Earl Eugene Kynette[a] (June 18, 1893 – June 3, 1970) was an American police officer who led the Los Angeles Police Department Intelligence Squad under Chief James E. Davis during the Great Depression era. The Intelligence Squad was assigned to (among other things) "spy on, compromise, and intimidate critics and foes of the department and the mayor".[1]
Earl E. Kynette | |
|---|---|
 Earl E. Kynette at the police academy in 1925 | |
| Born | June 18, 1893 Council Bluffs, Iowa, U.S. |
| Died | June 3, 1970 (aged 76) Los Angeles, California, U.S. |
| Occupation(s) | Pharmacist, police officer |
Career edit
Kynette was a native of Council Bluffs, Iowa who graduated from the University of Southern California.[2] He worked as a druggist and a hotel manager before entering the Los Angeles Police Academy, from which he graduated around November 1925.[2] Within 18 months he was a sergeant, working on raiding "blind pigs" (illegal Prohibition-era drinking establishments), among other tasks.[3]
Kynette was first fired from the LAPD in 1927, after being charged with taking a bribe, but was rehired a few weeks later.[4] After reinstatement he worked in Wilmington in the Harbor area for about three months before being transferred to the detective bureau downtown.[5] In 1929 the downtown homicide bureau adopted a stray tabby cat; Kynette named her Madame Pompadour.[6] By December 1929, Kynette was ranked as a detective lieutenant and was transferred to the Venice bureau.[7] In August 1930 he was "demoted" and transferred to Boyle Heights, likely due to his involvement in the investigation of the murder of Motley Flint; "For Kynette, at the time Frank Keaton shot and killed Motley Flint, prominent banker, was the only officer investigating the case to tell of the discovery of [Rev. Robert] Shuler's vitriolic booklet Julian Thieves found in the murderer's possession. There was much talk at the time of the finding of the booklet that it might have been a contributing factor in Keaton's desire to murder the banker. Kynette was subjected to much criticism by friends of the broadcasting pastor for telling newspaper men that Keaton had the booklet. Other officers lied deliberately or evaded questions of reporters about the pamphlet. No reason was given for Kynette's transfer. He was simply ordered to report in uniform Monday morning at the east side station."[8] Julian Thieves in Politics was part of Rev. Shuler's involvement in publicizing the Julian Petroleum Corporation scandal.
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Julian executives defrauded local investors of $100–$200 million (nearly $3 billion in 2019 dollars) with the help of local businessmen and politicians. Grand juries indicted several of those involved, but the slow pace of the prosecutions led the Supreme Court of California to dismiss the charges en masse for failure to provide a speedy trial...Shuler blamed both the District Attorney of Los Angeles County, Asa Keyes, and Los Angeles City Prosecutor Lloyd Nix for the failure, implying on air that Keyes was in the pocket of the indicted businessmen and that Nix was negligent. Shuler's broadcast attacks forced Keyes to resign; the disgraced former district attorney would indeed later be convicted of taking a bribe from a Julian executive. Nix, also forced to resign, would eventually extract a measure of revenge on Shuler, but not before the imbroglio peaked with the killing of one of the indicted businessmen by a defrauded investor who carried a printed copy of one of Shuler's broadcasts in his pocket bearing the title Julian Thieves in Politics. Nix claimed during an interview on another radio station that Shuler had as good as pulled the trigger by inciting public outrage over the acquittals in the first place."
— "Social Media Regulation in the Public Interest: Some Lessons from History" (2020), Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University[9]
According to the Los Angeles Evening Post-Record in 1930, describing Kynette and others criticized by Rev. Shuler, Kynette was an expert in poisons and chemicals,[8] and "As we know, Mr. Kynette has obtained the highest rating in the police school ever obtained by any policeman anywhere in the United States. He is a college graduate, an officer of the U.S. Army Reserves, a chemist and a man with a thorough scientific training. Besides that he has plenty of personal initiative and energy. He is the kind of man of whom the modern police executive is made."[10] In 1935, the editorial page of Manchester Boddy's Post-Record intimated that Kynette and other members of the LAPD Vice Squad were being favored within the department: "Apparently there is only one sure route to advancement on this police department. The candidate who would succeed in passing civil service examinations cum laude, so to speak, must pass his time in the intellectually more stimulating society of prostitutes, gamblers, hop-heads, small-time politicians, and the like who may be encountered regularly in the routine of a vice squad officer."[11]
A close ally of Chief Davis, Kynette was heavily involved in the department's unconstitutional diversion at the state line of migrants to California ("Okies and Arkies"), an action sometimes known as the Bum Blockade.[12] According to one historian, Kynette's career "was as crassly cavalier and oblivious to individual rights as mayor Shaw's career as a public servant. A craggy, misshapen former pharmacist who had once worked for L.A.'s brothel meister Albert Marco, Kynette had already been fired and rehired hired once since his graduation from the police academy in 1925. Like Commander St. Charles, Kynette had been caught shaking down prostitutes, but in the days before mayor Shaw, a vice officer could be suspended and/or discharged charged for dunning whores. Fortunately for Kynette, LAPD standards had dropped since Chief Davis's reinstatement."[13] In 1938 Kynette was charged with, and ultimately convicted of, conspiracy to commit murder in the bombing attack that maimed a private investigator and former San Diego Chief of Police named Harry Raymond.[14][15] Raymond worked for an regional anti-corruption group, digging up evidence against the mayor and the police department.[16] The trial was described by Time magazine as "Southern California's biggest political circus" and revealed that the Intelligence Squad was under direct control of the mayor's brother, and had spied on many local dignitaries including John Anson Ford (the mayor's political opponent in the most recent election) and Buron Rogers Fitts (the district attorney trying the case).[17] The scandal led Chief Davis' departure from the police force.[18]
Kynette served nine years in San Quentin prison.[19] He was released on parole in 1948 with the "proviso that he not return to Los Angeles County until 1952".[20] In 1951, Kynette was arrested in the San Francisco Bay area on a drunkenness charge, and then found to have "an empirin compound and codeine" in his hotel room, and as such, he was sent back to prison.[21] He died in Los Angeles County in 1970.[22]
Notes edit
- ^ Earl is sometimes spelled Earle. This may be a variant spelling and/or an erroneous conflation of his first name and middle initial.
