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The end of World War II was something of the Gold Rush days all over again in that there was a surge of people, in this case war workers, from all over the world converging into the city. August 14, 1945 might have marked the end of the war, but for a while San Francisco was something of a war zone, when celebration of military personnel turned into full-scale riot that lasted three days. Chief Charles Dullea (appointed 1940) had to use all his resources to quell the actions of what he unequivocally called "the unbridled and unrestrained acts of a lot of undisciplined men in uniform."
If V-Day put the department's crowd control tactics to the test, the 50s presented a new kind of crime to deal with: organized crime. No longer an East Coast phenomenon, organized crime was making inroads into the West Coast, with a marked presence in San Francisco. Police Chief Francis Ahern (appointed 1956) and homicide Inspector Thomas J. Cahill (who, upon Chief Ahern's sudden death would be appointed Chief, in 1958), had gained national recognition in their handling of the mafia murder of Nick de John in 1947. (de John, along with a couple of his cohorts, had absconded out of Chicago with some mafia money. The mafia was not pleased with this. De John's body was eventually found in the trunk of a car parked at Laguna and Greenwich; He'd been strangled with fishing line.) Senator Estes Kefauver's committee on organized crime recognized Ahern and Cahill's investigation on this case, and the committee relied heavily on their expertise.
President Eisenhower greets security escort with Chief Tom Cahill is at right.
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