The Oath We Take: Career Stories Of Those Who Served with the Los Angeles Police Department

By Gary Farmer

THE OATH WE TAKE is the last of a three-book series about police work featuring the first-person accounts of former officers with the Los Angeles Police Department, following THE STREETS ARE BLUE and MORE THAN HEROIC.To become a police officer with the Los Angeles Police Department, one swears or affirms an oath of office, promising to faithfull

• Language: English
• Publisher: Gary Farmer
• Release date: Aug 9, 2019
• ISBN: 9780960087327

Book preview

Lindo Giaco Giacopuzzi

Birthplace: El Sereno, California

Career: 1942–1964

Rank at Retirement: Sergeant

Divisions: Central, Hollywood, Detective Bureau Gangster Squad, Intelligence, West Valley

Where did I learn Italian? From my dad. I never spoke to my dad in English, except for a few words, in his life. I always spoke to him in Italian. My mother spoke English very well. When I was just a little kid, my dad bought a ten-acre dairy farm in the San Fernando Valley. I still own the property today, although it is no longer a farm. But that’s where I grew up, living and working on a dairy farm. I didn’t want to milk cows for the rest of my life, so I went to a school sponsored by the Los Angeles Civil Service Commission to learn how to take civil service examinations. I wanted to be a fireman, but the civil service examination for the police came first. I passed it, and I decided to give being a policeman a try.

In the academy, we were there twenty-four hours a day with weekends off. We slept in the gymnasium. Vi Redmond was the sergeant in charge of our class. There were a few times when somebody misbehaved during the middle of the night, and Sergeant Redmond would order us out of bed and outside to run as punishment. The whole class had to run.

The physical training wasn’t too bad; we were young then and we could do it. I was strong from lifting those milk cans on the dairy farm. Because we were there all day and night, we got to play various sports, including touch football. Now, I had played tackle football all through high school, and I was pretty good, so it was hard for me to play touch football; I instinctively had to tackle. Some of the guys in my class got mad at me a few times for that. I played football until I was forty years old. I was on a semipro team, and the last game I played was against the San Pedro Longshoremen. We whipped the hell out of them. They were beating everybody except us.

Bob Houghton and I sat next to each other in class, his last name starting with an H and mine with a G. We became good friends. He was a very smart guy and had already been a policeman for five years with the Beverly Hills Police Department. One day in the academy, we were talking, and he told me that he wanted to ride motors for the department. I told him that he could get hurt riding motors and that because he was so smart, he was going to go places in the department. And he did. He went on to become a deputy chief. To this day, I’m glad I talked him out of motors. He was a good guy.

Academy graduation, 1942: Lindo Giacopuzzi, top left, Robert Houghton, third row from bottom, far right

Once we graduated, I was sent to Central Division, but only for a week or two. I was assigned with this older officer walking a foot beat on Main Street. It was his regular beat, and he was breaking me in. He was awfully mean to the guys on the street. He would verbally abuse them. Fortunately, I worked with him for only a few days before I was sent to Hollywood Division. This was in ’42, at the beginning of the war. When I found out I was going to be drafted into military service, I talked to a friend of mine from San Pedro that I had met in the civil service school. He was now a motor officer for the department and had joined the Coast Guard as a pilot. He suggested I join the Coast Guard, too, and I took his advice. However, I had thirty days before I was supposed to report, so I stayed working at Hollywood Division.

During those thirty days, my only assignment in Hollywood was to pick up the girlfriend of one of the Hollywood sergeants, Fred Collani, from the nightclub, the Earl Carroll Theater on Sunset Boulevard, where she worked, and take her home. On the outside wall of the club were the words Thru These Portals Pass the Most Beautiful Girls in the World. His girlfriend was a dancer, I believe. Sergeant Collani looked like the boxer Gene Tunney. He really took care of me knowing I was leaving for the war.

When I first went in the Coast Guard, I was sent to a school in Maryland where I met another officer in the school, Jack O’Mara, who worked Seventy-Seventh Division. Once the war was over, I returned to Hollywood Division. I was only there a week when Jack called me. He said that a week earlier the department had started a new special squad to go after gangsters. He told me that initially seventeen policemen were offered to work it, but only seven accepted. The rest wanted nothing to do with gangsters. Jack said that he told his boss, Sergeant Willie Burns, about me and that I spoke Italian. They both felt my speaking Italian would be helpful to the squad since most gangsters were Italian.

