Murdered in the Line of Duty

Kevin J. Mullen

www.SanFranciscoHomicide.com

Charles Hanson’s horse was stolen on Green Street in North Beach in September 1859. A few weeks later it was found in the possession of Francisco Barrios who lived in a shanty on a ranch in the San Bruno Mountains. Hanson obtained a warrant for Barrios’ arrest which was turned over for service to Police Officer Benjamin Brown, the resident officer at the Mission.

Warrant in hand, Brown went to the ranch on October 3, 1859. On entering the shanty he found Barrios in bed facing the wall in a rear room. The man claimed he was too sick to respond to the warrant and when the officer laid a hand on his shoulder to turn him around to check on his condition, Barrios sprung out of the bed and attacked the officer. Barrios was able to disarm the officer and began to pistol-whip him with his own weapon. The assailant’s female companion joined the fray and stabbed the officer in the jaw with a dirk, temporarily paralyzing him.

At that point, a 17 year Indian boy intervened and physically restrained Barrios. As the officer struggled to remount his horse, the animal bolted and Barrios resumed his assault. Again the Indian boy intervened, giving the severely injured officer a chance to escape on foot to a nearby ranch where he obtained medical attention. Barrios was arrested a few days later on Davis Street, and thereafter convicted of the assault on the officer.

Sometime later, according to a contemporary newspaper account, Officer Brown died “from the effects of wounds inflicted on him by Francisco Barriones (sic), whom the officer was arresting for horse-stealing.” By that time Barrios (or Barriones) had served his sentence on the assault charge and, as far as can be determined from the sparse records of the time, doesn’t seem to have been brought to book for the officer’s death.

Officer Brown’s death was to be the first of 63 San Francisco police officers murdered by criminal assailants over the next century and a half. He died in the early days of municipal policing -- before much thought was given to Rolls of Honor -- and thus his name appears on no official list of murdered officers. .

For all its reputation as a wild and woolly nineteenth century port city, San Francisco suffered few police murders before the turn of the twentieth century. In all, seven San Francisco Officers were murdered in the half century from 1850 to 1900, including Brown and Patrol Special Officer John Gillen, killed while trying to make an arrest in 1891. (Gillen has also avoided being included on the Roll of Honor). That averages out to slightly more than one officer murdered every ten years, roughly comparable to the closing decades of the twentieth century.

Figure 1 displays the number and rates of police murders per 10,000 officers in San Francisco for decadal periods from 1880 to the present. (To allow for comparisons between cities with vastly different sized populations police murders are usually rendered in rates per so many officers.)

Figure 1. Number and Average annual rate of police killings in San Francisco by decade.

Decade	Number	Average Annual Rate per 10,000 Police Officers
1880's	2	5
1890's	3	6
1900's	7	14.2
1910's	9	9.4
1920's	9	9.5
1930's	7	5.3
1940's	1	0.07
1950's	5	3
1960's	3	1.7
1970's	10	5.5
1980's	2	1.1
1990's	1	0.5

The first thing to be noticed is that it was once much more dangerous to be a police officer in San Francisco than it is in modern times. The rate of police killings in the period from 1900 to 1930 averaged approximately twice as high as any other period, before or since. By looking behind the raw statistics perhaps we can learn something about murders of police officers.

One factor which may have had to do with the fewer police deaths in nineteenth century San Francisco was the relative inefficiency of firearms. All but one of the police killings since 1900 have been accomplished by firearms of some sort. Three of the seven murders prior to that, though, were by other than firearms. Officer Brown was killed by blunt force trauma. In 1884 Officer John Nicholson had his throat cut by an arrested subject and two years later Officer Edgar Osgood was stabbed fatally by an angry sailor in Chinatown. Perhaps the requirement to get up close and personal with a knife helped keep the rate down during that period.

The vast majority of the murders (79%) occurred in the process of making an arrest, somewhere between the point of initial contact and the delivery of the subject to the booking counter. In some cases, the officers unwittingly walked in on felonies in progress. Officer Eugene Robinson was killed on Valencia Street in 1901 when he walked up on a group of men trying to rob a Japanese man. Officer George Campbell walked in on a bank robbery at Pacific and Hyde in 1925 and was shot fatally. Officer John Manning happened on a payroll robbery on his waterfront beat in 1930 and he too was mortally wounded.

