by Paul R. Spitzzeri
During the 20-year period from 1904 to 1924, the Los Angeles Police Department had 17 chiefs, which was held up at the time as a prime indicator of how troubled the department was during a time of generally acknowledged significant corruption within the broader municipal governance of the Angel City.
The featured artifact for this post is a remarkable “Snappy Shots” caricature of Robert Lee Heath (1881-1974,) whose tenure of under two years between 1924 and 1926 was characteristically short, if, however, relatively free of much of the controversy that marked the terms of predecessors before and after.
The drawing is pretty typical of such renderings (there is one, for example, of Walter P. Temple that we should definitely highlight on this blog and which comes from the same time) showing Heath’s massive head perched atop a small body, shown in uniform with a blank star, with the chief holding a blank piece of paper and what appears to be a truncheon attached to his desk. There are noted at the bottom in ink and pencil, while the chief’s name and date of “3-6-25” are on the reverse.
Heath was born to Martin Heath and Margaret Woods in Mt. Pleasant, Pennsylvania, situated southeast of Pittsburgh and where his father was a doctor while his mother had a teaching background and the Heaths also resided in Kansas, southeast of Wichita, where they operated a farm. After his father retired, the family, which also included a younger brother, Cleveland, and a sister, Sarah, headed west and settled in Whittier. The Heath brothers worked in the burgeoning oil industry before they headed into Los Angeles to begin their careers as officers with the LAPD.
Martin and Margaret relocated to Baldwin Park, a newly established town (one of its main figures was Milton Kauffman, an El Monte merchant who later was Temple’s business manager and had a remarkable late-in-life career as a prominent post-World War II housing developer) not far from the Homestead. While Martin, who was two decades older than his wife, remained retired, Margaret became a teacher and principal and, in 1924, as honored with the naming of an elementary school after her. The school still exists and there is a scholarship offered in her name. Sarah was also a long-time teacher at Fairfax High School in Los Angeles.
Lee, as he was commonly known, rose in the ranks of the LAPD starting from a patrol officer in November 1904 and becoming a sergeant three years later. An early reference to him is from the 17 September 1911 edition of the Los Angeles Times, which observed that he was a “Los Angeles Apollo” while a lieutenant favored by Chief Charles E. Sebastian, who went on the great controversy when he became the city’s mayor a few years later. The paper stated that “Chief of Police Sebastian has found his Greek god” as Sebastian “believes that Lieut. Robert Lee Heath comes the nearest to the perfect man, physically, on the force.” For his part, Heath modestly told the Times,
I would prefer that the Chief’s views were expressed at another time. It’s rather ticklish getting into the limelight these days, especially if you’re on the police force. And I have never considered myself seriously as a handsome man.
What he did have, and this was likely encouraged by his boss, was ambition. In summer 1913, he passed the bar exam. At the end of 1918, having written a manual on the law and procedure for the department he was promoted to captain, while also serving as a Justice of the Peace in the city. His ticket to furthering his career, however, came when he entered the orbit of George E. Cryer, elected mayor in 1921 thanks to the help of his powerful campaign manager Kent Parrott.
Being well-connected to the Parrott “machine” at city hall and with Cryer heading, as all chief executives of the city did in those days, the Police Commission, Heath was in the fast lane at the LAPD’s upper echelons. This, however, meant clashing with Chief Louis D. Oaks, who charged his subordinate with five counts, including insubordination, political activity, violations of civil service regulations and the department manual, and a general overriding of Oaks’ authority.
The drama stretched over some weeks, including a Commission hearing, which generated some notable press coverage. The Pomona Bulletin of 29 July 1923 observed that the incident “created a tremendous sensation in the department and has thrown a bombshell into the ranks of local politicians.” When there were counter-claims that Oaks was found in a car with a scantily-dressed woman and a bottle of hooch (it was Prohibition) and the chief replaced by August Vollmer, a well-known Berkeley chief and criminologist, the situation got very heated.
In the end, Heath was reinstated by the Commission, which issued a “firm reprimand,” that is, a slap on the wrist, according to some, with one commissioner refusing to sign the reinstatement agreement. Vollmer, who quickly enacted sweeping reforms to clean up the department, did not last long in his position, however, with some suggestions that he was frustrated by the entrenched corruption in the ranks of the department.
