Preface to Chapter Five, "Sand Lots and Pick Handles":

So long as the Chinese are here, I shall give them the most complete protection which my official authority can control or create. The humblest individual who treads our soil, or whatever race descended and irrespective of the country of his birth or the language which he speaks, shall not appeal in vain for the protection of the law, which is no respecter of persons.

Chief of Police, Theodore G. Cockrill, 1874.

Also, from pp. 112-114:

The problem of Chinatown crime was complicated by the fact that for most of the nineteenth century, San Francisco was badly underpoliced. In 1863 there were still only 54 men in uniform. (They were outnumbered by the mignons Chinoises de nuit alone.) Yet the force made 5,422 (city-wide) arrests. In 1871, Chief Crowley complained to the Board of Supervisors that New York had 3 times as many policemen per capita as San Francisco; that London had 3 1/2 times as many; and that Dublin had (and doubtless needed) 5 times as many. Pat Crowley had to make do with 4 captains and only 100 men. The combination of tong troubles, continuing hoodlumism and anticoolieism taxed the law-and-order power of the city to the breaking point.

The colorful Crowley cast about for alternatives when he was not given the extra men he needed for Chinatown details. He strongly urged more drastic methods, even to the abolition of firecrackers and the prohibition of shooting galleries near Chinatown. He felt that the latter were too attractive to the tong hatchet men. "Nearly every Chinaman in the city," he said, "is the owner of a pistol, and we all know how handy he is in its use."

In 1874, when the strength of the force was brought into line with a realistic policy, it was Theodore Cockrill who was chief of police. Cockrill was a Kentuckian who had not really sought the office, but had allowed friends to place his name in nomination. As a Democrat he had not had the slightest hope of winning, but though the general Republican ticket swept the field Cockrill won the office of Chief by a 4,000-vote margin. He proved to be an effective leader but the problems of Chinatown were too much for him and persuaded him to flatly refuse renomination for a second term. Cockrill felt the growing tension in the air as the anticoolie agitators voiced loud threats. He was determined that no harm would come to the 25,000 Chinese for whose safety he was responsible; he promised them full protection and he gave it to them.

Chief Cockrill struck out at Chinatown crime, as so many of his predecessors had done, with an attack on the bagnios. An ordinance was passed which made it unlawful to sell any human being, such as a slave girl, or even to be in, enter into, remain in or dwell in any brothel. But Benjamin Brooks, attorney for the San Francisco Chinese, told Congressmen that this ordinance was used by the San Francisco police strictly for blackmail purposes. One wonders how many of the 13,007 arrests of 1873-1874 can be chalked up to this practice. In any case, Cockrill was proud that, thanks to his energetic activity, no Chinese brothels remained on main thoroughfares.

The chief had less success with gambling, since fan-tan players switched from brass "cash" (Chinese coins) and American silver to beans or buttons to fool his raiders. Either Cockrill was of excellent character or he was an able politician. Since he served only one term as chief, deliberately, the former is the more likely. His flowery pronouncement in regard to fan-tan was laudable enough. In his opinion it was far better for a few fan-tan operators to go unpunished for a misdemeanor than to have the police assuming unauthorized and arbitrary powers. A decade or so later this policy would be exactly reversed. City hall, in desperation at the number of tong killings, adopted a "get-tough" policy in Chinatown which infringed on many honest Chinese people's rights but which paid off in terms of affecting the tongs.

Tense as the situation was in the mid-70's, it would have been much worse but for the restraining influence of men like Cockrill and Governor William Irwin. The later, when he addressed a great anti-Chinese meeting in 1876, cautioned his listeners against violence. Of course to Cockrill an order was an order and an ordinance was an ordinance. While he stood ready to protect the Chinese from violence he also continued the enforcing of hazing legislation, such as the Cubic Air Ordinance. He arrested 518 Chinese for this offense in April, 1876, alone. Ambivalence came to be an occupational disease with police patrolling Chinatown eighty and ninety years ago.

Note: The Cubic Air Ordinance was a San Francisco "sanitary" law which was used against the immigrant Chinese poverty survival strategy of an extended family living in a small, single room dwelling. Similar Pagan Ordinances during the 1870's in San Francisco, included the Disinterment Ordinance, which made it illegal for Chinese to ship the remains of their dead back to China, and the Queue Ordinance which demanded the cutting of hair within one inch of the scalp of all prisoners in the city jail. It was a common believe by Caucasians of the time that the Celestials wore "pig-tails" for religious reasons and cutting them off prevented them from "going to heaven" and was a sacrilegious insult to their faith. In actuality, the wearing of queues by males was a custom and symbol of their national pride after centuries of Manchu enslavement. When the Manchu Empire was overthrown in 1912, the Chinese cut off their queues themselves.