I said, Sure, and I transferred into the Gangster Squad. The original seven policemen were Jack, Archie Case, Jerry The Professor Thomas, James Jumbo Kennard, Benny Williams, Richard Bulbnose Hedrick, and our Bug Man, Conwell Keeler. He did all of our electronic stuff. Later, we had a second Bug Man in John Olsen. John was kind of small, so he could crawl under houses pretty good to place a bug—an electronic eavesdropping device. Did I have a nickname too? Yeah, it was Giaco, for Giacopuzzi.

There had been several murders of gangsters in Los Angeles by mobsters from the East Coast and Chicago trying to establish themselves here. That prompted the formation of the Gangster Squad. We were told to keep the out-of-state gangsters from coming here and setting up illicit businesses, like gambling, bookmaking, and prostitution. Sergeant Burns would get information from Deputy Chief Joe Reed on gangsters coming to Los Angeles, and Burns would tell us what he wanted us to do. When we got information that a gangster was on his way here, like by plane or train, we would meet them as they arrived and tell them to go back—and usually they did. If they were in a car, we would escort them to the county or state line. If they refused, we took them down to the cellar at City Hall, and after a stern conversation, they would decide to go back. Nobody really gave us any trouble or complained. What good would it do them? If we didn’t send them back to where they came from right away, we would follow them to see who they would meet and, if an arrest was necessary, we turned the case over to the Detective Bureau.

Lindo Giacopuzzi escorting gangsters from Los Angeles City Hall

We could handle the few gangsters already here, like Jack Dragna, but we didn’t want all those others coming out here. Two that we made go back to Chicago were Jimmy Barcella and Marty The Ox Ochs. They were evidently hot in Chicago because within thirty days of going back, they found Barcella in his car shot in the head with rope burns on his neck and wrists. A week or two later Ochs was found with his head blown off.

The squad didn’t have an office. We would meet at various locations on the street or at Deputy Chief Reed’s office in City Hall. Later, we were given space in the basement of Central Station on First Street. The space used to be the horse stalls from when the station was first built.

Initially, to get us used to working with each other, we focused on local crime, like guys that would roll the drunks or the servicemen returning from overseas—meaning rob them of their money. The movie theaters were open all night, and the drunks would stay inside to sleep sheltered from the weather, and the servicemen would sit in the theater to get some sleep before catching a train back home. The thieves would go through the sleeping drunk or serviceman’s pockets and take his money. We caught quite a few, and we usually were able to convince them to stop their thieving. Gerry Greeley and I took one up into the hills above Los Angeles and had a good talk with him. He never stole anyone’s money again, at least not in Los Angeles. There was another time that we were told that a barber on Sixth Street who was a bookie on the side was trying to bribe a policeman working a foot beat to ignore his bookmaking activities. We paid him a visit and convinced him to change his ways. We even gave him a haircut!

Jack and I were partners initially, but later Gerry Greeley became my partner. There was a big ruckus in West Los Angeles ­Division one day, and the squad responded over there. I don’t remember ­specifically what it was about, but uniformed guys were there to take care of it. Sergeant Burns saw how rugged this big uniform officer was and said, I want him in the squad. The uniform officer was Gerry Greeley. Gerry was six foot three. I was six feet, 235 pounds, so between the two of us, we fit right in with the squad. Gerry was a college graduate, and he was awfully smart. Anything that Gerry did I never doubted. We worked together for several years, and he was my longest partner. When he retired in ’66, he was a lieutenant.

Mickey Cohen was a local gangster in Los Angeles. He worked for Bugsy Siegel, but after Siegel was killed, Cohen took over the crime syndicate. He first had a paint store on Beverly Boulevard, a front for bookmaking, then a clothing place on Santa Monica Boulevard, and eventually a haberdashery business up on Sunset ­Boulevard in West Hollywood. One time Gerry and I were ­watching his place on Santa Monica Boulevard when one of his guys came out. We were in an old Ford that was a police car, but it didn’t look like a police car because we had put out-of-state license plates on it. Cohen’s man saw us parked on the street and walked toward us. We pulled our hats down and pulled the collars of our coats up as he walked by so he wouldn’t recognize us. He went back into the business and then several other guys came out of Cohen’s establishment, probably wondering if we were cops or gangsters. I started the car up, drove toward them, then swerved as Gerry leaned out the window with a Thompson submachine gun in hand acting like he was going to shoot them. They all got scared and hit the ground. We did it just to harass them a little. We all had submachine guns, but we never used them other than practice at the academy.