A new element to the civil service aspect of policing in 1923 was the requirement that anyone seeking to be chief take an examination and Vollmer scored eight points higher than the others who took the test. Heath scored in the higher ranks of the thirteen men, including his brother, who passed, while 18 others failed to meet the minimum standard. When Vollmer, however, decided to resign in summer 1924, Heath immediately became the front-runner, no doubt because of his support of Cryer and ties to Parrott.
Heath became acting chief in mid-July while Vollmer went on vacation to conclude his term at the end of that month. The Los Angeles Record of the 17th, under the headline of “Heath Must Cooperate,” observed that Cryer’s appointee “apparently will not have the freedom in the conduct of the department” that Vollmer did, as Cryer was paraphrased as saying “he would expect Captain Heath to confer with him and the police commission on all matters of importance before taking action,” and that he wanted the avoidance of such controversies as that involving Oaks.
Four days later, the paper’s José Rodriguez, a rare person of color writing for one of the larger papers, interviewed the new chief, noting first that his “tall, spacious figure, supporting an urban, smiling countenance surmounted by a gray head of curling hair, [and] gives no indication of the self-propelling police official.” In fact, the reporter added, Heath “looks like a happy, kindly high school principal” and, rather than a hard-boiled law enforcement officer, “no man is milder and filled with greater desire for justice and temperance,” so that “this serenity is precisely what robs his personality of the pungency requisite for impinging fear.”
The new executive was to embark on a policy that was “paternal with a rare element of courtesy and tolerance,” with Heath quoted as saying, “I want to be just; I want to be fair. If we all work together harmoniously and without friction, everything will be all right.” Rodriguez then remarked,
Municipal politics are [sic] a complicated and cantankerous machine. It eats up the oil, and the oil is rare to find. In the police department specially, where everything becomes intensified and crystallized in difficulty, the oil becomes still more rare and more precious.
Heath believes this oil to be composed of a sense of justice strongly flavored with politeness; a vast capacity for praise, and a libation of sympathy served hot.
Averring that her prized personal communication and that demonstrating friendship with officers as essential, the chief told the reporter “I don’t want to bicker and argue . . . it would be silly on my part to stand on the bulwark of my authority” and that there should be no cold distance between the commander and officers.” Instead, he continued, “let me approach the personnel of the department from the angle of intimate kindliness.”
Rodriguez concluded by emphasizing the word “paternal” as core to the chief’s management philosophy because “in times of distress most men would rather be tried and punished by paternal means than by the typical means of the police.” He then apparently cited “a distinguished safe-cracker friend” who stated, “if I get pinched [arrested,] give me Heath to do the pinch. He’s a human being, not a prosecutor in uniform.”
The kindliness, politeness and paternalism did not apply to Oaks. At the end of 1924, he was dismissed, as he tried to do to Heath the prior year, after 14 years of service, ostensibly because of “affairs with a woman, misconduct in near-by towns, misconduct while with the police band touring the country in 1922, and misconduct in this city.” The substance was battling the bottle and, because Oaks did not go to the meeting or have counsel representing him, it was easy enough for the Commission to sign the order of discharge. Remarkably, he tried to get reinstated a full decade later.
Perhaps seeking to continue some of Vollmer’s momentum, despite Cryer’s misgivings about the predecessor chief, Heath introduced some innovations, including having nearly four dozen division commanders and other high-ranking officers take business courses through the extension department of the University of Southern California and opening a shooting range in Elysian Park, very close to where Dodger Stadium was built more than three decades later.
He was also frank about the inability of the LAPD to tackle Prohibition, citing this as more of a social than a legal problem. Appearing at a club speaking engagement with District Attorney Asa Keyes, Heath called for more public support, especially in the face of “an organized group of criminals who try to lower the morale of the department by circulating stories about police inefficiency” leading to public opinion before knowing all the facts. Keyes added that he’d known the chief for many years and asserted that Heath was absolutely honest, fair and competent,” though the DA later ended up in federal prison on a bribery conviction.
The Times, however, as part of a series on “Our City Government,” took the LAPD to task in October 1924 amid a major event to reform the city charter, which was done in 1925, adding that Heath was that 17th chief in two decades, and remarked acidly that,
The police department, while in theory having no connection with politics, always has been and still is a hotbed of petty politics and a political plaything for the present Mayor, as it has been for former Mayors. The Chief of Police takes his orders from the Mayor and the Mayor’s friends, or he doesn’t remain at the head of the police department. This has always been true in the past city administrations and is no worse nor better under the present administration.
