Los Angeles had Mickey Cohen, Bugsy Siegel and Jack Dragna — Al Capone even visited now and then — but sprawl and civic corruption may have played a role in tamping down the violence here.
L.A.’s mobsters were few in number, and maybe they were wearing board shorts under those topcoats — yes, I joke — but organized crime rackets and L.A. go way back together, and also way up, from City Hall and the LAPD, and down to speakeasys, vice dens, gambling joints and brothels.
Our sunshine racketeers weren’t Capone-grade, but Al Capone did come to town a couple of times. The first time, in December 1927, he was a guest at the Biltmore Hotel for a day or two before his incognito was blown and the cops hustled him back on a train to Chicago. “I thought you liked tourists!” he complained to The Times then.
If they were going to keep the money coming in, they had to come together to deal with another mob called “the Combination,” “the Spring Street clique” — officials who used the authority of City Hall to profit from the same criminal delights that enriched the mob, sometimes working in competition, sometimes hand in glove.: “The LAPD’s central vice squad was on the take; and a loose, organized-crime syndicate was protected by the top aide of Mayor George Cryer.
In the next decade, Mayor Frank Shaw ratcheted up the racket. He scammed city projects and contracts, and his brother sold the answers to LAPD hiring exams to candidates he favored. The long-gone magazine Liberty wrote in 1940 that in the 20 years before Shaw was recalled, in 1938, “the city of Los Angeles had been, almost uninterruptedly, run by an underworld government invisible to the average citizen.”When the mob wasn’t competing with City Hall profiteers, it was paying them off.
If things didn’t get too bloody too publicly, the city and the mob could keep a lid on things. “As long as it was quiet, no bloodshed in the streets,” Niotta figures, “then it was fine, because [L.A.] wanted to have this image of a family-friendly, fun, touristy place. But they also wanted these vices discreetly.
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