3. 13 Months in Sacramento

To say that Roche faced a challenge would be a colossal understatement. His predecessor, while apparently not on the take himself, nevertheless allowed many misdeeds to happen on his watch. It had been his duty to keep officers in line and he failed spectacularly. The one and only positive achievement of his time in office was that he allegedly put an end to the use of third degree techniques during interrogations. He was content simply occupying the office. When scandal threatened, he ducked and ran. Simply stated, Roche inherited a mess. He was replacing a man so entrenched in the crooked culture that, for many years, he held the record for longest-serving chief. (Oddly, it would be the man who replaced Roche who ended up breaking Hallanan's record.)

Dean was virtually the only honest man in city government when Roche arrived. He had been fighting against the status quo for so long that his cynicism was understandable.

Ultimately, the new chief would surprise him in small ways while justifying his lack of faith. Austin J. Roche would end up policing his way out of a job.

A first year progress report shows that Roche did make some inroads in bringing order and efficiency to the department. The numbers tell a story of a local agency transformed. Traffic fatalities dropped by over 50%. The arrest rate rose by 30%. Post-arrest clearance and conviction rates went up by at least 25%. It appeared that policy changes implemented by Roche meant that cops on the beat did actual police work. They no longer staged bogus busts, or let petty criminals slide. Serious crimes were taken a lot more seriously. The same numbers tell us that beat cops could no longer treat legitimate police work as a side gig.

To a point, the powers that be had no problem with what Roche was doing. However, at the rate he was going, it was inevitable that he would soon arrest one of their own, as opposed to the usual creatures of the West End. The _no-class_ drunks, homosexuals, junkies and the transient workers who were wanted when needed and shunned once the work was performed. Roche made enemies when he arrested such big wheels and "Bookie Butch" Nisetich and the madam Violet Wilson.

Violet Wilson had paid for protection and was understandably put out when she was hauled into jail. Nisetich was in a similar, if more respectable position. Along with his card rooms, he ran several books around town. They were mostly in the West End, although there were a few at 7th and K (across from the post office) and at 10th and K. At these places, a person could place a bet on any horse race in the country. When Roche busted him, he had been paying a still-unidentified police lieutenant for years.

This one arrest infuriated landlords, merchants and marked the beginning of the end of Roche's time in Sacramento. It especially angered the gentleman gambler set, who, like "Bookie Butch," had paid handsomely to prevent such a thing from happening. If his arrest had been an aberration, all could have been forgiven. It was not. Roche was bent on achieving the destruction of gambling operations with a passion second only to his desire to smash prostitution permanently.

Maybe it came down to the blatant manner in which they conducted business, but brothels were a thorn in the side of citizens and Roche. Bookmaking operations were relatively harmless and enjoyed something very close to respectability. Compared with the brothels, with the neon lights and belligerent behavior of the window girls, gambling appeared safe as milk.

On February 15, 1938, the very day he submitted a glowing first year progress report to the city manager, 15 window girls were taken in and charged with vagrancy and solicitation. Public reaction to the raid was mixed. Local residents applauded the effort. "Rooming houses," had cropped up all around 2nd and L Streets. The addresses listed in the story about the raid are: 206, 208, 212 and 224 L Street, as well as a place around the corner, 1221 2nd Street. (The operation included arrests at a house at 314 J Street, "rowboat row" living up to local legend,)

While Dean and groups such as the Sacramento Women's Council were pleased to see the obnoxious, foul-mouthed and generally out-of-hand whores taken to jail, these women worked for madams who had paid for the right to do business. Arrests like the one February 15, cost the wealthy property owners a lot of money. These were powerful people who had considerable pull with the city council.

Roche had made enemies. Within weeks of his glowing report to the city manager, which listed the accomplishments of the past year, he was on his way back to Buffalo. He lasted a little over a month following the arrest of the window girls.

The raid on proved to be the undoing of Roche as Sacramento's super cop. It was, to the monied property owners, the final straw. The embarrassing arrests and subsequent dip in revenues was unacceptable to a very influential bloc of community leaders.

One month after he told the Sacramento Union, "I like Sacramento. It is a fine city, " stories appeared in the papers hinting that gambling was thriving while Roche did nothing about it. (5)

Following some high-profile arrests, his very presence was intolerable to those who counted. A local man who lived in Sacramento at the time recently wrote, "poor guy was supposed to make a show of cleaning up the town without actually doing it. Trouble was, he didn't understand his assignment."

On March 17, 1938, Roche handed in his resignation. In addition to the stories which hinted that Roche was protecting the bookies (!) there were those which implied that he was hiding the identity of the infamous Firebug, a career criminal who was setting fire to local businesses to cover his burglaries. Around the end of his time as chief, his daughter was hit by a car. Apart from some scrapes and bruises, she was unharmed. There is no evidence to suggest that the incident had anything to do with Roche's actions as chief.

If bad press and reluctance on the part of the local district attorney to prosecute certain offenders were part of a strategy to demoralize and discourage Roche, the plan was a partial success. He was soon on his way back to Buffalo. Although he and Dean claimed that he had only planned on spending a year in Sacramento, it is likely that he left with a feeling of disappointment at leaving a job unfinished.

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