In many cases the circumstances were apparently less inherently dangerous going in. Sergeant Anton Nolting was killed by a soldier in 1909 at Washington who had been drunkenly fooling with a pistol he had taken from another soldier. Sergeant Michael “Joe” Brady was shot down without a word across from the Fairmont Hotel in 1924 by a group of men in an auto he went to investigate. Timothy Ryan was responding to a common domestic dispute on 23^rd Street in 1943 when he was gunned down by the drunken husband.

In other cases – those in which officers were after wanted suspects – they would have benefited from an extra measure of caution. Officers Thomas Finnelly and Charles Castor had reason to know that the man they had the Ferry Building staked out for in 1911 was very dangerous. Yet he was able to kill both of the officers before they could neutralize him. In 1920 another two officers, Detective Sergeant Miles Jackson and Detective Lester Dorman were mortally wounded in Santa Rosa by one of three men they went to arrest for criminally assaulting a young woman in San Francisco. Inspector Denis Bradley was killed in 1953 as part of an arrest team who went to pick up a man who had robbed a Safeway store.

Transporting prisoners to the station following an arrest was a particularly dangerous practice. Officer Charles Coots, the first officer on the official Roll of Honor (mistakenly entered as John) was killed in 1877 (not 1878 as inscribed on the Roll) as he walked two young arrestees from Chinatown toward the Hall of Justice. As the jail loomed in front of them, one of the men, 17 year old John Runk, managed to get behind the officer and shot him in the back of the head. In 1891, Officer Alexander Grant was in sight of the Folsom Street station when he was fatally shot by the man he was bringing in. In 1958, Officer Robert Morey was gunned down from the back seat of a radio car by a man he was transporting to Potrero Station after arresting him on a minor charge. Taken together these cases demonstrate that many of the officers would not have died had they been more aggressive in their searching practices.

Most of the officers (42 of the 63) were working on their own when killed. Before the introduction of motorized patrols, and, more importantly, two way radio communications, officers were very much on their own most of the time. This circumstance engendered a culture – which survived into recent times -- in which a call for assistance could result in being kidded about “not being able to handle it.” Perhaps that’s why Officer Coots declined the offer of help with his prisoners from Officer Joseph Kelly at Clay and Dupont, and walked on to his death.

In defense of the officers who died in such circumstances, it must be considered that they were confronted with the dilemma – still very much part of the equation – of whether to pull their gun or not. Commenting on the 1924 killing of “Joe” Brady, Captain, later Chief, Charles Dullea gave voice to the dilemma faced by officers in any age confronting potentially dangerous subjects. “Should he be courteous and approach with his gun in his holster? Or shall he play it safe and approach with a cocked and threatening weapon? If he plays it safe, he may be dismissed; if he is courteous, he may be killed.”

When Officer Timothy Ryan was shot down in 1943 by an enraged spouse, one local editor voted for the latter course, saying that policemen should take more precautions in family disputes and that “even if they may face the displeasure of citizens who feel they are exceeding their authority by having a gun in hand when they come to settle some quarrel between a husband and wife, a little ridicule is much more desirable than a lot of tears and sorrow."

The murder of a police officer has always been seen as a particularly heinous crime, deserving in the general public perception of the most severe penalty. When Runk was hanged in 1878 for the murder of Officer Coots, the San Francisco Chronicle approved. "An officer of a city like San Francisco," wrote the editor, “is frequently called upon to risk his life . . . . His only protection [in case he is disabled or killed] is the knowledge that the law will surely punish anyone who attacks an officer. . . . " Otherwise, the editor added, “no officer who has a wife and family could be blamed for keeping out of the way of danger." The execution was necessary, he continued, "as a pledge to officers that their lives are held sacred by the authorities." Those same sentiments are embodied in modern “special circumstance” legislation which calls for the mandatory death penalty in particularly heinous crimes, including the murder of a police officer.

