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

In theory, policemen of the era were charged with many tasks. Officers not only apprehended criminals, they were also responsible for preparing cases against criminals appearing in court. They picked up loose paper on the streets (blowing paper could spook horses), cleared weeds from abandoned lots, enforced foot-and-mouth disease regulations, notified businessmen of upcoming police auctions, and enforced licensing requirements. Officers also responded to fires and floods. In practice, few applied themselves to their work with much zeal. A 1904 study of the Chicago Police Department found that police officers “spent most of their time not on the streets but in saloons, restaurants, barbershops, bowling alleys, pool halls, and bootblack stands.”

The activities of plainclothes detectives were more suspect still. When they operated out of saloons and dives—supposedly, in order to better monitor the underworld—it was often difficult to distinguish them from the men they were tasked with policing. Detectives routinely demanded cuts from the pickpockets, pimps, burglars, and bunco men who operated in their areas, often at the behest of local elected officials, who frequently insisted on a cut as well. Most were not particularly good at solving crimes. When something truly serious happened, for instance, the 1910 firebombing of the Los Angeles Times, cities turned to more capable outfits such as the William Burns Detective Agency.

In 1902, the LAPD’s woes were greatly exacerbated by two ministers’ “discovery” of Los Angeles’s booming crib district, which centered at the time on Sanchez Street, an alley just off the historic plaza. The clergymen immediately set out to publicize the horrors of this “market for human flesh” with a series of vivid pamphlets and books (which sold very well). Inflamed churchmen descended on “hell’s half-acre” to implore its prostitutes and saloonkeepers to renounce their evil ways. When that failed, they turned to the ballot, amending the city charter so as to completely outlaw all forms of prostitution, gambling, and vice within Los Angeles city limits. (Previously, such activities had been explicitly prohibited only within the central business district.) Henceforth, Los Angeles was “closed”—at least in theory.

The decision to prohibit vice put the LAPD in a difficult if not impossible situation. Faced with the threat of extinction, saloonkeepers, brewery owners, brothel operators, and gambling kingpins threw themselves into politics, donating lavishly to candidates for sheriff, district attorney, superior court judge, city council, and mayor. (Kent Parrot was simply the first to harness these funds in a systematic manner.) Their largesse was likewise available to policemen, particularly to members of the Chinatown and the Metropolitan “purity” squads willing to tip them off when the pressure to mount a raid became irresistible. As a result, officers on the front lines of the effort to police the underworld often faced a stark choice: break the law and accept bribes from the saloonkeepers, madams, and gaming house operators who were bankrolling the politicians or refuse bribes, enforce the law, and risk being fired or assigned to direct traffic on the 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.