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William Francis Hynes (July 30, 1897 – May 16, 1952) was an anti-communist and anti-labor American police officer who led the Los Angeles Police Department "Red Squad" in the 1920s and 1930s. The LAPD Red Squad generally and Hynes specifically were known for both their violence and their corrupt profiteering as enforcers for hire. Hynes personally pioneered a number of "anti-subversive" propaganda techniques and became a nationally recognized expert on anti-communism with a side hustle as a regional strikebreaker.

Hynes was a U.S. Army veteran who first came to public notice when he infiltrated the IWW in San Pedro, California and contributed significantly to disrupting a strike action there in 1923. Hynes was then promoted within LAPD and ultimately given control of the anti-radical half of the department's Intelligence Division, functioning as both a detective and as a police commander. Hynes, who was described as a proto-fascist mercenary by his targets, his opponents, and the Southern California Methodist Ministers Conference, was just one element of a larger system wherein LAPD worked not so much for the general public as for a close-knit group of L.A. businessmen. The Red Squad's aggressive investigation, infiltration, and physical attacks on liberal groups and labor organizers in the Greater Los Angeles area successfully protected the area's "open shop" system and suppressed the labor movement and left-wing political organizations in Southern California during the Great Depression. By the 1930s the LAPD's anti-radical Red Squad was so overtly violent that entities like the L.A. Sheriff's Department and the city of Pasadena began intervening to protect civil liberties and prevent cop-instigated public brawls.

In 1938, when a new reform-minded chief of police came to power, Hynes was demoted from acting captain back to patrolman and spent the remaining years of his LAPD career as a local beat cop. Hynes died of hepatoma in 1952. Evidence collected by Hynes was still being cited in Congressional anti-communist hearings in 1957. The long shadow cast by the Red Squad continued to influence popular perception of the municipal police in Los Angeles until at least the 1960s if not until the 1992 Los Angeles riots and beyond.

Life & work
UNDER MAYOR PORTER: "The infamous LAPD 'Red Squad' was allowed to escalate its activities in breaking up meetings of leftists and liberals, infiltrating labor unions, and interfering in strikes, while Porter charged that even the suggestion of restraining this unit was 'communistic'."

"Frank Shaw's political coalition has been compared to a typical big city machine, but...it was more a directorate of political managers and interest groups banded together to achieve similar goals."

Hynes - "notorious for his sometimes violent, legally questionable pursuit of suspected Communists, and he was believed sympathetic toward far-right extremists."

"The 'Shaw machine' was in office for only five years and was quickly routed once Bowron took office."

"All of this has led to whispers and rumors that will not be still that a 'Shaw machine' was the front organization for big business interests led by the Los Angeles Times."

"the Los Angeles constabulary I found fairly swamped with duties of which old-time policemen never heard. These duties were largely the regulating of the average citizen's morals, people's economic views, and what the population might carry in its automobiles."

"The trial board in Los Angeles, which rejected every complaint of brutality laid before it by the local Bar Association, may be regarded as typical. It is sufficiently insufferable that policemen should not be normally answerable before the courts of law for the breaches of statute which they commit. It is doubly insufferable that the tribunals before which they do appear should be "loaded" against the citizen's cause. Many a police tribunal is the head and front of the lawless enforcement of the law."

"I asked a Western detective what drew young men into police work. He answered without hesitation: 'Adventure'; then after a pause, added "and graft."

"Orators of the Los Angeles department had indulged in amazingly frank public utterances in favor of the criminology of violence, the denial of individual rights, and the infliction of cruel punishments. The more extreme verbal flights, such as one ranking officer's advocacy of the cat-o'-nine-tails with salt to be rubbed into the victims' wounds, obviously far outstripped the practices of the department."

"A common characteristic of the countersubversive units Donner studied was their almost exclusive focus on the activities of left-wing radicals. Protectors of Privilege makes clear that, regardless of the precise contours of the relationship between police and the privileged, the ultimate victims of such a relationship are inevitably politically powerless, poor and minority status. That any relationship between the police and the privileged hurts poor and minority people and their advocates is an important lesson of Donner's book. This is not a revolutionary idea, but it is a valuable reminder of the effects of abuse of police power within a capitalist country. As such, the book presents a powerful basis for an argument that, so long as police power remains commodified, this power must be limited. Although his conspiracy theory is ultimately unpersuasive, Donner's documentation is valuable, and at times he succeeds in portraying the horror of police abuse with all the shocking clarity of a videotape."

"police and the privileged simply act according to prevailing social mores and buy and sell protection services. This distinction between conspiracy and general commodification is important to any proposed solution."

"He adequately exposes an interactive link between countersubversive units and right-wing interests but fails in his attempt to characterize the link as conspiratorial or even as evidence of an ideological bond."

"Far from dictating terms to the police, the business community often was duped by greedy officers into paying for protection that it did not really need"

"countersubversion campaign served the police more than the wealthy industrialist. Indeed, after reading Donner's book, it seems more realistic to describe the red squads as the exploiters of privilege, rather than its protectors...From Donner's history it appears that urban red squads exploited the private sphere's fear of communism, unions and minorities to reap huge personal profits from the "sale" of police protection."

