THE VERDICT:O.C. set 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 After the Volstead Act was repealed, organized crime didn’t miss a step and simply moved into other areas of commercial crime — gambling, narcotics, prostitution, loan sharking and other rackets.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 Williams’ 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 officeholders 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.