Abstract
In order to understand what William Parker accomplished and how he did it, it is necessary to lay some historical groundwork about the history of the settlement of Los Angeles, the parallel history of its neighbor to the South (San Diego), and, of course, a detailed discussion of the pattern of corruption in Los Angeles in general and in the Los Angeles Police Department in particular. This is the task of Chapter 2. In the first section, we look at the historical rivalries between Los Angeles and San Diego. As later developments made Los Angeles the more economically dominant of the two cities, it is important to recognize that, early on, San Diego was perceived to be the city best situated for growth in Southern California. In the second section, we look more closely at the growth of Los Angeles as a deliberately designed process of self-selection, appealing to Midwestern immigrants with a strong religious and ethical orientation. Finally, in the third section, we detail the specifics of Los Angeles police corruption during the 1920–1950 period, with particular emphasis on the years 1938–1949.
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Notes
The openly and Progressively partisan California Outlook published in 1914 a speech by Theodore Roosevelt in which he argued, to a group in New England, that there was no state in which the practical application of Progressive ideals “has been as great as in California.” Bartlett (1907) argued that “while not the first city to declare itself for complete nonpartisanship in city politics [a prominent Progressive goal], the state of the partial victory of the city of Los Angeles may well encourage other cities to enter upon this latest movement in social service and civic betterment…” (p. 172).
For example, some Los Angeles residents are quoted as saying, “We must be content to be the political and social capital of south California; we must be satisfied with our genial climate, fruitful soil, our generous wines, our golden fruit, our productive mines, our cattle upon a thousand hills… The great commercial city of south California must be San Diego.” (Los Angeles Star, August 14, 1869 as quoted in Fogelson).
Charles Crocker once said, “We would blot San Diego out of existence if we could, but as we can’t do that we shall keep it back as long as we can” (1880 letter as cited in Fogelson 1967).
Pourade (1965), Hennessy (1993) and in the Journal of San Diego History all write about the importance of the California-Panama Exhibition. Specifically, Hennessy argues that, “Growth so dominated politics during this period [1900–1920] that voters in a frantic search for prosperity and metro recognition, returned only two mayors to office for a 2nd term.”
Despite the success of Los Angeles the “Smokestacks” still envisioned San Diego as a major port with large industries and booming commerce. On the other hand, “Geraniums” preferred a resort town to industrialization. In the end, voters voiced their preference for the smokestack strategy to growth (Ports 1975).
This is using the 2009 GDP deflator compared to the 1947 deflator at http://www. gpoaccess.gov/usbudget/fy05/hist.html. The original California Chamber of Commerce data are not online, so it is difficult to calibrate them to federal data series. However, from Rhode (2003) we find that, using 1948 again as the benchmark, California had 8.157? of all business formations in the United States and the Pacific Coast had 20.27? of all urban building construction. California had just over 7? of the U.S. population in the 1950 census, following about 5.6? in the 1940 census. Rhode also makes the point that the Great Depression was still fresh in people’s minds, so a billion dollars in new plant was undoubtedly important to people in California regardless of how that squared with what actually occurred in New York or Pennsylvania.
San Diego was the home of modern passenger aviation (see Starr), the manufacturing location of Charles Lindbergh’s Spirit of St. Louis (Ryan Aviation), the home of Consolidated Aircraft, and a constant booster of its civilian aviation facility (later known as Lindbergh Field).
These data are from the U.S. Census and are excerpted from “Table 8: Region of Birth of the Native American Population of Los Angeles” in Fogelson (1976). “Midwest” is the combination of “East North-central” and “West North-central” in Fogelson.
“Table 3” in Fogelson (1976) is fully titled “Negro Population and Nativity of Foreign Born in Los Angeles 1890–1930.”
The official Foursquare biography is at http://www.foursquare.org/about/ aimee_semple_mcpherson/p2.
Los Angeles citizens were not complacent to accept the increasing graft in “a boss-controlled city administration” and formed The Citizen’s Anti-Crime Commission in 1923 (Peterson 1953). Immediately the commission sought Berkeley police reformer August Vollmer to, “help in the reorganization of a police department ridden by corruption and ineffectual crime control” (Douthit 1975). Vollmer’s appointment as police chief lasted only one-and-a-half years. Moreover, many of his reforms did not survive his tenure. Douthit writes, “It was not until the 1950s that the Los Angeles Police Department developed into a professionalized police system under William H. Parker” (ibid.).
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© 2013 R. Mark Isaac and Douglas A. Norton
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Isaac, R.M., Norton, D.A. (2013). A Brief History of Los Angeles: Conditions for Institutional Change. In: Just the Facts Ma’am: A Case Study of the Reversal of Corruption in the Los Angeles Police Department. Palgrave Pivot, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137354396_2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137354396_2
Publisher Name: Palgrave Pivot, New York
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