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www.cityemployeesclub.com September 2010 23

Comes by Hynda Rudd, Alive! City Archivist (Retired), Tales From the City Archives and Club Member Parker, Poulson and the Mob L.A. Noir author John Buntin examines the workings of LAPD Chief William Parker by looking at the 1953 race for mayor. Part 2 of 3.

lum element” that Mayor ohn Buntin’s article is the second of a tril- Story by John Buntin. Photos courtesy the Herald-Examiner and Security Pacific Collections, Bowron and Chief Parker ogy. It is a continuation of the August J Public Library photo archive. constantly warned about entry, where he gives an overview of what was real. City government was dealing with in the This realization came mid-20th century Los Angeles. In his vol- ow do cities really work? It’s a question I slowly. At first, Parker crit- ume, L.A. Noir: The Struggle for the Hwrestle with frequently as a reporter who ics approached Poulson to Soul of America’s Most Seductive City, covers crime and urban affairs. It’s also a ques- express the view that Buntin gives a layout of crime and corrup- tion that must be answered to make sense of “Parker and his ‘Gestapo’ tion that is almost too hard to believe. mid-century Los Angeles and the two figures should be controlled,” Enjoy this article! But get prepared for who did so much to define it, LAPD chief recalled Poulson in his next month’s conclusion. It will be a William Parker and his pint-sized rival, mobster memoirs. But as the knockout! Mickey Cohen. weeks passed, Poulson – Hynda Rudd For years, filmmakers, journalists and many The central city, 1965. became increasingly historians have promulgated the notion that Los uncomfortable with the Angeles was shaped and ruled by a small plutoc- John Buntin drift of these discussions racy of real-estate developers and newspaper little about the immediate problems of Los covers crime and and the people who engaged in them. Some publishers. I call this the Chinatown interpreta- Angeles,” except for the public housing issue urban affairs for had very close connections to mobster Mickey tion of LA history, after Robert Towne and (which, of course, he opposed), he quickly Governing Cohen. Just days before the election, Poulson Roman Polanski’s eponymous 1974 film, and it agreed to sign on for the race. Times reporter Magazine in went to breakfast with someone he would later remains enormously popular, reinforced by Carlton Williams took charge of launching the Washington, DC. identify only as “a former deputy district attor- books both both historical (David Halberstam’s Congressman as a candidate. ney and now the vice-president of a Los The Powers that Be; Eric Davis’s City of Quartz) Bill Parker, though, was suspicious. Angeles and nationally known institution.” and fictional (James Ellroy’s Los Angeles trilo- One year earlier, Parker had taken com- When he arrived, the candidate was startled to gy), as well as by films including Crash and tele- mand of the LAPD after a scandal involving the find the shady ex-LAPD-captain-turned attor- vision shows like The Shield. Histories of the administrative vice squad, 114 “pleasure girls,” ney and a well-known “Las Vegas gambling L.A. Noir: The Struggle LAPD, including Joe Domanick’s To Protect and and mobster Mickey Cohen had led to the man” waiting for him. As he sat down to break- for the Soul of America’s To Serve from 1994, have taken a similar tack, ouster of Chief C.B. Horrall. The new chief’s Most Seductive City fast, Poulson was “really scared.” The men got presenting the history of the police department previous experiences had demonstrated the Photo by John Buntin. right to it: They offered Poulson $35,000 if he John Buntin. as a series of civil rights abuses; Chief Parker, ample powers of the underworld. As a result, by David Kidd. would agree to name three men to the five- who from 1950 to 1966 built the modern LAPD, Parker was determined to vet anyone who member Police Commission, which oversaw was portrayed as a brilliant but paranoid chief might oversee him. So Parker unleashed his the chief of police. Poulson tried to stall. The executive who used the pretext of the Mob to newly expanded intelligence division on candi- men then insisted that he “go out and talk in build an intelligence operation whose true task date Poulson. An unsettling connection was the gambler’s car.” Even though he suspected was defending the Chief and the department. soon discovered, not to the Mob but to that he was being maneuvered into a “bugged” However, in recent years, historians includ- Moscow. A left-wing attorney who had attract- car, Poulson was too scared to refuse. ing Tom Sitton have criticized this interpreta- ed the attention of the House Un-American “I talked in