Inside the LAPD’s Original Gangster Squad

Speaker 1 (00:10):
This is Lee Habeeb, and this is our American Stories.
In the years after World War Two, Los Angeles was
a city caught between Hollywood clamor and a growing criminal underworld.
Here to tell the story is Ashley Lebinski. Ashley is
a frequent contributor here on Our American Stories and he
was the former co host of the Discovery Channel’s Master

(00:31):
of Arms. Let’s take a listen. You boys shouldn’t fight.
You got to be different like these four cops. They
would not as the Hat Squad, and they were hats
and thusters as a symbol of that difference, and no
criminal would mess with them, and they protected people like it.
So maybe someday you could be like them.

Speaker 2 (00:50):
Inside the Los Angeles Police Museum, which is housed within
the former Highland Park Police Station, there are so many
objects that document way more than crime, and amidst all
these items are a series of artifacts that appear deceptively simple.

(01:10):
There are four books, two from the nineteen fifties and
some from the nineteen forties, and they are worn bound
volumes that are filled with photographs and on the outside
it mentions the gangster Squad and what these books are
are called mug books, and when you open them up,

(01:33):
you get it’s almost like your old family photo album,
but instead it’s a bunch of criminals, and you see
rows of faces captured in black and white and a
lot of notes about them. You’ve got front facing portraits
sometimes paired with these kind of profile views or pictures
of them kind of out in the world, and they’re

(01:54):
arranged in careful rows. And the format descends from kind
of nineteenth century Roague galleries, which were early photographic archives
used by police to catalog repeat offenders. But over time
these evolved into kind of portable reference systems that they
were books that detectives could carry a study and rely

(02:15):
on in the absence of a centralized database. And in
Los Angeles these volumes became a lot more dynamic. Their
pages should wear the edges, softened, corners bent, some photographs, spent,
and services that have been clearly handled repeatedly. By the
time they came to the museum, they were used by

(02:36):
an organization that is known as the Gangster Squad, but
at the time they went by the Hat Squad. When
you look at modern mug shots, you see kind of
the person does not look great holding the sign and
having kind of the stripe lines behind them. But when
you look at these mug books, you see men in
three piece suits that are looking quite good for having

(02:59):
their mugshots. That’s an interesting piece of style that existed
with both the LAPD’s Hat Squad and organized criminals. When
you think about gangsters back EASTEE a lot of that
times think about the pinstripe suit, and that was not
popular out in LA because of the suit riots, and
so gangsters and the Gangster Squad, who was trying to

(03:19):
fly under the radar and sometimes impersonate other organized criminals,
they kind of wore the same thing. It was flashy,
they wore tanned suits, they wore spectator shoes, and they
wore their fedoras low on their heads, which is how
the Gangster Squad actually was known as the Hot Squad
because they embodied LA style in every single facet. So

(03:41):
to understand these mug books, we have to look at
kind of the context of the time. By the nineteen
forties in Los Angeles, it was becoming a breeding ground
for organized crime, and the LAPD was incredibly concerned that
East Coast and Chicago based organized crime was going to
kind of slowly start to migrate further west, and they

(04:02):
had genuine reasons to fear this because it literally was.
The LAPD responded in nineteen forty six and they formed
a kind of small specialized unit under the direction of
Police Chief Clements by Horror, and it was initially composed
of just eight officers, and it became known as the
Gangster Squad, or the Hat Squad as they kind of preferred,

(04:24):
and that was a nod to the fedoras that the
members wore. Unlike traditional police units, the Gangster Squad operated
with a lot more autonomy and that’s what set it apart.
They essentially didn’t exist. They were led in the early
years by Sergeant William Burns, and his squad’s mandate was
basically simple, keep organized crime out of Los Angeles dot

(04:49):
dot dot by any means necessary, and how that was
accomplished was often left to the discretion of the officers themselves.
The Hat Squad was also known to have midnight chip
chats in the Hollywood Hills where they would take new
criminals that have come to the area associates of bigger criminals,
and they would have what were referred to as heart