"pervasive police corruption and profit-seeking that Donner exposes suggests that officers were not so much out to protect the "privileged" as to advance their own venal interests."

"Countersubversive units were essentially local police spy networks-metropolitan CIAs."

"history of power abuse and discrimination by police officers: improper surveillance and repression techniques aimed at left-wing organizations"



LADIES WHO SEE RED

"undercover work. Hynes recruited men to infiltrate union organizations to conduct surreptitious surveillance on union organizers, agents, and members. Their goal was to interrupt union organizing drives and prevent unionization. Their benefactors were Los Angeles area business owners concerned about a rising tide of unionization in the 1930s, and who were willing to pay to prevent or disrupt it."

"With the support of city power-elites, he imposed his will on communists and demonstrators in the city. The violent clashes with communists and demonstrators in the early 1930s were critically important in Hynes's rise to power in the city. They proved to respectable residents in the city that Hynes's warnings were accurate: communists were around every corner in the city and were bent on a violent overthrow of the government. The willingness of Angelenos to overlook police brutality and Cossack style tactics was made even more apparent when the Grand Jury came back with the results of its investigation in June 1932. In its report, the Grand Jury found that the communists and their sympathizers were a threat to Los Angeles."

Egalitarian: Stromberg, Yoneda, Eva Shafran

Yetta Stromberg 169–170

Tactical INNOVATION: arrests (for criminal syndicalism) but not prosecuted bc time and money and annoying and "op sec" and testimony is so hard man "simple intimidation or a good beating could get the job done just as effectively as arrest and conviction prosecution" Evidence of beatings VIOLENCE (McClellan)
 * "In addition to breaking up the street demonstrations, the Red Squad stepped up its raids on communist offices. In February, they seized Eva Shafran, a member of the CPUSA, as she left their headquarters. She was beaten so severely by the police officers that she was admitted to a local sanitarium."

", he testified before the Fish Committee that no fewer than 24 community groups, including the A.C.L.U., in Los Angeles were controlled by communist party factions and cells. This was in addition to the multitude of groups that were openly communist; although, he estimated that actual party membership in Southern California was fewer than 4,000.51 Further, in a 1938 report submitted to the Peace Officer's Association, a state-wide association for California police officers, Hynes suggested that communist infiltrators had unwittingly subverted everything from the Y.M.C.A. to local church groups."

"The LAPD was unconcerned with questions of constitutionality and legality; they were only concerned with the outcome. This ends-justify-the-means mindset was clearly articulated by Chief Roy E. Steckel (Chief from 1929-1933) when he said, "By the time a man has stuck his gun in your ribs and taken away your money, hasn't he lost his Constitutional rights?" This attitude pervaded much of the law enforcement community in Southern California at the time."

Anti-radical and anti-labor "arrest as many as possible and hold them without filing charges or allowing them access to an attorney." "The Red Squad's activities were somewhat proscribed during 1926, which coincidentally coincided with Hynes' assignment to the Pickpocket and Bunco Detail. However, he returned to the squad in 1927, this time as the acting-Lieutenant in charge of the unit; he would not leave the unit again until its dissolution in 1939."

"relative impotence of the Los Angeles labor movement in the 1920s meant the squad's activities were largely directed at groups who were affiliates or supporters of unionization and radical groups, at least until the depression of the 1930s would help to generate a larger union movement"

LAT, M&M, BAF "a fictive identity that defined respectable behavior in Los Angeles and had very specific membership requirements: white, native-born, protestant, and non-union. To define this fictive identity they had to create its opposite,"

"marginalizing the Los Angeles working class in a way that associated any working class activism with radicals and Communists. In short, union members were not true Americans, but dangerous 'others' who posed a clear and present danger to the United States. As the experts on crime control, only the police were equipped to deal with the threat."

"most potent force in the Police Department and city in those years"

"he was one of the first crusaders against the 'evils of communism'"

joined the department in 1921 or 1922

"Radical squad"

"discussed by Chief Davis in his 1933 Annual Report...Its primary function was the 'investigation and control of radical activities, strikes, and riots'. These duties included raids on 'radical' headquarters, prevention of open discussion in public parks and streets (violation of city ordinance), denial of permits for protest marches, and any other activities which would help to disrupt communists."

"During a proposed hearing in City Council chambers, the Council President requested the room be cleared so testimony could be given regarding the Red Squad. When some in attendance refused to leave Red took over. According to subsequent accounts, a 'wild' battle took place with participants 'hurling spittoons, biting, and swinging clubs and fists.'...Hynes [later] told the City Council he had instructed his men "never to use force until resisted. But, when the fight does start, I don't want them to get hurt. I don't want to see them on the floor. I want to see the communists on the floor."

"Today these actions would be reprehensible, but in the 1930s the mood was different. Red had the support of such groups as the Chamber of Commerce, much of the press (including the LA Times), the County Grand Jury, the Mayor and City Council...Even the Police Commission lent its support. As one Commissioner put it, 'The more the police beat them up and wreck their headquarters, the better...Communists have no constitutional rights and I won't listen to anyone who defends them'."