Gerry Greeley, left, Lindo Giacopuzzi, center back, preparing to escort gangster Jimmy Fratianno, front center, and two others

We used to follow Cohen all the time, and he knew we were following him. One time we were following him down a street, and he made a U-turn, came back, and waved at us. Did we wave back? Sure. One of his henchmen, Harry Hookey Rothman, was killed in Cohen’s haberdashery store on Sunset. Jack Dragna’s guys ­entered the store looking for Cohen and killed Rothman when he tried to stop them. They then fled. Cohen was in the bathroom and was not hurt. Cohen and Dragna battled for control of organized crime in the Los Angeles area. That became known as the Sunset War.

l to r: Mickey Cohen, bodyguard Jimmy Rist, and others in custody

About a month later, Gerry and I stopped Mike Howard, one of Cohen’s men, in front of a café on Sunset at Poinsettia. As I searched him, I found a gun on him. He said, I’m here meditating over the loss of my friend Hooky. I’m only carrying the gun because I’ve been threatened thirty times today by telephone. Mickey told me not to carry the gun, but if your best friend had been killed and you had been threatened, you would too.

Do you have a license to carry the gun?

The hell with a license! It’s none of your business if I have a license.

It is our business, and you’re coming with us.

I’ll get even with you guys if it’s the last thing I do!

We booked him for the gun. It was a .38 Detective Special. We ran into him again on several occasions, and there were no problems.

Gerry and I stopped a gangster in his car in Beverly Hills one day. I don’t remember why, but at one point I was taking him out of his car with one hand while pulling my gun, a six-inch .38 revolver, out with the other hand. As I pulled him out, I instinctively cocked my gun at the same time. We struggled a little bit, but I was able to get him under control. It was then I realized that if my gun had gone off, I could have killed the guy. It scared the hell out of me. I never pulled my gun again.

One case we got involved in, but not because of gangsters, was the Black Dahlia murder. Elizabeth Short was killed, mutilated, and her body sliced in half and left in a vacant lot on Norton Avenue in University Division. During the investigation, Leslie Dillon made contact with Dr. J. Paul De River, a police psychologist, and expressed an interest in the case. Based on their correspondence, the doctor felt that Dillon knew more than he should have and could possibly be the murderer. Short was cut in half by someone who was possibly a surgeon. It was a clean cut, and the murderer knew exactly where to cut. And this guy Dillon had a little bit of knowledge about surgery.

l to r, standing: Gerry Greeley, James Kennard, Jim Ahern, Jerry Thomas, Willie Burns, Lindo Giacopuzzi, Richard Hedrick, Unknown, Unknown; l to r, sitting: John O’Mara, John Olsen, J. B. Jones, Archie Case, Unknown, Unknown. Original member Benny Williams is not in the photo. Photo taken by Conwell Keeler, Gangster Squad.

Dillon met with Dr. De River, tried to make the doctor believe that he knew the killer and that the killer lived in San Francisco. Dillon was allowed to leave, and Gerry and I followed Dillon to see if he made contact with the person he said was the killer. We followed him to Las Vegas, then San Francisco, and eventually back to Los Angeles. But he didn’t meet up with anyone. Back in Los Angeles, we took Dillon into custody and stayed with him in a hotel room off Broadway. At one point, he asked if he could draw a picture of the murder suspect, so we gave him some paper and a pencil. He drew a caricature of the man he thought had committed the murder. He also wrote a note and threw it out the window of the hotel. The note was found and somehow wound up in the hands of Florabel Muir, a freelance newspaper reporter. On the note, Dillon said he was being held against his will by the doctor. He wasn’t being held by the ­doctor—he was being held by Giacopuzzi and Greeley! Eventually, he was released.

It was my understanding that the primary detectives on the case decided Dillon was not a suspect. For that surveillance, we were gone from home for well over a week.

One of the good things being on the squad was some of the gangsters would go to the fights at the American Legion Hall in Hollywood on Friday nights. We would follow the gangsters to see who they met up with. While we were there, we would also watch the fights. There were some good fights, some damn good fights. Jimmy Rist, one of Cohen’s bodyguards, was an ex-boxer, a heavyweight.

When William H. Parker became chief, he broke the squad up and the duties were absorbed into the Intelligence Division. Chief Parker brought in Captain James Hamilton to be in charge. ­Hamilton had me transferred out because he felt Italians were clannish, that I would show favoritism to the gangsters. Here I was, brought in because I was Italian and spoke Italian and that was seen as an asset. Under this new leadership, because I was Italian, I was seen as a liability. It didn’t make sense.

Sergeant Lindo Giacopuzzi atop a roof assisting in lowering a female burglar

Fortunately, I had made sergeant while I was on the Gangster Squad, so I went back to Hollywood as a sergeant. Willie Burns, now a lieutenant, retired at the same time I left the unit. He later became a chief of police of a small town up in Northern California. He ultimately died of cancer.