A noble sentiment but one often observed in the breach. On the occasion of the killing of Sergeant Anton Nolting by Thomas Jordan in 1909, the San Francisco Examiner reported that the police “believe that Jordan can be convicted without difficulty, although they point somewhat bitterly to the list of four other policeman killed since the [1906] fire with but one ten-year conviction.” That was to be a common outcome, at that time, before and since. In five of the 63 murders, no suspect was identified. In 49 of the remaining 58 cases, someone was brought to justice one way or the other. Six, starting with Runk, were executed by legal process. The last to be executed was Peter Farrington in 1932 for the murder of Officer Malcolm. In nine cases, the murderers were killed at the scene or died later of wounds received in the encounters. In the first instance, retired Officer George O’Connell was able to kill one of two holdup men in 1907 saloon robbery but the man’s crime partner killed him. More recently officers responding to the murder of Officer James Guelff put paid to the murderous career of Vic Lee Boutwell.

In two instances the perpetrators committed suicide. George Nelson ,who mortally wounded Officer Peter Hammond in a barricaded suspect incident at Oak and Buchanan streets in 1916 committed suicide as other officers closed in. In 1982, David Arien, the murderer of Sergeant John Macauley killed himself as well, saving others the trouble. Following the 1920 murders of Detectives Jackson and Dorman, the three men charged with their killing were taken from the Sonoma County Jail by an angry mob, supposedly including San Francisco police officers, and hanged from a nearby tree.

In the 30 remaining cases (61 % of those in which someone was caught and brought before a tribunal of justice) some lesser penalty was assessed, ranging from outright dismissal of charges, to commitment to a mental facility, to prison sentences from five years to life in prison.

There wasn’t much doubt about the circumstances of Alexander Grant’s 1891 murder. His killer, Maurice Curtis, was arrested immediately after the shooting, less than a block away, with the officers “nippers,” with which he restrained the arrestee as they walked along, still attached to Curtis’ arm. But Curtis was a wealthy theatrical figure and was able to hire a “dream team” of attorneys who were able to muddy up the waters enough to secure his eventual acquittal. More recently, six young burglars, who came to be called the Los Siete, were arrested and tried for the 1969 killing of Officer Joe Brodnik on Alvarado street but were acquitted by a sympathetic jury. When analyzed over the long term the 1909 estimate of an average served sentence of about ten years for killing a police officer upon conviction holds up pretty well.

There is one aspect of police killing in more recent times that didn’t occur in earlier years. Since the late 1960s a number of officers have been the victim of out-and-out assassinations. First was Officer Herman George, shot by rifle fire as he sat in the Housing Police office. Sergeant Brian McDonnell was killed in the terrorist bombing of Park Police Station in 1970 and Officer Richard Radetich was assassinated on Waller Street a few months later. In 1971 Sergeant Jack Young was murdered in an armed invasion of Ingleside Station and the next year Officer Code Beverly was shot and killed by a by a sniper on Valencia street as he walked to his beat.

Over the long term most of the killers were non-Latino whites, 91 % up to 1958. The exceptions in the early days were Officer Brown, killed by a Latino, Officers Nicholson and Gillen, killed in 1884 and 1891 respectively, by Chinese men. In 1937 Officer Albert Argens was killed by Elliot Ambrose, an African American, while waiting for a wagon at Union Square. Ambrose was sent to the Ukiah State Hospital for the Insane. It was after that, in the late 1950s that the racial profile of police murderers began to change. Between 1958 and 2000, in 75% of the cases the police killers were “people of color” (51 % African American and 24 percent Latino).

In the last two decades of the twentieth century, police murders declined dramatically nationwide. From a national annual average of 3.3 per 10,000 murdered police officers in the period of 1970-74, the rate dropped to 1.4 per 10,000 in the period from 1985-89. In San Francisco the annual average rate was 7.7 per 100,000 in 1970-74 compared to zero in the latter period. The downward trend continues. The declines are usually explained by the introduction of soft body armor into the armory of police defensive features, and improved training in police practices.

Some old timers have been known to wonder at the tendency of modern officers to draw their weapons so freely and their vigorous spreading people, “putting them on the ground,” and cuffing them, even for minor crimes. That same concern has been expressed by community groups who sometimes see police practices as invasive and heavy handed. But when one looks at the number of officers who were killed in times past for failing to exercise adequate officer safety techniques over the century and a half, and the marked decline in officers’ deaths since such techniques have been implemented, the aggressive tactics might just be a price that society has to pay. Otherwise, as Chronicle editor warned in 1878, “no officer who has a wife and family could be blamed for keeping out of the way of danger."