circles,” Poulson wrote in his tion as simplistic. In this article, I’d like to offer Activities Committee (HUAC) had given memoirs. A few days later, on April 7, Poulson a fresh take on this dispute by recounting how Poulson a small “liquor refrigerator” — price defeated Bowron, 53 to 47 percent, to become Chief Parker and the underworld clashed over $157.35 — from Hecht’s department store in Los Angeles’s next mayor. Yet as Poulson left one of L.A.’s more colorful political campaigns, Washington, D.C. The story soon broke, to the Gaylord Hotel downtown to go to his cam- Republican Congressman Norris Poulson’s Poulson’s great embarrassment. While Poulson paign headquarters to celebrate his victory, he Former LAPD Chief 1953 race against incumbent mayor Fletcher rode the scandal of “the Red refrigerator” out, was “filled with mixed emotions.” Thoughts of William Parker. Bowron. Poulson’s unpublished memoirs depict his troubles with the LAPD had only begun. Cadillacs, chauffeurs and a nice raise now the LA underworld in its last flush of great Several weeks later, Poulson was approached seemed far away. Poulson now had to worry power, illustrating both the very real threat that by an athletic young man (a plainclothes detec- about how he could avoid “opening up the Chief Parker and the LAPD faced as well as the tive) who asked the candidate what we would do town” in light of the fact that “some of the peo- darker recesses of Parker’s personality. about the police department if elected. ple who had supported me thought I would.” In December 1952, pub- “I just casually reached over and touched a Faced with a choice of keeping his police chief lisher Norman Chandler and Pacific Mutual microphone, which I detected pushing out or facing the underworld alone, Poulson decid- Insurance president Asa Call summoned Los from his shirt,” Poulson recounted in his ed, with great reluctance, to retain Parker. Angeles’s business elite to a strategy session on unpublished memoirs. Then he walked away. What does this story tell us? It shows that the top floor of the Los Angeles Times building. The realization that the LAPD was investi- the dominant narrative about Los Angeles was Among the invitees were lawyers Frank gating him angered Poulson. But as the cam- Mayor Norris run not in some dark fantasy but rather rooted Poulson, 1960. Doherty and James Beebe of O’Melveny & paign progressed, Poulson’s anger towards in truth. It all demonstrates, decisively to my Myer and business leaders Neil Petree, Henry Parker was modulated by the growing realiza- mind, that the 1950s Los Angeles’s underworld Duque and Preston Hotchkis. The top item on tion that Chief Parker had a point: “the hood- and its influence were very real. Both revela- their agenda was choosing a new mayor. Thirty- tions exculpate Chief Parker in important ways: four names were up for discussion, but when the LAPD’s intelligence division developed, at the group got to number 16, everyone agreed least initially, in response to a real threat. that they had found their man in Congressman But the story of Norris Poulson’s election also Norris Poulson, a died-in-the-wool conservative illuminates some dark corners of Bill Parker’s who’d done yeoman’s duty in Congress block- soul. “In my conversations with [Chief Parker],” ing ’s efforts to secure a larger allotment Poulson would later recall, “he would inadver- of water from the . tently tell what he knew about this person or Mayor-elect The day after Christmas, Norman Chandler that... I later found out that chief Parker had a file Norris Poulson with called Poulson at his home in Washington, Police Chief William Parker, 1953. on many people and not all communist suspects.” D.C., and informed the Congressman that a The intelligence division’s operations would group of civic leaders wanted to draft him to continue long after the LAPD broke the power run for mayor. Chandler asked Poulson back to of the Mob. Parker’s files would soon emerge as Los Angeles so that Poulson could hear their a real source of fear among the City’s politi- pitch. A follow-up letter described the details of cians. Had he resigned in 1959, Parker would their offer. In addition to promising to bankroll have been remembered as LA’s greatest police- Poulson’s campaign “generously,” Chandler’s man. But by staying into the 1960s, a decade in letter noted that the mayor’s salary was likely to which Parker emerged as an outspoken critic of be increased and that Poulson as mayor would the civil rights movement, Parker would be “entitled to strut around in a car (Cadillac) become Los Angeles’s most controversial and chauffeur supplied by the city.” Although Mayor Fletcher policeman instead. Bowron. Poulson privately admitted that he “knew very Broadway looking south, 1953.