Being out of uniform for almost five years, I didn’t know anything. It had been quite some time since I had been in uniform and for just a few days at that. Everybody in Hollywood helped me make the adjustment. Wouldn’t you know it? I wasn’t there long when there was a gangland killing right there in Hollywood. Tony Brancato and Tony Trombino were shot in the back of their heads in a car on Ogden Drive.

I responded, and as I’m looking at them, both of whom we had dealings with while I was on the Gangster Squad, I was thinking that they didn’t have a chance, that it was boom boom. Whoever shot them was in the back seat of the car and must have been considered a friend. Jimmy Fratianno, a Mafia hit man, along with some other suspects, were arrested, but later released because of insufficient evidence. I believe years later Fratianno admitted to the killings. It was dubbed the Two Tonys Murder. I don’t know why they were killed, but I guess they got what was coming to them. My old partner Gerry, now assigned to Homicide, helped investigate the murder.

Sergeant Lindo Giacopuzzi, in uniform, at the scene of the Two Tonys Murder

Academy class reunion: Lindo Giacopuzzi, far right, standing next to Robert Houghton

When they opened the West Valley station, I transferred out there to be closer to home. Not too much happened while I was in West Valley. There was a radio call of a burglary in progress one time and I responded. I saw the burglars and they started running when they saw me. I chased them, but they outran me. I was too big to be able to run fast and they got away.

When I was near retirement, I thought of maybe working a different assignment. Bob Houghton, my academy classmate and good friend, was now a deputy chief, and I told him I would like to get a job someplace else. He said, We’ll see what we can do. When I didn’t hear from him for a while, I went ahead and retired. Then he called me and told me he got a good job for me working for ­Assistant Chief Thad Brown in Homicide. I thanked him and said, I can’t do that now. I’ve already retired. Once I was retired, I was not going to change it around. I had already started developing my property, and that became a full-time job for me. As of now, I have the lowest serial number, 3012, of any living policeman who has served with the Los Angeles Police Department.

Harold Hal Williams

Birthplace: Santa Ana, California

Career: 1942–1963

Rank at Retirement: Policeman

Divisions: Hollywood, Newton, Metropolitan, Traffic Enforcement, Communications, Wilshire

Before I went on the police department, I delivered water for Sparkletts for three years and milk for Adohr Milk Farms for two years. On my milk route, there was a retired LAPD policeman. He had a little house, and he was getting a hundred dollars a month pension. I think you had to work twenty-five years at the time to qualify for a pension. Hell, a pension sounded good to me, and it meant financial security. Three of us from Adohr took the exam, and I was the only one who passed.

There were fifty-eight of us in my class and on our first day, we were sworn in as police officers down at City Hall. Two of my classmates, Dwight O’Dell and Lindo Giacopuzzi, I knew before I came on the job. Dwight was one of my customers on my Sparkletts route. His brother, Bernard, was also in our class, and their dad was a retired policeman. Lindo was riding a motorcycle one day when he came by where I was stopped and straightening out my milk truck. He worked on his own dairy farm at the time. He introduced himself, we talked for a little bit, then he left. We later rode motorcycles together. When I saw the O’Dells and Lindo on the first day at the academy, it was like, My friends are with me.

Our class lived at the academy for six weeks; we were off on the weekends. Our beds were in the gymnasium. We were paid $170 a month. People nowadays wouldn’t believe that. The only things you were given were your cap piece, your four uniform buttons, and a badge.

We really didn’t have much in the way of physical training. We had time off at lunch to play basketball and volleyball. The focus was on academics, like knowing the laws. We went to bed and we went to class, and that was pretty much it.

Academy class: Hal Williams, kneeling, eighth from right; Lindo Giacopuzzi, kneeling, far right; Dwight O’Dell, kneeling, fifth from left; Bernard O’Dell, standing, fifth from left

Hollywood was my first division, and I worked a radio car. Hollywood was real calm back then; nothing ever happened. It certainly wasn’t like what it is now. There was this one old-timer, a policeman named Jake, who usually walked a beat down on La Brea. On his beat was a restaurant that he used to eat at, and he took their monies for them to deposit at the bank each day. That’s all he did, walk a beat. Up until I worked with him this one day, I often wondered if he had ever made an arrest.

I’m working with Jake this one day, and we’re in a police car on our way to a radio call. As I’m driving, I see this kid driving a car come off a side street. I looked at him, he looked right at me, and I knew something was wrong. I turned the car around and went after him. Jake emphatically says, We have to go to this radio call. Well, it turned out this car was on the hot sheet; it was a stolen car.

We stopped it and made the arrest. When we get to the station, all you heard was Jake got a hot car! Jake got a hot car! No one said anything to me, although I was the one who actually saw the guy.

