James E. Davis (police)
| James E. Davis | |
|---|---|
| Born | 1889 |
| Died | June 20, 1949 (aged 59-60) |
| Other names | "Two-Gun Davis" |
| Police career | |
| Department | Los Angeles Police Department |
| Rank |  Chief of Police (1926-29; 1933-39) |
James Edgar Davis (1889 - June 20, 1949) was an American police officer who served as the chief of the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) from 1926 to 1929, and from 1933 to 1939. During his first term as LAPD chief, Davis emphasized firearms training. Under Davis, the LAPD developed its lasting reputation as an organization that relied on brute force to enforce public order. It also became very publicly entangled in corruption. Members of the LAPD were revealed to have undertaken a campaign of brutal harassment, including the bombings of political reformers who had incurred the wrath of the department and the civic administration.
Under Chief Davis, civil service reforms were implemented in the City Charter via the ballot initiative process that insulated the police department from political influence.
James E. Davis made a name for himself in the department as the head of the vice squad during Prohibition. When Chief Davis created a "gun squad" staffed with 50 policemen, he made a public pronouncement that "the gun-toting element and the rum smugglers are going to learn that murder and gun-toting are most inimical to their best interest." Davis declared that the LAPD "would "hold court on gunmen in the Los Angeles streets; I want them brought in dead, not alive and will reprimand any officer who shows the least mercy to a criminal." For his efforts, he won the moniker "Two-Gun Davis."
The primary "targets" of Davis' department were purveyors of vice, radicals, and vagrants.
Davis was a proponent of the use of radio in police work. In 1929, he ordered his staff to investigate the use of radio for dispatching officers. However, it was up to his successor, Roy E. Steckel, to put the radio in L.A.P.D. vehicles.
After being succeeded by and succeeding Police Chief Roy E. Steckel, Davis served as chief from 1933 to 1939. In his second-go-round as chief, Davis developed a reputation as a reformer. Under Chief Steckel, departmental regulations forbidding the solicitation of rewards or the acceptance of gratuities by policemen had lapsed; Davis reimplemented the restrictions. He also fired 245 police officers for misconduct in the first four years of his second term.
However, in reality, Two-Gun Davis was to serve one of the most corrupt mayors in Los Angeles history, Frank L. Shaw, who had been elected despite the opposition of the Chandler Family, conservatives who owned the powerful Los Angeles Times newspaper. (The 1910 L.A. Times building bombing had been carried out by a union member, upset with the anti-union stance of publisher Harrison Gray Otis, whose son-in-law Harry Chandler would take over as publisher of the Times in 1917. The bombing killed 21 newspaper employees and injured 100.)
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