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

154The role of the red squads further expanded during World War I, thanksin part to Attorney General A Mitchell Palmer and his curious notion ofnational security. Local cops aided the Justice Department first in 1917, witha series of raids against the Industrial Workers of the World. IWW headquarterswere raided in eleven cities and hundreds of union leaders were arrested,allegedly for interfering with the draft. 'The red squads repeated their performancetwo years later, beginning in 1919, as they provided support for JusticeDepartment raids on a wide range of leftist organizations, resulting in 4,000arrests and almost 1,000 deportations.2H Local police agencies found supportfor these endeavors among the members of the American Protective League,a volunteer organization formed during the war to combat espionage andsabotage, round up draft-dodgers, and spy on immigrants. Many APL "volunteers"were actually off-duty cops; others were deputized to assist in raids.1,!During this same period, laws regulating demonstrations, meetings, andleafleting granted the police broad powers to determine when, where, andwhat speech would be allowed. It thus became the explicit function of thepolice to suppress the free exercise of political speech.'()As the Great Depression produced a swell of activism and unrest, policepractices shifted toward a focus on intelligence operations rather than directintervention. Intelligence became a distinct pursuit, very nearly its own profession,increasingly removed from law enforcement. While the potential forsuch a division had been present as early as 1886, it became institutionalizedduring the 1930s as red squads paid less attention to public disorder andmore to the organizations and movements behind such discord. I!'This change in emphasis was accompanied by a marked escalation in tactics.Increasing numbers of informants were employed against an ever-widerarray of organizations. The most spectacular abuses, of course, were thosedirech'rl from the top. During the 1930s, Los Angeles's red squad had teeHused to target the mayor's critics and political opponents-even to the pointof outright blackmail. At the same time, active disruption of organizationsbecame a higher priority, often greatly overreaching the authority grantedthe police, and even directly violating the law. For instance, the head of theLos Angeles red squad, Captain Earl Kynette, was convicted and imprisonedin connection with a 1938 car bomb explosion that critically injured a memberof a reform group, the Citizen's Independent Investigating Committee, whichhad been leading a campaign against police corruption-an effort certain todraw the ire of the authorities.31Kynette's zealotry led not only to a prison term, but to the dissolution ofhis squad as well. Shortly after his conviction, the City Council eliminated itsfunding. Elsewhere in the country, red squads fell victim to their own success.In the conservative climate of the 1950s, they faced a repeat of CaptainSchaack's problem-a shortage of subversives. The response to this situationwas two-fold. In part, red squads focused again on their historical opponents,labor unions. At the same time, they were granted a new mission as auxiliaryforces in the Cold War. But while the FBI still relied on local police for agreat deal of information, the special units saw their numbers and resourcesdwindle.}3 As a result, red squads became increasingly isolated within local