The Gangster Squad, later known as the OrganizedCrime Intelligence Division (OCID), was a special unit of the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) formed in 1946 to keep the East Coast Mafia and organized crime elements out of Los Angeles. [1]
The Gangster Squad, later known as the OrganizedCrime Intelligence Division (OCID), was a special unit of the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) formed in 1946 to keep the East Coast Mafia and organized crime elements out of Los Angeles. [1]
The squad was created by then Chief of Police Clemence B. Horrall in 1946. Initially organized as an eight-man intelligence detail, it became popularly known as the Gangster Squad. It was given the tasks of fighting organized crime and spying on corrupt cops. Criminals it targeted included Mickey Cohen, Jack Dragna, Bugsy Siegel, Jack Whalen and Jimmy Fratianno.
Much like the events in the 2013 film Gangster Squad , the real-life squad waged war on crime and did things that would be considered illegal by today's standards. As the real-life Sgt. Jack O'Mara later told the Los Angeles Times in 2008: "We did a lot of things that we'd get indicted for today". [2] In 1949, interim LAPD Chief William Worton increased the team's size and renamed it the Intelligence Division. William Parker became chief in 1950 and expanded the team even more, including the addition of a female field team.
Meyer Harris "Mickey" Cohen was an American gangster, boxer and entrepreneur based in Los Angeles during the mid-20th century.
The police procedural, police show, or police crime drama, is a subgenre of procedural drama and detective fiction that emphasizes the investigative procedure of police officers, police detectives, or law enforcement agencies as the protagonists, as contrasted with other genres that focus on non-police investigators such as private investigators.
John Stompanato Jr., was a United States Marine and gangster who became a bodyguard and enforcer for gangster Mickey Cohen and the Cohen crime family.
James Edgar Davis was an American police officer who served as the chief of the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) from 1926 to 1929, and from 1933 to 1939. During his first term as LAPD chief, Davis emphasized firearms training. Under Davis, the LAPD developed its lasting reputation as an organization that relied on brute force to enforce public order. It also became publicly entangled in corruption. Members of the LAPD were revealed to have undertaken a campaign of brutal harassment, including the bombings of political reformers who had incurred the wrath of the department and the civic administration.
The Big Nowhere is a 1988 crime fiction novel by American author James Ellroy, the second of the L.A. Quartet, a series of novels set in 1940s and 1950s Los Angeles.
William Henry Parker III was an American law enforcement officer who was Chief of the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) from 1950 to 1966. To date, he is the longest-serving LAPD police chief. Parker has been called "Los Angeles' greatest and most controversial chief of police". The former headquarters of the LAPD, the Parker Center, was named after him. During his tenure, the LAPD was known for police brutality and racism; Parker himself was known for his "unambiguous racism".
The L.A. Quartet is a sequence of four crime fiction novels by James Ellroy set in the late 1940s through the late 1950s in Los Angeles. They are:
Anthony Brancato was an American criminal who served as a freelance gunman to various Mafia and syndicate organizations.
Jewish-American organized crime initially emerged within the American Jewish community during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It has been referred to variously in media and popular culture as the Jewish Mob, Jewish Mafia, Kosher Mob, Kosher Mafia, and Kosher Nostra or Undzer Shtik. The last two of these terms are direct references to the Italian cosa nostra; the former is a play on the word for kosher, referring to Jewish dietary laws, while the latter is a calque of the Italian phrase 'cosa nostra' into Yiddish, which was at the time the predominant language of the Jewish diaspora in the United States.
Jack Ignatius Dragna was an American Mafia member and Black Hander who was active in both Italy and the United States in the 20th century. He was active in bootlegging in California during the Prohibition Era in the United States. In 1931, he succeeded Joseph Ardizzone as the boss of the Los Angeles crime family after Ardizzone's mysterious disappearance and death. Both James Ragen and Earl Warren dubbed Dragna the "Capone of Los Angeles". Dragna remained the boss of the Los Angeles crime family from 1931 until his death in 1956.