It was in Hollywood that I met my second wife, Penny. The Melody Lane Café was a restaurant at Hollywood Boulevard and Vine. It was an eating spot for policemen. One day, we go to eat, and here was this new cashier. Well one thing led to another, and we eventually married in ’43. We were married for sixty-three years. She died twelve years ago.

Academy graduation, 1942: Hal Williams, seventh row from bottom, far left

Just down the street from where my wife worked, there was a music store with a big parking lot in the back. One day, while I was off with a stiff back, I parked my ’38 Buick in the parking lot and went to visit my wife. When I came back, there was a guy in my car trying to steal it. I yelled to him and he took off running. I chased him for several blocks, crossing several streets and dodging cars. Although he was a young guy, he quickly tired out, and I caught him in the backyard of a house. I had more strength than he did. I placed him under arrest, and used a phone inside the house to call the police. He had previously been arrested for stealing a car in Missouri, and now he was out here doing the same thing. My back sure loosened up from the exercise.

In ’43, I was working with Ed Drager, my regular partner, this one night, when we decided to go by the apartment of the girlfriend of a Hollywood policeman named Jackson. His girlfriend and her roommate were moving. When we got there, Jackson was there in uniform. Well, the manager of the building called the station and talked to the watch commander, a lieutenant, and wanted to know why all these uniformed policemen were there. The lieutenant showed up, and Ed and I got in trouble for being out of our district. The lieutenant wanted to fire us, but fortunately for us, Captain Lee German interceded, and that was that. But life was hell for me after that with the lieutenant. So, I transferred to Newton Division, which was good because I was teamed up with one of the best partners I ever worked with, Danny Muzik.

Melody Lane Café, Hollywood Boulevard and Vine

Danny was part of the War Emergency Relief Program, guys who were hired to be temporary policemen due to the manpower shortage from the war. They worked as regular officers, but they had not gone through the academy. Danny was a hell of a policeman though and a great partner. We were close friends, lived near each other, and we used to go fishing together.

Our assigned area was the north end of Newton Division along Seventh Street. One night we saw these two guys in a Buick coupe. When they saw us, they took off. As we chased them, at one point they drove across these railroad tracks, drove into a dead-end area, stopped, got out, and took off on foot. We had followed them across the same tracks, and the tires on our car were cut up pretty bad. We went in foot pursuit. Danny caught the driver, not too far into the chase. The other was getting away, so I pulled my gun out and yelled, Stop, or I’ll shoot. They were brothers. The older one called out to the younger one by name and told him to stop, and he did. I’m thankful he did stop, although I wasn’t going to shoot him. We took them into custody. They had just committed a burglary and had stolen jewelry in their socks. They were also in a stolen car. It was fortunate that we stayed with them during the pursuit. Most police cars then, like the one we were driving, had no emergency equipment like red lights and a siren. We only had a spotlight. The police cars were painted black. The only police cars that were black and white were the cars assigned to traffic enforcement.

Danny and I used to get a stolen car, what we called a hot roller, about once a week. Our sergeant, though, started complaining that we weren’t arresting enough drunks. The north end of Newton Division was part of Skid Row. He didn’t care that we were making a lot of felony arrests. It was about then that I had an opportunity to go to Metropolitan Division, and although it was tough to part with Danny, I took it.

At Metro Division, we mostly worked labor strikes. This was just after the war ended. There were strikes in ’45 at several movie studios, all about the same time. At one, we were working, the strike got violent. Some cars belonging to workers trying to come into the studio were overturned. To push the strikers back, a fire hose was used against them. Then we moved in to break up the strikers. We wiped them right out, and they left. It was pretty ugly for a while. I didn’t know what they were striking about, probably more money.

There was an opportunity for me to work motors, and having ridden motorcycles before I came on the job, I transferred to Traffic Enforcement Division. The division was at 123 North Figueroa Street, and my captain was William H. Parker, who later became our police chief.

I was there for only four months when the department opened up the Detective Bureau to policemen. I told Captain Parker that I would like to go back to Newton and take advantage of a chance to work detectives. He was good with my decision, and I returned to Newton working detectives for Lieutenant Raleigh Coppage.

I didn’t know what they were striking about, probably more money.

Hal Williams

Charlie Rothert and Manny Bustamante were my partners, and we worked Forgery, specifically the bad check detail. Charlie and I went to court on this one case, and I’m hanging back a little bit, and I noticed that wherever Charlie went, this guy followed him. I stopped him, and he turned out to be a buddy of the guy we were in court on. We took him to the station and found out he was writing bad checks too. You just kind of stumble on to these guys if you keep your eyes open.

