L.A. Noir: The Struggle for the Soul of America's Most Seductive City

BUGSY SIEGEL wasn’t the only person flexing his muscles. So was Mayor Bowron. Bowron disliked the fact that he had such limited formal control over the police department. The 1934 and 1937 charter amendments, which broadened police officers’ job protections and extended them to the chief of police, were a particular sore point, which Bowron repeatedly sought to circumvent. He continued to secretly wiretap the telephone lines of senior police department officials—an activity that arguably constituted a federal felony offense—in order to ensure that the underworld did not reestablish ties with the department. Soon, the mayor was routinely demanding that Chief Hohmann fire officers caught in the wiretaps’ surveillance dragnet. But Bowron, not wanting to acknowledge his illegal wiretapping, refused to explain the basis of these demands, and Hohmann refused to act without evidence. The result was a standoff—and growing tension between the city’s top elected official and its top law enforcement officer.

Hohmann had been an exemplary police chief—honest and intelligent, enlightened on racial issues, and uninterested in currying favor with others. He curtailed special privileges (such as police cars and drivers for city councilmen) and ended the department’s tradition of strikebreaking. Committed to professionalism, he urged his subordinates to do their duty without fear or favor because, he told them, “the days of ‘Big Shot’ political influence in the police department are over.” He was wrong. After winning reelection in 1941, Bowron turned up the pressure on the chief. An embarrassing corruption trial involving the head of the robbery squad finally persuaded Hohmann to step aside and accept a demotion to deputy chief, clearing the way for a new, more deferential chief, C. B. Horrall.

As chief, Hohmann had appointed Horrall to a plum position, giving him responsibility for the Central, Hollenbeck, and Newton Street divisions as well as command of the elite Metropolitan Division. Now that he was chief, however, Horrall demoted Hohmann to lieutenant. Under assault from the new chief and distraught about the sudden, tragic death of his son, Hohmann agreed to accept this second, more humiliating position—only to then turn around and sue the department to have his rank restored. Their feud further demoralized the department.

Bill Parker was demoralized too. In June 1941, he graduated from Northwestern’s Traffic Institute and returned to Los Angeles. As the number two person on the inspector list, Parker had every reason to expect that he would soon receive a promotion. Instead, he found himself trapped in his position as director of the traffic bureau’s accident investigation unit. Chief Horrall routinely passed him over for promotion, blandly noting that “scholastic achievements do not necessarily make the best policemen.” In 1930, Parker had been trapped in the police department by the Great Depression. Now he seemed stuck again, until December 7, 1941, when history provided a way out.

The news hit official Los Angeles like a thunderclap, as the Associated Press blared

JAPS OPEN WAR ON U.S. WITH BOMBING OF HAWAII

Fleet Speeds Out to Battle Invader

Tokyo Claims Battleship Sunk and Another Set Afire with Hundreds Killed on Island; Singapore Attacked and Thailand Force Landed

The situation was actually worse than that. The U.S. Pacific fleet was not “speeding out to battle the invader.” The five battleships and three destroyers that made up the backbone of the U.S. Pacific fleet were in fact sinking to the bottom of Pearl Harbor. The California coast was virtually defenseless. No one knew where the Japanese attack fleet would strike next. The situation was so dire that the War Department deliberately withheld information about the strike, lest the news trigger panic. Meanwhile, law enforcement prepared to move against what many saw as a potential “fifth column”—the city’s Japanese American population.

Los Angeles was home to roughly 38,000 residents born in Japan. Another 70,000 second-generation Japanese Americans, the so-called Nisei, lived in other parts of California. The FBI had already compiled lists of politically “suspect” Japanese Americans. It turned to the LAPD to help round up the subversives.

Around noon that Sunday, police officer Harold Sullivan, who worked under Parker in the traffic division, was driving down Western Avenue on his way to work, when an acquaintance pulled up beside him at Santa Barbara Avenue (now Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard).

“Did you hear the news?” the man asked.

“What news?” Sullivan replied.