Vollmer’s reform efforts were given due attention, with another being the establishment of a record and identification department to centralize an essential set of functions under Heath’s management, and it was approvingly noted that the size of the force doubled under the administration of the pair. Even with City Hall “interference,” the Times recorded that experts believed that the LAPD “is probably on a better footing in every way than ever before.”
Amid this praise, however, the paper’s report concluded with,
The experience of many years has proven that the present method of administering the police department is a failure and that politics will not allow any Chief of Police to conduct the department as it should be conducted. Under the method set out in the new city charter matters may be much better or, as pointed out by police officers of years’ standing they may be much worse. It will depend absolutely on the character of the Mayor and his appointees as Police Commissioners.
In February 1925, Cryer addressed claims from council member Robert Allan, who apparently had designs on defeating the mayor in the next election, that “vice and gambling were flagrantly in operation” but that “nothing has been done, to stamp out vice.” Vociferous in his response, the chief executive told the press that he’d understood that there were 1,000 arrests in January and that “I appointed Robert Lee Heath as chief of police after I was assured by the law enforcement element that he was best fitted to enforce the law impartially.”
In April, the Los Angeles Illustrated Daily News called for reelecting Cryer to a third term, reminding readers that, when he took office four years before, there were 775 officers with the Angel City being widely known as “under-policed,” but there were then more than 2,500 of them with more to come as the city’s population grew. The paper also asserted that “the morale and efficiency of the department have been bettered, and its commander, Chief Robert Lee Heath, is recognized as one of the outstanding police officials of the United States.” Among further improvements was a better traffic bureau and instructional programs for LAPD personnel.
Rather abruptly, however, Heath resigned in late February 1926, citing high blood pressure and a physician’s recommendation that he step back from stressful activity. After more than 20 years on the force, he was pensioned at $3,000 annually, half his current salary and intended, after several weeks’ rest, to devote himself to a sole proprietor law practice. He and his wife and children moved to a distinctive house in Tujunga, from far downtown, but Heath did not distance himself from activities downtown.
In fact, his legal work sometimes involved representation of police officers and officials and a Pasadena Post columnist was critical of the fact that Heath received a pension while engaging in that kind of defense work. When it seemed, in spring 1927, that Cryer might resign, though, in fact, he won another two-year term, the former chief was mentioned as a possible replacement. Heath’s successor was James E. “Two-Gun” Davis, a former vice squad commander whose blunt and forceful rhetoric attracted controversy.
In 1928, council member Carl Jacobson, who’d survive considerable problems involving his arrest on a morals charge the prior year, called for the termination of the police chief position and the abolishment of the Police Commission, arguing that both were corrupted beyond repair. When Davis was ousted at the end of 1929, Heath was his attorney, though “Two-Gun” ended up returning to the chief role four years later and served another half-dozen years.
Heath’s public presence remained prominent during the end of the Roaring Twenties and into the Great Depression years. He was a director of the Southern California Academy of Criminology, was on a governing board for a planned club on the coast at Venice, and, in spring 1931, joined a law firm created by Cryer.
While he remained an attorney for many years, he appeared far less often in media accounts after that period, but lived to be 93 years old, residing in Tujunga and then in a Van Nuys retirement facility. After his death in December 1974, however, rather little was said about him and merely that he was chief for not quite two years.
Heath, however, was a notable law enforcement figure and was a major official for the LAPD during a time of massive growth in the Angel City and expansion and transformation in the department and he deserves to be remembered for his career, including that brief tenure as chief.
While reading this post, two things came to mind. First, my friend’s son, whose first job after college was as a police officer, was terminated within his first year after witnessing his supervisor engaging in indecent behavior with a woman in a car – an incident similar to what is described in this post. Second, The widespread corruption within the Hong Kong police force before the 1970s, comparable to the rampant police corruption in Los Angeles, Chicago, and New York in the 1920’s and 1930’s, ultimately led to the establishment of the Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC) in 1974.
I believe that morality is easily eroded by authority and power; and without accountability and oversight, the power granted to the police is highly susceptible to abuse – especially when fueled by opportunities such as Prohibition.