The History of the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department, Part 2: The Los Angeles Rangers
Newsletter April 13, 2021
As discussed in the last post, the main form of law enforcement at the time of California’s statehood was “vigilance committees,” which were widely considered “democratic,” even when this mob justice made decisions at odds with judges or the sheriff. This populist mob justice – agreed upon by a majority of white men – had the blessing of fairness, a kind of legitimacy bestowed by the group nature of the decision-making. In fact, one of the major challenges early sheriffs faced was their ineffectiveness in the face of a vigilance committee; as a result, sheriffs tended to just go along to get along, which is what one does where there’s an armed mob. I hear echoes of the far right today…
Early sheriffs had maybe 2 deputies working under them and, while paid a handsome sum, weren’t always able to contain mob rule and certainly couldn’t respond to calls for service. The Los Angeles Rangers were formed in 1853 as a quasi-military posse under the command of the sheriff. They only last about 4 years, disbanding in 1857 fter what was probably their most dreadful massacre following the death of Sheriff James Barton (more on that later). This wasn’t the first vigilante-military style group in early Los Angeles; apparently, the Anglo elite had tried three other times to form a mounted posse, a local army, in essence, to deal with what was largely framed as an intense problem of crime in Los Angeles.
An August 6, 1953, edition of the Los Angeles Star (the first newspaper in the city) described the Rangers as “Public Defense.” The article describes an “efficient military force, which could be brought out promptly, in aid of the laws and protection from life and property.” The corps would consist of 100 rangers, with horses, and would require, according to the editorial, $1000 from the Board of Supervisors.
What were the dangers, according to the newspaper of the time? Well, they were not a far cry from what people say today, racist fears of outsiders”
We are not only exposed to regular predatory visits from Indians from the neighboring mountains, who come here to feed on cattle and carry off horses, and who have never yet been even once chastised, and, consequently, are every day getting bolder in their forays amongst the ranchos; but recently, we have seen an organized band of robbers, well mounted and well armed, traversing the country unmolested, sometimes making no concealment of their movements…it is universally admitted that the roads are unsafe to travel, and a sense of utter insecurity prevails in house and field.
It’s hard to assess the legitimacy of these fears. Certainly, many publications of the time focus on the high murder rate in Los Angeles as well as the legendary “banditos,” referring to mostly Mexican men who gambled with piles of gold in the saloons. But, much of this feels like myth-making on the frontier. What we do know is that Native Americans and Mexicans (as well as Black and Chinese residents, especially a bit later when more migrated to the area) were subject to a great deal of violence, which largely went unrecorded. There was also a lot of score-settling amongst landowners and ranchers. Additionally, because of laws preventing Native Americans from owning land, hunting, fishing, or otherwise engaging in any activity that is necessary for living, people were indeed desperate, and a lot of thefts of cattle appear to me to be based on the necessity to survive in a time when Anglos and Californios were busy waging war over property and dominance.
The first Captain of the Rangers was Alexander Hope, a physician, soldier, and “man for the place.” The Los Angeles Rangers are considered one of the first police forces in the city (they called Hope the “Chief of Police”). They were a more organized form of the Vigilance Committees, better able to spring into action at a moment’s notice.
Major Horace Bell, a big-time Ranger member, wrote a memoir/ history about the Los Angeles Rangers, called Reminiscences of a Ranger, or Early Times in Southern California in which he champions the vigilante and individual hero, looking at crime and punishment with a point of view that suited his purposes. His Los Angeles is one of great violence, filled with desperados hanging out in saloons. Bell argues that “no man could be found bold enough” to take the job of sheriff. I mean, men did take the job, but we can allow Bell poetic license.
A mercenary, soldier, lawyer, and vigilante, Bell was raised on the romantic tales of conquistadors and “championed causes of both legitimate and questionable repute.” Bell had a soldier’s determination and abhorrence for “savagery and deceit.” When Bell moved to Los Angeles in 1852, he entered a changed and fluid region where there was both a great deal of cultural and ethnic diversity and the desire to impose American-style “law and order” on what was considered the wild frontier. There were Native Americans, “Californios” (Mexicans born in California), and, of course, a bunch of Anglos. As American businessmen moved to Los Angeles, they imposed their version of “justice” and adopted some of the Hispanic customs. Both systems were virulently racist against the Native people, an attitude that was codified as California was swallowed more thoroughly into the United States. (Recall the “regular predatory visits” from Native Americans as part of the justification for the Rangers.)
One of Bell’s heroes was Judge Roy Bean, a frontier Texas judge (after he fled California) who held court in a saloon and was known as “the hanging judge,” which gives you a pretty good idea of what Bell liked about the man. So it’s not a surprise that Bell’s memoir ignores racial frictions – the cause of a great deal of strife in Los Angeles – and instead focuses on stories that sound like classic Western movies.
