Bruce Smith (1892-1955) was the director of the Institute of Public Administration, a New York City based non-profit. He was a longtime and respected expert on American policing, and his statistical and behavioral studies of how cops work, lead to reforms in many cities and states.
In this profile from the February 27, 1954 issue of The New Yorker, the same woes and complaints that are heard from citizens and cops today echo throughout.
Crime, corruption, police abuse, and the many facets, (mental, physical, emotional, political, racial) in tough, violent, rebellious America is the law enforcement story of our nation. Corruption, lies, patronage and wealthy people who get the “fix” and way out for wrongdoing, that is all illuminated in this essay.
There is an ongoing struggle in our country between our love of freedom and our fear of violence, and our longing for, and resentment of, order.
Mr. Smith knew the devils and angels of human character through his footwork and statistical analyses.
It’s good reading to remind ourselves that whatever meltdowns afflict our nation today have lots of precedent.
The PDF below is downloadable. Or read the enlargements that follow.
Clearly, there was crime and murder in Van Nuys in 1962.
In great staccato shorthand a woman is described as “a 22-year-old divorcee and dime store manager” (doesn’t that say it all). Divorced and managing a dime store. Things could be worse at 22.
Miss Colleen K. Mitzel was alone, in her apartment, and called police from a bedside phone when she heard an intruder, later identified as Leonard A. Farmer of Glendale, aged 19, ripping her living room screen.
She kept her revolver but did not use it, waiting for the police to come.
When cops arrived, the suspect was ransacking the apartment and then barricaded himself in a bathroom. After he refused to come out and surrender, Officer Dale Baker and his David Spickles fired through the door and killed him.
The intruder died in a stranger’s bathroom in Van Nuys. An ignomious way to depart this world.
He had a police record and had served time in a Florida prison.
He is 21, dressed in a Hawaiian shirt with a cotton bomber jacket and button front denim jeans. She is 19, holds a Boxer pup and wears a leopard print coat and appears somewhat sad and disturbed.
They are Alvin and Beverly Turnmire, recently married.
Their address is a home in Studio City at 4232 Goodland Ave. near the golf course. They probably live with his parents, but they want to get out and get an apartment.
And Burbank police said they committed a string of burglaries in order to furnish their new place.
November 5, 1947 is the date of their arrest. They were caught 71 years ago, and are probably dead. But their reincarnated young beings still walk Ventura Boulevard.
Studio City people: in love with dogs and exotic clothes, chasing goods and desires beyond their reach, a place of happiness and meltdowns, a magnet for dreamers, a trap set in the San Fernando Valley for aspirational types who fled from somewhere else, a district where many survive by impersonation, wearing costumes and carrying animals and evading responsibilities.
1954: Cop with Five Truckloads of Stolen Building Material
And then Alvin Turnmire, 27, is arrested seven years later. For white people back then there were always second chances.
Photograph caption dated March 8, 1954 reads “Officer Thomas Quarles examines king-sized wire snips as he stands amid five truck loads of building material loot alleged stolen by Alvin R. Turnmire, 27, and found by officers at the suspect’s Sun Valley home. Goods was (sic) valued at $20,000.” The article partially reads: “A Sun Valley father, who seven years ago looted Burbank stores to set up housekeeping, is back in jail today for a fantastic nine-month series of burglaries.”
1957: Cops with stolen loot.
Alvin Turmire, now 31, is arrested again, ten years later, in 1957, now living in Pacoima. He is still committing burglaries. For white people back then there were always third chances. Maybe it helps that he was a Marine, fought in WWII, earned a Purple Heart, “got a Jap bullet in the leg at Iwo Jima, as his wife explains.”
Photograph caption dated August 1, 1957 reads, “T. E. Holt, left, checks stolen property at Valley station with Det. John Sublette after police picked up two truckloads of stolen goods at home of Alvin Turnmire, 31, 8969 Snowden Ave., Pacoima. More than $10,000 worth of various equipment was picked up. Turnmire was booked on suspicion of burglary and is scheduled to be arraigned today.”
Foolish Robert Norris, 25, of 4809 Sepulveda Blvd, Van Nuys, was celebrating his last day on probation and decided to celebrate. He got drunk and went for a drive. After he was pulled over, near Balboa and Vanowen, he told the police, “You’ll have to shoot me to take me back.” Then he ran away but was subdued by four cops and taken into custody.
This is a glimpse into the good old days of Van Nuys when criminals were thin and white and had Anglo-Saxon names.
Something quiet and urgent was hanging over the radio this morning soon after I awoke in the darkness at 5:30am.
LAUSD was expected to make an announcement.
It was forthcoming: a rumor the schools might be closed down here in Los Angeles.
The sun rose, the skies were clear, the winds blew, and it was a cold morning in December, 9 days before Christmas.
Then it was official.
The schools were, indeed, closed.
A bomb threat had been “sent electronically” (how else are communications sent these days?) and over a half million children would not go to school. Which made many of the students happy, but caused those parents, who work at jobs, to work at worrying, about their kids.
Our alerted and nervous minds went to school, where poisons and dangers and societal toxins lined up near the entrance, under the flag, ready to march past the lockers, down the hall and into the classroom. The diversity of fear, one nation under lockdown, forever ready to give up liberty before death.
Internet, Islam and San Bernardino, caution, children, unforeseen terror, substantiated threat, hoax, fear, prayers, moms, guns and explosives.
It was a day of mayoral and school chancellor pronouncements, of the FBI, the White House and the LAPD, all speaking in front of reporters, and the line of authority acting competent when deep down we know that the sick and the violent soul of humankind casts a darker shadow across our nation these days.
No wonder the blurted and un-thoughtful utterances of Mr. Trump lure us into his mad funhouse of revenge and strongman demagoguery. We know or think we know that he knows what we know. When he blurts out what’s on everyone’s minds, we imagine he can fight and win the battle.
In our country, there are many days when children go to school and nobody tells them to go home, but instead someone armed and ill enters a school and kills.
Those are the days we should fear. Those are the days that have already come too many times.
But it is hard to know what to fear first, so paralyzed with dread are we at red blood under the blackboard.
Here in Van Nuys 
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