(05:11):
to hearts where basically in some of the instances they
would put a gun to the head of the criminal
and basically tell them to get out of town. So
definitely a lot of questionable moments in the HAD squad’s career,
but they were effective. They drove unmarked cars, and sometimes
there would be it was like a clown car. There’d
be so many of them piled into these unmarked cars,

(05:31):
and they would park these unmarked cars kind of near
operations by these organized criminals. Sometimes they would dig out
Illinois license plates from the DMV in LA and put
them on the car to convince the criminals that they’re
not cops. There maybe rival gang members. They conducted a
lot of surveillance, including illegal wiretaps, and their tactics included intimidation,

(05:56):
warrantless searches, and extra legal pressure methods that reflected both
the urgency of the mission and the limited oversight under
which they operated. And within this environment, these mug books
became essential because it was basically a diary of LA’s
most wanted and they could gather photographs and gathered dirt

(06:19):
on them and write notes. Because their job wasn’t necessarily
to make all these little arrests. They were there to
gather intelligence so that they could arrest criminals down the road.
In fact, Mickey Cohen was arrested twice on tax evasion.
Not necessarily you might assume from someone as prolific a
gangster as Mickey Khen. These records were not stored in

(06:42):
evidence rooms. They were basically working tools that were handled daily,
flipped through in squad cars, consulted before raids or confrontations.
In fact, in one of the later mug books, there
is kind of a profile on the organized criminal Jack Dragna,
who operated under the front of a Sicilian banana farmer.

(07:02):
When you look at this, you see not just the mugshot,
but like a list of like known associates, different names
that the person went under the arrest records. But then
at the bottom of this month book and very very
small writing, it has like an other category and it
lists a few things and one of them is quote
a great lover end quote And I’m not really sure

(07:25):
why that was necessary for the gangster squad to know,
but you know what, to each his own. In nineteen
fifty five, as a result of a lot of these
kind of illegal wire taps warrantless searches, there was a
California Supreme Court case that created the exclusionary rule, which
said that LAPD officers could not use evidence gathered illegally

(07:51):
in court, which really kind of changed the way that
law enforcement operated, especially in Los Angeles. It was these
court visions and internal reforms. There were chiefs that came
in kind of grew the Hat Squad beyond just eight
men to having women’s units, and they created a much
more structured system, ultimately with the Gangster Squad being disbanded

(08:14):
and those functions were absorbed into more structured divisions that
would eventually evolve into laped’s Organized Crime and Intelligence Division,
and now it’s under many different umbrellas. The firearms and
badges often associated with the Hat Squad capture a lot
of attention, but it’s these books that were handled, studied,

(08:37):
and worn from use that review how the work was
actually done. In a city defined by reinvention, illusion, and performance,
the Hat Squad relied on something far more concrete, the
ability to recognize a face, to place it within a network,
and to act on that recognition. And within the pages
of these mug books, that system, which was imperfect, powerful

(08:59):
and deeply human, still unders.

Speaker 1 (09:03):
And a terrific job and the production, editing and storytelling
by our own Greg Hengler. And a special thanks to
Ashley Lebinski. She’s a frequent contributor here and she’s doing
this as a part of a series, the Stories of Objects,
and my goodness, this book, this one on the Gangster Squad,
the Hat Squad, fascinating. Here’s La. It’s a city on
the rise, and of course whenever there’s a city on

(09:25):
the rise, all the other crime families around the country, well,
they want to get some territory. LA’s response was a
sort of form a let’s just call it a non sanctioned,
sanctioned organized crime unit that got to do almost anything
it wanted. And then came the Supreme Courts case Matt v. Ohio,
and it basically said, you need a warrant before you
can do a search, and you can’t beat up people

(09:47):
to get a confession. Oh and you got to read
people their rights. The story of the Hat Squad, the
original gangster Squad of the LAPD here on our American
Stories