In ’47, I transferred to Wilshire Detectives to be closer to home. Initially, my partner was Sergeant Ed Tulloch, and we worked burglaries. One guy who was a thorn in our side was a burglar named James Hanna. I was already familiar with Hanna. When I first went to Hollywood, Hanna was a prolific window burglar. One target for Hanna was parties because the ladies would all put their purses on a bed in a bedroom. He would come through a window and rifle the purses.

The Hollywood detectives decided they had had enough of Hanna, so they set up a situation in an apartment with ladies’ purses on the bed, hoping to draw him in and catch him in the act of committing a burglary. Even though I was on probation, I was positioned in the bedroom by myself, hiding in a closet, waiting for him to strike. Unfortunately, he didn’t take the bait.

Sergeant Ed Tulloch, right, with Captain Harry Elliot at a crime scene

Now, I’m working Wilshire, and Hanna is still doing burglaries. Then one day he was picked up by officers and brought to the station. He had evidence of a burglary on him, but the officers didn’t know from where. Unbeknownst to them, he had just committed a burglary of an apartment above a barbershop near where they had picked him up. The apartment was where the barber lived.

Hanna had just left there, and he’s walking down the street when he hears what he thinks is a police siren. Thinking they were after him, he tried to hide. It was actually the siren of an ambulance. I don’t remember how they came upon him, but the officers stopped Hanna and he had property on him they believed was stolen. Hanna gave the officers a phony name and that was what he was booked under. When I saw him the next day, I knew who he was right away.

When I interviewed him, he admitted to the burglary of the apartment above the barbershop. He was cooperative. Detectives at the Detective Bureau downtown also had cases against Hanna from several divisions. They picked him up and booked him downtown for the other cases. In the meantime, I went over to his apartment where his girlfriend was staying. While I was there, the phone rang. It was Hanna wanting her to go to his fence—a pawnshop dealer—and have the guy bail him out. I gave that information to the downtown detectives.

When Hanna was in court on the burglary cases, I brought in a woman from another burglary, and she readily identified Hanna as the man she saw coming out of her apartment. He had heard her opening the door and he ran out. Hanna ultimately went to prison, and that was the end of my dealings with him.

A burglar had been arrested and Frank DuBant and I went downtown to Lincoln Heights Jail to interview him. During our conversation, the suspect talked about a car owned by his brother. The car was unrelated to the case, but Frank had a big interest in cars and seemed to enjoy talking about it. On my next day off, Frank, ­unbeknownst to me, went back to the jail and talked with the suspect. Ultimately, the suspect sold Frank the car. Well, that was wrong, and once it was found out, Frank was immediately transferred to Seventy-Seventh Division. He later quit the job and bought a used car lot. He was a good partner, he just made a mistake.

Although I had no knowledge of his purchase of the car, the fact that we were partners cast a shadow on me, and I was sent to Communications Division. There was no investigation per se, that’s just how things were done then. Communications was in City Hall and I was the supervisor in the mic room. Eventually, I transferred back to Hollywood where I would spend the rest of my career.

The department used to put on shows for the public at the Shrine Auditorium downtown. It was an annual event, and ­policemen would sell tickets during their assigned shift. In ’52, Harvey ­Gibson, Jerry Ellis, and I, all from Hollywood, did some publicity for the show with actress Marie Wilson. At the time, she was famous for her radio character, Irma Peterson, on the radio comedy show, My Friend Irma.

Marie Wilson with Harvey Gibson, Jerry Ellis, and Hal Williams

For a couple of weeks, I worked the Hollywood Vice Unit. One of the things that they went after was prostitution, both those who worked the street and those who advertised and welcomed their customers to their home. The policeman I was assigned with had information on this man who was selling sex out of his home. I was supposed to work him. I called the advertised number and arranged to visit him. The plan was for me to go in the apartment and my partner would give me twenty minutes to get a violation—an offer of sex for money. Well, after a little while, he gave me a ­violation—he wanted me to be a homosexual. Right at twenty minutes, my partner knocked at the door and the man answered it. As soon as we identified ourselves as policemen, he went nuts. He put up a big fight, and we even went over the couch. I choked him out, we handcuffed him, and took him to jail. That was enough for me. I didn’t want to work vice anymore.

When I returned to patrol, I was working with Manny Mesa. There was this four-family flat in an area where we were having a rash of burglaries. The gal in one of the apartments that faced a side street saw two guys sitting on the curb one day next to a parked car with the trunk lid up. She continued to watch, and one guy left and came back carrying a television and put the television in the trunk. They got in the car and left. Well, these two had just committed a burglary. Manny and I were working together in plain clothes on the burglary problem, and we were given a description of the car and the suspects.

