4.Corrupt Cop Culture

The culture of the Sacramento Police Department in the 1930s was ultimately too hostile an environment for a man with a rigid moral code like Austin Roche. The motivation of most men on the force appears to have been purely mercenary. He was not rewarded for any of his innovations or efforts to reform the department. His replacement was a man who, along with two brothers, were known as the Brothers McAllister. Alec McAllister would prove to be exactly what the property owners and their friends in city government wanted. He was a cop's cop, claiming that in his years on the force, he had never drawn his weapon. While claiming to admire all that Roche had done, he did nothing to give the new policy changes any "teeth," which meant that the status quo was back in effect by the time McAllister was sworn in. As mentioned earlier, McAllister would break the record of William Hallanan for time served as chief by at least a few years.

The McAllisters were a trio of Irish immigrants who arrived on the east coast at the turn of the century. Perhaps feeling the prejudice of the NINA laws back east, or maybe just suffering from an excess of ambition, at least one of the brothers, Neil, headed towards the Klondike in search of gold. Failing that, he journeyed to California and taught himself law well enough to qualify to practice. His career seems to have peaked when he was named Deputy Attorney General solely to prosecute communists in the 1920s. After this, he opened a private practice..

Younger brothers Frank and Alec were cops through and through. They also were despised for their role as bagmen, collecting payoffs from bootleggers throughout the county. Not much is known about Frank, beyond that his law enforcement career peaked at the rank of Captain.

What is clear from newspaper accounts as well as statements from persons who lived in the River City at the time is that the naming of Alec McAllister as chief meant that it was safe for gambling and prostitution in the West End until the early 1960s, at which point the area became a neglected skid row. In the decades following this decline, the West End became known as Old Sacramento. Many of the rooming houses in the area were razed to make way for the freeway system. At about the time plans for the freeways were being laid, two consecutive police chiefs implemented hiring policies in the police department which destroyed the culture of corruption and brought department regulations in line with those of the state. These new chiefs had higher standards for new recruits and offered higher pay for officers with college educations.

As for the whores, it must have gotten too hot for them in the West End. They scattered. A lot of them going south. First to T Street in the Southside Park area, as well as Oak Park, a formerly respectable working and lower-middle class neighborhood. There remains, in Oak Park, a thriving street walking trade. What was a big industry in a sordid river town has been driven underground.

At around the time the police department became professional, that is, the early 1960s, Governor Pat Brown made good on providing funding for building interstate highways. A lot of the West End had become a skid row, so getting property owners to take fair-market value to move on probably went smoothly.

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