
The report was scathing: Woods, “The Progressives and the Police,” 35657; Starr, The Dream Endures, 168-69; Parrish, For the People, 127.
The counterreaction was: McDougal, Privileged Son, 44; Starr, The Dream Endures, 169. For more evidence of Fitts’s thuggery, see Richardson’s account of when a Fitts investigator jabbed a gun in his belly, For the Life of Me, 177.
Clinton came under pressure: Starr, The Dream Endures, 169; Woods, “The Progressives and the Police,” 355.
The Shaws weren’t: Woods, “The Progressives and the Police,” 261, 357. See Richardson, For the Life of Me, 220, for a more positive assessment of Raymond.
Then Raymond himself got: Sitton, Los Angeles Transformed, 16-17. Gerald Woods speculated that Raymond was targeted for a hit out of fear that he might testify to the Combination’s connections with the Shaw machine in the upcoming trial of Shaw campaign assistant (and former Police Commission member) Harry Munson (357-58). Tom Sitton finds evidence that Raymond also approached the Combination with a shakedown request.
On the morning of: Underwood, Newspaperwoman, 175.
“They told me they …”: Richardson, For the Life of Me, 221-22.
The next morning, Raymond’s: See Weinstock, My L.A., 56-57, for an account of the connections between Raymond, Clinton, and the Combination; Sit-ton, Los Angeles Transformed, 17-18.
Chief Davis’s career: Domanick, To Protect and to Serve, 77-78.
In April 1938, the: Underwood, Newspaperwoman, 176-78.
Davis parried that everyone: “Davis Defends Police Spying at Bombing Trial, Bitter Clashes Mark Chief’s Day on Stand,” Los Angeles Times, April 27, 1941, 1. See also Domanick, To Protect and to Serve, 76; Woods, “The Progressives and the Police,” 361; and “The Case of Earl Kynette,” Los Angeles Herald-Examiner, July 8, 1966.
One year earlier, Mayor: See Sitton, Los Angeles Transformed, 18-23, for the definitive account of the race.
In theory, thanks to: Sitton, Los Angeles Transformed, 32.
Despite his closeness to: “Chief Shifts 28 Officers in New Shake-Up of Police,” Los Angeles Times, March 9, 1939, 2.
A few days later: Gambling ships first appeared off the coast as early as 1923, but it was Tony Cornero who had the audacity to reconceive of them as floating casinos. He would die of a heart attack eighteen years later at a craps table in Las Vegas, just months before he, Milton “Farmer” Page, and other Combination figures finished building the world’s largest casino, The Stardust. At Cornero’s request, a band played “The Wabash Cannonball” at his funeral. Richardson, For the Life of Me, 227.
There was just one: “Chief Shifts 28 Officers in New Shake-Up of Police,” Los Angeles Times, March 9, 1939, 2.
Mayor Bowron was exultant.: Richardson, For the Life of Me, 219-28; Woods, “The Progressives and the Police,” 367.
Yet the triumph of: Los Angeles’s city charter sharply curtailed the power of the mayor. City departments operated under the control of general managers who enjoyed civil-service protection and who answered to independent boards of commissioners. Mayors enjoyed only the right to nominate commissioners (who then had to be approved by the city council), though mayors frequently sought to expand their authority by demanding written resignations in advance. Woods, “The Progressives and the Police,” 370.
In theory, promotion in: Author interview with Harold Sullivan, July 26, 2007.
The acting chief of: Woods, “The Progressives and the Police,” 371.
One hundred seventy-one: See William H. Parker Police Foundation archives for
this and other Civil Service board notices.
From the first, Bill: Letter of recommendation from Inspector E. B. Caldwell, Parker Foundation archives; “Police Due for Shake-up Tomorrow, Chief Announces: New Divisions Will Be Organized and Shifts Made of Many Uniformed Officers in Sweeping Program,” Los Angeles Times, November 30, 1939. See also Sjoquist, History of the Los Angeles Police Department, 84.
Demoralized by his de facto: Letter from Caldwell to HQ Los Angeles Officer Procurement District, February 23, 1939, William H. Parker Police Foundation archives.
Chapter Nine: Getting Away with Murder (Inc.)
“Men who have lived”: Muir, Headline Happy, 161.
District Attorney Buron Fitts: Central Avenue played an important and unique role in Los Angeles politics. During the 1920s, its large and fast-growing African American population emerged as one of the only reliable voting blocks in the city. A handful of political bosses controlled many of these votes and were sometimes able to demand considerable freedom for illicit activities, a situation that greatly frustrated African American progressives like Charlotta Bass Hayes, publisher of the California Eagle. Parrish, For the People, 127; Woods, “The Progressives and the Police,” 347.
“You never heard of…”: Jennings, We Only Kill Each Other, 60.
Bugsy Siegel was one: Jennings, We Only Kill Each Other, 27.
The next day the: Muir, Headline Happy, 167-69; Richardson, For the Life of Me, 4-5.
Mickey and Bugsy: Cohen, In My Own Words, 58.
“I found Benny a …”: Later (much later) Cohen would circulate stories of how he’d stood up to “the Bug” at their first meeting (while generally omitting the story of what happened to him as a result). Cohen, In My Own Words, 38. Cohen’s comments to Ben Hecht in the mid-1950s make it clear that even at his craziest, Mickey knew how powerful Siegel was. Hecht Papers, Newberry Library.