The history of crime and punishment in the United States

Escobar’s “Bloody Christmas”: The History of Crime and Punishment in the United States

Escobar used the case of “Bloody Christmas” to highlight the larger cultural issues during the 1950s in L.A. by showing how the police beating incident led the way to a confrontation between the Mexican American community and the burgeoning Mexican American civil rights movement in the city. While 8 officers were indicted (Escobar, 2003), this was just the latest crime by police in a series of injustices that were motivated by race. For example, Escobar (2003) notes that “beginning with early twentieth-century police attacks on Mexican immigrants, through efforts to destroy Mexican American labor unions in the 1930s, the Zoot Suit riots of World War II, the attempts to suppress the Chicano movement of the 1960s, and culminating with the most recent Rampart scandal, the LAPD has a lengthy history of harassment, physical abuse, and civil rights violations against Mexican Americans and other minority individuals” (p. 173). In other words, all throughout the 20th century there has been tension between the Hispanic community in L.A. and law enforcement. Escobar shows that leading up to Bloody Christmas, the police department had been very corrupt, had been taking bribes from individuals involved in prostitution, gambling and liquor establishments and had been persecuting organized labor as well.

The Mexican American community on the other hand was trying to clear its name from charges of being “criminally inclined” by the LAPD (Escobar, 2003, p. 178). A culture war was truly underway in L.A. in that era, as powerful business and political interests held relationships both with the criminal underworld and with the police. This made it difficult for Mexican Americans to etch out their own place in city that was being fought over by larger classes and interest groups.

The case of “Bloody Christmas” highlighted the issues police professionalization by showing that problems with this approach to policing. Instead of Parker holding the officers responsible he pressed for more autonomy. Instead of placing the police in a position where they would be accountable to the community, Parker asserted that he and his department must be able to police itself and discipline itself so that the city could not take advantage of it. It was really just a power play for Parker and he was using police professionalization as a pretext for tightening his own control as the Chief and wielding more influence from his seat of power. He made excuses like “if he were removed, underworld inßuences would reenter Los Angeles and reestablish their illegal activities. He defended his officers’ use of force, saying that, in a violent society, ‘sometimes the police have to use violence to protect the public’” (Escobar, 2003, p. 190). The police professionalism model, however, did not really help to address the issues of corruption because the corruption remained at the top—with Parker himself.

The professionalization model was supposed to support “police autonomy, particularly about internal discipline” but Parker and the police abused this autonomy: “Parker and his allies in city government stifled external investigations into department matters, vilified LAPD critics, and even ignored perjury by officers” (Escobar, 2003, p. 171). In other words, Parker did everything he could to hide behind the model of police professionalization. Instead of opening the department to public scrutiny, he clamped down and tried to show that the police had to be an independent force in order to be effective. He did not want anyone coming in and pushing him around or holding him and his department accountable for their crimes against the community. That was the real issue the whole time.

References

Escobar, E. J. (2003). Bloody Christmas and the irony of police professionalism: The Los
Angeles Police Department, Mexican Americans, and police reform in the 1950s. Pacific Historical Review, 72(2), 171-199.