Setting the standard in district attorneys

In California, the district attorney is the single most important

officeholder in any county. As the chief law enforcement officer, he

sets the standards for all law enforcement in the county and, at the

same time, creates the climate for all other officeholders.

With an honest, aggressive district attorney, you have a clean

county. Without an honest, aggressive district attorney, corruption

and favoritism inevitably raise their ugly heads.

Except in the eyes of the temperance movement, Prohibition was a

disaster for our society. Thanks to bootlegging, organized crime

became entrenched. Faced with a law that the majority of the populace

rejected, law enforcement became, at the least, indifferent, or, at

the worst, corrupt. After the Volstead Act was repealed, organized

crime didn’t miss a step and simply moved into other areas of

commercial crime -- gambling, narcotics, prostitution, loan sharking

and other rackets. By and large, law enforcement, its lax habits

established during Prohibition, went along.

Peaceful, and at the time, rural Orange County was not spared.

Newport Beach and Seal Beach were always wide open to gambling.

Huntington Beach boasted a well-known and active brothel.

Even sleepy Santa Ana, which claimed to have more churches per

capita than any city in the country, did not escape. There was a

walk-in bookie joint on East 4th Street and another in the old Labor

Temple. The F&F; Sales Company on South Main Street furnished slot

machines to the whole county. We were far from squeaky clean.

Then, in 1954, Bob Kneeland was elected district attorney, and

things began to change. He established an investigative unit aimed at

stemming the inroads organized crime was making into the county. He

closed down the open gambling operation of a retired L.A. cop in Seal

Beach in a long and hard-fought case.

About that time, Ken Williams, then a deputy district attorney,

conducted the first successful prosecution of a big-time bookie

operation in the county. After that case, it was said that if you

stood on the county line, you would have been trampled to death by

the bookies fleeing to the more friendly environment of Los Angeles

County.

In 1957, Bob Kneeland was appointed to the Superior Court, and Ken

Williams was appointed district attorney. Ken kept the pressure on

the gamblers and successfully prosecuted several city officials in

western Orange County who had succumbed to easy money in the form of

bribes offered by overeager land developers.

Upon William’s appointment to the Superior Court in 1966, Cecil

Hicks was appointed district attorney. He, too, kept the lid on

organized crime and successfully prosecuted several county office

holders and political string-pullers who, in the 1970s, were seduced

by their own thirst for power.

Among their number was the most powerful member of the county

Board of Supervisors of that era. The board approved the budget for

the district attorney’s office and don’t think efforts weren’t made,

through the budget process, to cripple the district attorney’s

investigations of shenanigans in county government. Fortunately,

Cecil prevailed.

Orange County has been fortunate to have had the likes of Bob

Kneeland, Ken Williams and Cecil Hicks in that most important of

positions, setting the standard for a clean county.

* ROBERT GARDNER is a Corona del Mar resident and a former judge.

His column runs Tuesdays.