Bell’s memoir describes one of the early Los Angeles Vigilance Committee “trials,” which was of six men accused of killing General Joshua Bean, the brother of the infamous Judge Bean. (General Bean was apparently more well-liked and his murder was quite the scandal.) The arrested men were alleged to be from various outlaw gangs, so I assume that the Committee members were not overly-concerned with the actual facts of the case. The Committee essentially held inquisitorial-style sessions in which they tried to extract confessions by the men in order to justify hanging them. Bell describes the “investigation” as follows:
On inquiry I found that said sub-committee had been in session for about a week, endeavoring to extract confessions from the miserable culprits by a very refined process of questioning and cross-questioning, first by one of the committee, then by another, until the whole committee would exhaust their ingenuity on the victim, when all of their separate results would be solemnly compared, and all the discrepancies in the prisoners statements be brought back to him and he be required to explain and reconcile them to suit the committee, poor devil…was held strictly accountable for any and all contradictions, and if not satisfactorily explained, was invariably taken by the wide heads of the said committee to be conclusive evidence of guilt.
The first sheriffs were also in charge of maintaining jails, to the extent they existed. The first jail in Los Angeles was an old adobe house attached to the building used as a City Hall. Historical documents describe a room with a pine log down the middle where people were chained. It also wasn’t very secure. People could puncture the walls or cut holes. Early on, the jail was vastly overcrowded from the beginning.
And, there was convict leasing. Native Americans were arrested, sentenced by Justices of the Peace, and “leased” as labor for $.50 a day, a process described by author Kelly Hernandez thus:
Held every Monday morning at the Los Angeles county jail, the auction of natives was a spectacle on the streets of Los Angeles. As one city resident recalled, the local Marshall would begin arresting natives on drunk and vagrancy charges at sunset on Saturday evening. In the morning, the jailer tied the incarcerated natives to a wood beam in front of the jail, allowing white employers to inspect and bid on them as convict laborers.
The role of Anglos in general, and early Vigilance Committees and other law enforcement in particular, in the genocide of Native Americans, cannot be overstated. By 1854, the California government has spent nearly $1 million to kill or expel Native Americans from their homes. The state even issued bonds so that people could invest in the genocide. While many of these campaigns were run by the state government, local law enforcement and governments knew how to marshal the laws to the same effect, and history reflects that this was done intentionally. Laws specifically allowed for the enslavement of Native people, and there were various codes that prevented Native Americans from, for example, testifying against white men. White men kidnapped children and held them as indentured servants. Laws that limited fishing and hunting were put in place to prevent Native Americans from subsistence activities. Nor could white people sell ammunition or guns to Native Americans.
As mentioned last week, George Thompson Burrell was the first sheriff of Los Angeles County. The second was James Barton, who took over in 1851 and had a more colorful career. (This was when sheriffs were still elected every year.) Next installment will have more on James Barton – “the intrepid man-hunter” and his death.
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“The Sheriffs Are Mobilizing”
Last week, some 275 sheriffs signed a letter addressed to President Joe Biden complaining about his “border policies,” whatever that means. On Fox News, Sheriff Thomas Hodgson of Bristol County, Massachusetts – the sheriff who seems to have been the lead instigator for this letter – described the situation falsely as “open borders.” Um, no.
Honestly, I don’t take anything these sheriffs say for the truth of the matter because their statements are mostly politically oriented and factually dubious. But, here’s what I think is important. The sheriffs “are mobilizing,” as Sheriff Hodgson said. They have plainly decided that there is strength in numbers and a place to use that strength, along with the typical tactics all advocacy groups use, to oppose the Biden administration and push their agenda.
In my view, they have settled on immigration as a key issue because they can get the most airtime, both from the mainstream media and on places like Fox and Newsmax. A few new tweaks include the fact that sheriffs are positioning themselves as “humanitarians,” concerned about human trafficking and child welfare, in lieu of just being racist xenophobes. This makes sense, and I think it’s important to think about how policies shift in order to absorb the ongoing dialogue around issues. (Sex trafficking, for example, both a left progressive/ women’s issue and a far-right, Qanon issue is now a regular old police issue.)
Most important of all, sheriffs have decided they can mobilize without relying on other special interest groups, like the NRA, FAIR, Oath Keepers, or the Republican Party (even though these sheriffs all have links to one or more of these groups). Even if such groups are disbanded – prosecutors may charge the leader with crimes in connection to January 6, for example, and some state attorney generals are thinking about outlawing militias more generally – the sheriffs will survive.
See my Panic! At the Border post for more on sheriffs and border-mania.