A couple days later, lo and behold, we see the car with the trunk lid up in the same area where the prior burglary had ­occurred. Two guys were sitting next to it. We detained them, and the gal who first saw them identified both. We were feeling pretty good about the arrest, thinking maybe we would get a commendation. The lieutenant told us, You were just doing your job. That was it; you were just doing your job. That was disappointing, but even so, it was a good arrest. We were out looking for these guys, we found them, and the burglary problem stopped.

One night, I’m working with Manny, when one of the Felony cars found one of their units, unattended, and parked in the middle of Gower at Carlos Street. They couldn’t find the two officers and put it out over the air. Manny and I were close by so we rushed over there to help search. We were the first uniformed officers there. No one knew what the hell was going on, but the officers were gone.

The officers were Ian Campbell and Karl Hettinger, working one of the Hollywood F-cars, and that was the night they were kidnapped and taken to Bakersfield. Ian was killed, Karl escaped, and the two suspects, Gregory Powell and Jimmy Lee Smith, were captured. We learned in roll call the next day exactly what had happened. I worked with Ian several times, we always spoke, and we were always friendly; more so than I had with Hettinger. Ian had a certain clump, for lack of a better word, to his walk. If you didn’t tell me who was coming from behind, hearing the clump, I would know it was him. At the funeral, they played the bagpipes, I think that was the first time for a Los Angeles policeman. Ian had played the bagpipes and practiced in the station. That was a sad moment for me, losing a fellow policeman and one who was a friend. It wasn’t just some policeman that I didn’t know. I knew him. I’ll tell you, all the way home after we were released that night, I looked in every damn car going by to see if they were in it.

My intention was to stay for twenty years. But there was talk of providing a fluctuating pension, and I stayed for one more. Unfortunately, the pension change did not happen, so I retired and went into private business.

Leon Mott

Birthplace: Los Angeles

Career: 1947–1967

Rank at Retirement: Policeman

Division: Central

It was unheard of to stay at one division from the beginning to the end of a career, but I did. The only thing I cared about on the job was walking the beat. I wasn’t the smartest guy in the world at reports and stuff, but I was a worker. It would be safe to say that I made thousands of arrests, and Internal Affairs only came to my house once. I lived near downtown Los Angeles, and when they came, we sat on the porch and talked. It was about an allegation of false arrest, but nothing ever came of it. When I retired, I was given a big celebratory card that had written on it, Leon Mott, 5213, check on one please. That was what you would say when you used the call box to run someone for warrants. You would identify yourself by name and serial number. Everybody signed it. I wish I still had that card.

My family was very poor. My father left soon after I was born, and my mother cleaned houses for a living. We lived in a rooming house, one bathroom for three or four rented rooms, in Los Angeles. As a teen, I worked every chance I got. I worked for Mrs. Carrie Estelle Doheny, the widowed wife of Edward Doheny, an oil tycoon and one of the wealthiest men in the world. Mrs. Doheny lived in their mansion on Chester Place just off Adams Boulevard. My mom and I lived about a football field distance from the mansion property on Estrella Avenue. Mrs. Doheny knew we were poor and one day asked me to help with the gardening during the summertime. About all I knew about gardening was raking leaves, so that’s what I did. The money I earned, about twenty dollars a month, allowed me and my mother to live a little bit higher.

Leon Mott

After I came on the department, I worked as Mrs. Doheny’s bodyguard. Here was one of the wealthiest ladies in the world whose life I had in my hands. Fortunately, nothing happened that caused me to take any type of action. She died in 1958 and had included me in her will leaving me a sum of $3,000. I used the money to buy my first car, a Cadillac.

In ’47, after three years in the Army, I was twenty-one years old and looking for a job. I read an advertisement in the newspaper one day that the Los Angeles Police Department was hiring. It stated in the advertisement that a twenty-year retirement plan was being offered to new policemen. That was very attractive, that I could retire at the age of forty-one with a pension. I applied and was accepted.

The academy was tough for me academically. I really had trouble learning how to write the reports. Even at the end of my career, I still had trouble doing a traffic report. Despite one sergeant wanting to kick me out because of my academic deficiencies, another sergeant put his reputation at stake and argued for me to stay. He prevailed, and I graduated in November of ’47.

During my career, I worked off-duty jobs, including at Dodger Stadium and at the local racetrack. One of the detectives from the infamous Hat Squad, Ed Benson, was in charge of security at the Hollywood Racetrack, and he put me in the jockey’s room, a choice position. He knew from my reputation that I wouldn’t ask the jockeys for any racing tips. The sergeant that wanted to kick me out of the academy brought a group of cadets from the academy on a tour of the racetrack. He saw me and, as he pointed at me, he said to the cadets, One of the best officers on the LAPD is standing right over there. It was the funniest thing.