Tere Tereba is an American fashion designer, writer, and actress. She is well known as one of the pioneers of women's "contemporary" clothing design and for playing "Ingrid Joyner" in Andy Warhol's Bad (1977). She is also the author of Mickey Cohen: The Life and Crimes of L.A.'s Notorious Mobster, published in 2012, which has been released in hardcover, trade paperback, e-book and audio editions. The book has also been translated into French, Italian and Chinese.
The Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) was formed in 1869, and has since become the third-largest law enforcement agency in the United States. They have been involved in various events in history, such as the Black Dahlia murder, the Watts riots, the 1992 Los Angeles riots, the North Hollywood shootout, the murder trial of O. J. Simpson, and the Rampart scandal.
Jack Whalen, also called Jack O'Hara and "The Enforcer," was a criminal and freelance contract killer and bookie, who worked for the Los Angeles crime family, although he also was associated with Benjamin "Bugsy" Siegel, the Shannon brothers and Mickey Cohen during the 1940s and 1950s.
The Los Angeles crime family, also known as the L.A. Mafia or the Southern California crime family, is an Italian-American organized crime syndicate based in Los Angeles as part of the larger Italian-American Mafia. Since its inception in the early 20th century, it has spread throughout Southern California. Like most Mafia families in the United States, the Los Angeles crime family gained power bootlegging alcohol during the Prohibition era. The L.A. family reached its peak strength in the 1940s and early 1950s under Jack Dragna, although the family was never larger than the New York or Chicago families. The Los Angeles crime family itself has been on a gradual decline, with the Chicago Outfit representing them on The Commission since the death of boss Jack Dragna in 1956.
Nick "Old Man" Licata was an Italian American mobster who was the Boss of the Los Angeles crime family from 1967 until his death in 1974.
Mob City is an American neo-noir crime drama television series created by Frank Darabont for TNT. It is based on real-life accounts of the L.A.P.D. and gangsters in 1940s Los Angeles as chronicled in John Buntin's book L.A. Noir: The Struggle for the Soul of America's Most Seductive City. The series premiered on December 4, 2013.
Gangster Squad is a 2013 American action crime thriller film directed by Ruben Fleischer, written by Will Beall, based on the non-fiction book by Paul Lieberman, and starring Josh Brolin, Ryan Gosling, Nick Nolte, Emma Stone, Anthony Mackie, Giovanni Ribisi, Robert Patrick, Michael Peña and Sean Penn. Set in 1949, it is a fictionalized account of the group of real-life LAPD officers and detectives, called the Gangster Squad, who brought down crime kingpin Mickey Cohen and his gang.
Brenda Allen was a madam based in Los Angeles, California, whose arrest in 1948 triggered a scandal that led to the attempted reform of the Los Angeles Police Department (L.A.P.D.). Allen received police protection due to her relationship with Sergeant Elmer V. Jackson of the L.A.P.D.'s administrative vice squad, who reportedly was her lover.
Barnett "Barney" P. Ruditsky was a British-born American police officer and private detective.
Man Against the Mob is a 1988 NBC television movie directed by Steven Hilliard Stern, starring George Peppard, Kathryn Harrold and Max Gail. Man Against the Mob is a precursor of the 2013 theatrical feature Gangster Squad, in that it deals with the post-war formation of a special LAPD unit set up to suppress Organized Crime in Los Angeles. It may have been inspired by the success of the 1987 theatrical feature The Untouchables, a period drama which also depicted an elite law enforcement unit pitted against mobsters. This was designed around the actor George Peppard as a tough LA cop in the late 1940s. A December 10, 1989 NBC-TV movie follow-up, Man Against the Mob: The Chinatown Murders, is a sequel that also stars Peppard, reuniting him with his co-star from The Blue Max, Ursula Andress. The first movie was a pilot of a proposed NBC series entitled City of Angels but ended up panning out as only the two TV movies before George Peppard died in 1994.
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