page_title: History of Los Angeles
section_title: Civic corruption and police brutality
hierarchical_section_title: History of Los Angeles / Boom town: 1913–1941 / Civic corruption and police brutality
caption_attribution_description: English: Title: Walkway and front façade of Los Angeles Public Library's Central Library, circa 1935
context_page_description: The History of Los Angeles began when 11 settlers established a settlement that changed little in the three decades after 1848, when California became part of the United States. Great changes came from the completion of the Santa Fe railroad line from Chicago to Los Angeles in 1885. “Overlanders” flooded in, mostly White Protestants from the Lower Midwest and South.
  Los Angeles had a strong economic base in farming, oil, tourism, real estate and movies. It grew rapidly with many suburban areas inside and outside the city limits. Its motion picture industry made the city world-famous, and World War II brought new industry, especially high-tech aircraft construction. Politically the city was moderately conservative, with a weak labor union sector.
  Since the 1960s, growth has slowed—and traffic delays have become infamous. Los Angeles was a pioneer in freeway development as the public transit system deteriorated. New arrivals, especially from Mexico and Asia, have transformed the demographic base since the 1960s. Old industries have declined, including farming, oil, military and aircraft, but tourism, entertainment and high-tech remain strong.
context_section_description: The downtown business interests, always eager to attract business and investment to Los Angeles, were also eager to distance their town from the criminal underworld that defined the stories of Chicago and New York. In spite of their concerns, massive corruption in City Hall and the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD)—and the fight against it—were dominant themes in the city's story from early 20th-century to the 1950s.
  In the 1920s, for example, it was common practice for the city's mayor, councilmen, and attorneys to take contributions from madams, bootleggers, and gamblers. The top aide of the mayor was involved with a protection racket. Thugs with eastern-Mafia connections were involved in often violent conflicts over bootlegging and horse-racing turf. The mayor's brother was selling jobs in the Los Angeles Police Department.
  In 1933, the new mayor Frank Shaw started giving contracts without competitive bids and paying city employees to favor crony contractors. The city's Vice Squad functioned citywide as the enforcer and collector of the city's organized crime, with revenues going to the pockets of city officials right up to the mayor.
  In 1937, the owner of downtown's Clifton's Cafeteria, Clifford Clinton led a citizen's campaign to clean up city hall. He and other reformers served on a Grand Jury investigating the charges of corruption. In a minority report, the reformers wrote:
  A portion of the underworld profits have been used in financing campaigns [of] ... city and county officials in vital positions ... [While] the district attorney's office, sheriff's office, and Los Angeles Police Department work in complete harmony and never interfere with ... important figures in the underworld.
   
  The police Intelligence Squad spied on anyone even suspected of criticizing the police. They included journalist Carey McWilliams, the District Attorney, Judge Fletcher Bowron, and two of the county supervisors.
  The persistent courage of Clinton, Superior Court Judge and later Mayor, Fletcher Bowron, and former police detective Harry Raymond turned the tide. The police became so nervous that the Intelligence Squad blew up Raymond's car and nearly killed him. The public was so enraged by the bombing that it quickly voted Shaw out of office, one of the first big-city recalls in the country's history. The head of the intelligence squad was convicted and sentenced to two years to life. Police Chief James Davis and 23 other officers were forced to resign.
  Fletcher Bowron replaced Shaw as mayor in 1938 to preside over one of the more dynamic periods in the history of the city. His 'Los Angeles Urban Reform Revival' brought major changes to the government of Los Angeles.
  In 1950, he appointed William H. Parker as chief of police. Parker pushed for more independence from political pressures that enabled him to create a more professionalized police force. The public supported him and voted in charter changes that isolated the police department from the rest of government.
  Through the 1960s, the LAPD was promoted as one of the more efficient departments in the world. But Parker's administration increasingly was charged with police brutality—resulting from his recruiting of officers from the South with strong anti-black and anti-Mexican attitudes.
  Reaction to police brutality resulted in the Watts riots of 1965 and in the Los Angeles riots of 1992, after the Rodney King beating. Charges of police brutality dogged the department through the end of the 20th century. In the late 1990s, as a result of the Rampart scandal involving misconduct of 70 officers, the federal government was forced to intervene and assumed jurisdiction of the department with a consent decree. Police reform has since been a major issue confronted by the city's mayors.
  Social critic Mike Davis argued that attempts to "revitalize" downtown Los Angeles decreases public space and further alienates poor and minority populations. This enforced geographical separation of diverse populations goes back to the city's earliest days.
caption: Walkway and front façade of Los Angeles Public Library's Central Library, circa 1935
exif: {}