References edit
- ^ Domanick (1994), p. 76.
- ^ a b "Police Race Causes Furore". The Los Angeles Times. October 29, 1925. p. 19. Retrieved 2024-04-19. & "Furore Caused by Police Race [part 2 of 2]". The Los Angeles Times. October 29, 1925. p. 20. Retrieved 2024-04-19.
- ^ "Trio Seized by Police in Liquor Raid Daughter of Asserted Blind Pig Proprietress Flees Thru Window". The Los Angeles Times. May 12, 1927. p. 29. Retrieved 2024-04-19.
- ^ "Officer Ousted on Bribe Charge Gets Job Back". The Los Angeles Times. December 14, 1927. p. 28. Retrieved 2024-04-19.
- ^ "Police Sergeant Is Transferred to L.A." News-Pilot. March 13, 1928. p. 1. Retrieved 2024-04-19.
- ^ "'Murder Queen' Adopted". Los Angeles Evening Post-Record. February 2, 1929. p. 1. Retrieved 2024-04-19.
- ^ "Venice Gets New Detective Officer". Evening Vanguard. December 4, 1929. p. 1. Retrieved 2024-04-19.
- ^ a b "Detective in Keaton Murder Case Is Demoted". Los Angeles Evening Post-Record. August 29, 1930. p. 1. Retrieved 2024-04-19.
- ^ Samples & Matzko (2020), p. 6.
- ^ "Tells of Pastor's Control of Mayor". Los Angeles Evening Post-Record. September 11, 1930. p. 1. Retrieved 2024-04-19.
- ^ "Very Clever, This Vice Squad!". Los Angeles Evening Post-Record. February 8, 1935. p. 8. Retrieved 2024-04-19.
- ^ McDougal (2009), p. 144.
- ^ McDougal (2009), p. 143.
- ^ Domanick (1994), p. 77.
- ^ Crawford, Richard (2010). "The Brief and Hectic Career of Chief Harry Raymond" (PDF). sandiegoyesterday.com. Originally published as "POOR SERVICE AT LOCAL NIGHTCLUB LED TO CHIEF'S DEMISE," San Diego Union-Tribune, Oct. 21, 2010. p. CZ.2.
- ^ Judkins (2016), p. 86.
- ^ "CALIFORNIA: Restaurant Reformers". Time. June 27, 1938. ISSN 0040-781X. Retrieved 2024-04-19.
- ^ Archives, L. A. Times (January 14, 2006). "Police Bombing Sets a Recall in Motion". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved 2024-04-19.
- ^ "Police Testimony: Echoes from 1938". The Los Angeles Times. August 9, 1970. p. 76. Retrieved 2024-04-19.
- ^ Sjoquist (1972), p. 235.
- ^ "Earle Kynette Asks Release". The San Francisco Examiner. June 21, 1951. p. 18. Retrieved 2024-04-19.
- ^ "United States Social Security Death Index" - FamilySearch - https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:JTHD-F3X - Earle Kynette, Jun 1970; citing U.S. Social Security Administration, Death Master File, database (Alexandria, Virginia: National Technical Information Service, ongoing).
Sources edit
- Domanick, Joe (1994). To Protect and To Serve: The LAPD's Century of War in the City of Dreams. New York: Pocket Books (Simon & Schuster). ISBN 978-0-671-75111-1. LCCN 94019984. OCLC 30510259.
- Judkins, Simon J. (2016). "Citizen Surveillance: CIVIC and the Investigation of Vice in the City of Los Angeles, 1935–1938". California History. 93 (3): 75–91. doi:10.1525/ch.2016.93.3.75. ISSN 0162-2897. JSTOR 26412674.
- McDougal, Dennis (2009). Privileged Son: Otis Chandler and the Rise and Fall of the L.A. Times Dynasty. Hachette Books. ISBN 9780786751136.
- Samples, John; Matzko, Paul (May 4, 2020). "Social Media Regulation in the Public Interest: Some Lessons from History". 20-09 Knight First Amend. Inst. Columbia University.
- Sjoquist, Arthur W. (August 1972). From Posses to Professionals: A History of the Los Angeles Police Department (Thesis). California State University at Los Angeles – via Internet Archive.