My entire career was walking a foot beat in Central Division. I worked in a police car maybe a dozen times, but only when someone called in sick and they needed someone to take that person’s place. In twenty years on the job, I never drove a police car! I drove the B-wagon, but I never drove a police car. I’m not much of a driver. I didn’t even get an automobile until I became a policeman, that Cadillac I told you about.

My first beat was on East Fifth Street. On East Fifth Street it seemed like there was a cutting every night. Most were on parole and they wouldn’t carry guns because carrying a gun put you right back in prison. If there was a weapon involved, it was usually a knife. On a weekend, it was nothing to come across a knife fight on one corner and call for an ambulance, then find another knife fight on the next corner and call for another ambulance. This one night, we came across a guy that had his stomach slit during a knife fight. When we lifted his shirt, you could see his guts hanging out. My partner told me to go into the bar that was right there and get a clean towel. Using the towel, my partner pushed the man’s guts back into his stomach. We then waited for the ambulance.

I was a twenty-two-year-old kid, and it was scary walking into those bars on a Friday or Saturday night. I was scared stiff; I’m not ashamed to say it. I thought someone could stick me with a knife and run out, and no one would say who it was that stuck me.

One night, these plainclothes officers had a guy that gave them a bad time and at one point challenged them to a fight. He apparently said, If you didn’t have a badge on, I would beat the heck out of you. Well everyone knew that I had been a boxer in high school and in the Army. They called for me to meet them, and when I got there, they said to this guy, Okay, you want to fight a policeman? Fight him. The guy had been drinking. Otherwise he would not have accosted the officers. The officers took my gun and belt and then told the guy, Okay, beat the heck out of a policeman if you want to. I hit him, boom, boom, and down he went. It happened a few times. It was not right, but that’s how things went.

I’ll tell you how things were in ’47. At Sixth Street and San ­Julian, there was a bar owned by an Italian guy named Johnny. Like all other bars around there, it was a crummy bar. However, the back room was like a lawyer’s office. Johnny had a desk that any Beverly Hills lawyer would give their eyetooth to have. I found out Johnny was very powerful.

One day, I’m relatively new and walking a beat by myself. I see this guy walking on the sidewalk carrying a large suitcase. He looked at me and tried to hurry his pace toward the bar. I became suspicious, thinking maybe he had drugs in the suitcase. I stopped him just before he could go into the bar. Somebody must have told Johnny because he came running out and said to me with his heavy Italian accent, What you got. What you got.

I said, I got this guy here with a suitcase maybe full of drugs.

He said, Come in the back. Come in my office.

I didn’t know Johnny, but I presumed he didn’t want any police activity outside his bar, and it appeared he wanted to help. I escorted the guy and the suitcase into his office. We opened the suitcase, and there was a large amount of money in it, a ton of money. Johnny looked at the money and said he knew the robbery detectives and thought I should call them. I thought that was a good idea, so I went outside to a call box on the corner and called the robbery detectives who said they would be right over. I went back in the bar, and when the detectives got there, we reopened the suitcase—no money, only clothes. The detectives looked at me as if I had wasted their time. They didn’t question Johnny or the guy who had the suitcase. The detectives took me outside and told me I should stay away from the bar. This was two years before Parker became chief.

Well I knew I had been taken advantage of, so about two or three weeks later there was a customer in the bar, and he and the bartender were screaming and hollering at each other. Here’s my chance to get back. I called the B-wagon, arrested the bartender and the customer, and took them to jail. The customer was drunk, and the bartender had hit him. Two weeks later, I was transferred to another foot beat near the Biltmore Hotel.

Now I’m directing traffic at Fifth and Olive in front of the Biltmore Hotel, and part of my duties was to assist pedestrians walking from the parking garage across the street to the Biltmore Theater. As I’m directing traffic, who do I see but my captain and Johnny walking together to attend the theater. I found out Johnny was the captain’s guest. That’s how things were before Parker took over. The corruption was there. All Johnny had to do was make a phone call, and I was gone.

The Mafia never reached Los Angeles, but we had Italians here who were just as much involved in crime as any Mafia guy. And if you upset them, they had ways of getting to you. I was always afraid someone would put dope in my locker. It sounds crazy, but it did happen to some other policemen. And I knew darn well they were clean. That’s why I never went to my locker; I always wore my uniform home. When Parker became chief, he was able to clean up uniform in Central with no problem. He could ­transfer people. Detectives were harder to replace, so that took more time.

Biltmore Hotel