|
 At the end of World War I, in 1918, the SFPD had around 930 officers. The lawlessness that characterized the city during the Gold Rush began to take different turns, like the bloody Chinatown Tong Wars (they would be known as gang wars now) of the early 20s, and the flaunting of Prohibition laws during that decade. The tong wars were resolved with an early from of community policing, which would eventually become the department's ruling philosophy. Under Chief O'Brien, Inspector Jack Manion brought Chinatown leaders together, and persuaded the tong leaders to sign an agreement ending the violence. Because of Manion's work, the tong wars stopped, and the Chinese community came to respect and admire him.
The era of Prohibition, which extended for 13 long years, form 1920 to 1933, provided a unique example of law enforcement dealing with a basically unenforceable law. The law was brazenly violated by everyone from big-time distributors to a man called the "Walking Boot-legger," whose multiple inside pockets of his long coat concealed not only flasks of booze, but a glass as well, as he went along the waterfront selling his moonshine by the glass. The Property Clerk's Office was a vast liquor store. No sooner were the bottles' contents poured down the drain after court proceedings had ended than more full bottles were hauled in as evidence.
The Waterfront Strike of 1934, pictured right and below, prefigured the confrontations police would experience on V-day 11 years later and, much later, in the racially based riots and San Francisco State demonstrations over Vietnam in the 60s. A distressful time, striking dockworkers were pitted against police and federal troops, and the result was a mini-war, with a number of dockworkers killed in the gunfire and tear gas melee. It was a case of police drawn into a workers' conflict that should have been mediated by the workers and bosses through arbitration from the beginning, but animosity and temper prevailed, with unfortunate consequences.
Between the end of prohibition and the beginning of World War II, the Department continued to grow in manpower as the city itself increased in population. The department's years were marked by advances in training (Chief Daniel O'Brien [appointed 1920] instituted the Police Academy in 1923, the first in the nation; in technology (officers began to use the police radio in 1932); by new facilities (Park Station, opened in 1932); in organizational restructuring to meet department needs better; and in a major change in uniform design, namely, a short, single breasted dress coat.
General Strike 1934
|