Protecting the Underworld in Prohibition-Era Los Angeles: A Case Study

For purveyors of gambling, intoxicants, and commodified sex in twentieth-century urban America, anti-vice and Prohibition laws created challenges but also opportunities. Protection was crucial. The ability—or inability—to operate with minimal interference from law enforcement, hijackers, or thieves often determined whether a given illegal enterprise survived or failed. Accordingly, protection rackets played a major role in structuring the illicit vice economy. Despite their importance, however, protection schemes were informal, hidden arrangements, and thus remain difficult to see in much detail. This paper seeks to illuminate that murky territory by examining a plan to secure police protection for gambling, liquor, and sex work in the multiracial districts of Los Angeles circa 1919. The thwarted scheme, thrust into the public eye by a grand jury investigation and subsequent sensational trial, offers an unusually broad view of the phenomenon at the dawn of the Prohibition Era. It reveals how protection schemes could be organized. It shows how racial logics determined the spatial distribution of illicit enterprises. And it illustrates the central role that newspapers played in both conjuring the idea of a criminal underworld and shaping the actions of those caught up in it.