Kristian Williams - Our Enemies in Blue - Police and Power in America

And let's not forget the enormous range of corporate crimes that are essentiallyhandled as violations of administrative rules or as civil matters ratherthan as criminal conspiracies.89If the social control function operates as this argument suggests, it followsthe same pattern as nineteenth-century public order arrests, and may be presumedto fulfill a similar function.9oWHITE LAWS, WHITE POWERLaws have been passed, and interpreted, and enforced in ways designed to maximizethe control White people exercise over people of color. But they have alsobeen broken, and ignored, and underenforced with the same aim in mind.When the demands of White supremacy and the requirements of the law haveconflicted, the maintenance of White supremacy has almost always appearedhigher on the police agenda. Police illegality and complicity in White terrorcontinue in an unbroken sequence from Reconstruction to today.In the early twentieth century, police re-established their ties to the newlyreconstituted Klan. During the 1920s, Klansmen were enlisted to aid theauthorities in their fight against the evils of alcohol and Communism. In 1930,John G. Murphy, a member ofthe Alabama Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, testifiedbefore the House Special Committee to Investigate Communist Activities(also called the Fish Committee) that the Klan helped the Birmingham policeand the FBI keep track of Communists by following Communist Party organizers,identifying people at their meetings, and so on.91 In other places, wholeKlaverns were deputized for Prohibition raids, and many cops signed up inthe "Invisible Empire."92The extent of joint membership was often startling. In 1922, when Los AngelesDistrict Attorney Thomas Lee Woolwine raided area Klan headquarters andseized their records, he discovered that Los Angeles Chief of Police Louis D.Oaks, Sheriff William 1. Trager, and U.S. Attorney Joseph Burke were all connectedto the Klan. The police chief and police judge in nearby Bakersfieldwere both members, as were seven Fresno officers, twenty-five cops in SanFrancisco, and about a tenth of the public officials and police in the rest ofCalifornia's cities.93Further north, in Portland, Oregon, the connection between the police andthe Klan was public knowledge. In 1923, the Portland Telegram reported thatthe police bureau was "full to the brink with Klansmen." )! At times, this relationshipwas officially sanctioned, as when the police bureau deputized one hundredKlansmen specially selected by Grand Dragon Fred Gifford, designating them"Portland Police Vigilantes." Of course, Klan membership was not limited topolicemen. The Portland-based Klan No. 1 boasted 15,000 members. and onMarch 3, 1923, it hosted a banquet featuring Governor Walter Pierce and MayorGeorge L. Baker.95When the Klan was at the peak of its power in Colorado, it counted amongits members many prominent businessmen, state representatives and senators,the Colorado secretary of state, four judges, two federal narcotics agents, andscores of police. In Denver, the mayor, city attorney, manager of public safety,two deputy sheriffs, the chief of police, and a police inspector were all Klan91