KENT CROWLEY FOOTHILLS HISTORY COLUMNIST

Law enforcement at the start of 20th century wasn’t always a noble calling, and the line between lawman and criminal was frequently blurred – especially when it came to organized crime.

In the words of early Los Angeles muckraking journalist Horace Bell (who once beat an LAPD police chief with a typesetting mallet) the “line of demarcation between rebel and robber, pillager and patriot, was dimly defined.”

San Bernardino Town Marshal Benjamin Emerson became the “godfather” of the city’s organized crime by controlling gambling and brothels, sometimes combining them into sporting events.

Low life, high stakes Emerson – one of the founding members of the San Bernardino Police Department and married to the town’s leading madam – regularly hosted a high-stakes poker game at one of the city’s most elegant hotels for the elite of the region’s sporting fraternity.

At a time when the average American worker made about $300 per year, the customary bets ranged between $50 and $100, and even the lower-stakes games he hosted enjoyed official protection and boasted well-known prizefighters as bodyguards.

In 1908, he left the police department to concentrate on promoting local prizefights or fistic carnivals staged at the Armory Hall where local “soiled doves” (often provided by his wife’s brothels) were allowed to sit in the balcony so attendees could window shop for their post-fight entertainment.

Editorial comment Yet, it wasn’t Emerson’s criminal empire but his political ambitions that led to his downfall. On October 14, 1914, Emerson encountered H.E. Davis, editor of the San Bernardino Weekly Index, exiting a campaign headquarters.

Smarting from a series of anti-Emerson editorials in Davis’ paper, Emerson pummeled him to the floor. Davis whipped out a pistol and shot Emerson.

The ex-policeman died in the back of a police patrol wagon.