TOPICS


 * Hynes in context of Davis


 * Hynes in context of Los Angeles communism

RED SQUAD - "focused on 'enemies' of the government and big business"

INTELLIGENCE SQUAD - "to spy on, compromise, and intimidate critics and foes of the department and the mayor" - Intelligence Squad had 19 men

Davis - chief 1926–1929, deputy chief 1929–1933, chief again 1933–

"Lapdog" of LAT - undisguised propriety interest in Frank L. Shaw - newspaper "studiously ignoring the administration's corruption even as it took place right under the noses of the paper's most astute reporters

Harry Chandler found "labor organizing and left-wing political activism" threatening

max Berenzweig - vice squad commander - crony of Davis - "unable to pass the civil service exam"

"As the Record put it after a lengthy interview: "Davis quite honestly and sincerely believes that the country would be much better off if the whole question of constitutional rights was forgotten, and everything left to the discretion of the police...It is an axiom with Davis that constitutional rights are of benefit to nobody but crooks and criminals, and that no perfectly law-abiding citizen ever has any cause to insist upon 'constitutional rights.'"

"James Davis understood what was required. Dissent was to be squelched. The Red and Vagrancy squads unleashed."

Chief Davis's favorite speech topic was "Communism, and the subgroups that, he was certain, revolved around it: unions, union men and union organizers, liberals and subversives (there was no difference) and vagrants, drunks and drug addicts. His Red Squad was considered by the Los Angeles chapter of the ACLU to be 'the most lawless and brutal' in the country. And he himself was thought of even by contemporaries such as reporter Harold Story of the then ultra-right-wing Los Angeles Times as 'a burly, dictatorial, somewhat sadistic, bitterly antilabor man who saw communist influence behind every telephone pole".

"In no other country has the struggle between management and its employees engendered a contingent of mercenaries who specialize in breaking strikes...anti-union entrepreneurs have been a part of the business community's arsenal from the bloody strikes of the last quarter of the nineteenth century to today."

"Although strikebreaking troops and even armed guards continued to engage strikers in battle until the 1930s, as early as the first part of the new century these plug-ugliest were already beginning to fall out of the favor of anti-union employers as the public became less and less tolerant of the violence that accompanied labor disputes...By the Depression decade, industrial espionage had become not only an accept part of labor relations but the most important form of labor discipline services provided by anti-union specialists."

"The Chamber [of Commerce] maintained a very close relationship with the Los Angeles Police Department. The offices of Capt. William 'Red' Hynes, head of the LAPD intelligence squad, better known as the Red Squad, were in the Chamber of Commerce building. Chief James E. Davis told the Chamber's board of directors that his desire was to provide Los Angeles with the kind of stable conditions that made secure investments possible. He assured them that he was not afraid to take firm action against radical elements."

"In Los Angeles the newly elected mayor gave La Follette investigators access to the LAPD Intelligence Bureau records, where they found evidence of collusion between Hynes, Associated Farmers, and other antiunion employers." "Captain William 'Red' Hynes, head of Los Angeles' notorious Red Squad, boasted to a Congressional committee in 1930 about how he had 'succeeded in stopping the showing' of WIR films by informing theater managers of the organization's communist leanings and suggesting they needed to 'protect themselves against suit, or anything.' When asked by the committee, 'Under what law did you do that?' he smugly replied, 'There is no particular law.'"

"The bureau was not the only government agency then concerned with Communist propaganda in the motion pictures. The Los Angeles Police Department's infamous Radical Squad regularly monitored Southern California communities, keeping tabs on members of the Industrial Workers of the World; Italian anarchists; Mexican Obreros Libres (Free Workers); ACLU members; pacifists; radical intellectuals; the local branch of the Universal Negro Improvement Association; radical churches and women’s clubs; and a veritable host of trade and labor union locals, including carpenters, painters, butchers, and bakers. The LAPD also paid close attention to any instances of “Red Propaganda with Moving Pictures.” William F. Hynes, then secretary (and later captain) of the LAPD Radical Squad, was particularly concerned about the activities of the International Workers' Aid (IWA), formerly known as the Friends of Soviet Russia. The IWA started as a relief organization for famine victims in Soviet Russia in 1921, but soon it set out to counter anti-Communist portrayals of the Bolsheviks in the popular culture. To this end, the IWA hired William F. Kruse, known as the “Camera man of the American Communists” according to historian Steven Ross. Kruse, who was monitored by both the Bureau of Investigation and the LAPD, produced several documentaries for the company, including one that truly agitated Hynes, entitled Russia and Germany: A Tale of Two Republics (1924)."

The LAPD also kept track of other radical pictures, including Beauty and the Bolshevik, a comedy-romance, and Russia in Overalls, a documentary showing Russian industrial development. William F. Hynes, “Confidential Weekly Summary of Intelligence,” Report no. 2, August 23–29, 1924; Hynes, Report no. 5, September 13–19, 1924; Hynes, Report no. 7, September 27-October 3, 1924; Hynes, Report no. 12, October 31–November 7, 1924; all in box 43, LAPD RS. See also Ross, Working-Class Hollywood, 155–56.

1957 - congress citing Hynes - https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/GPO-CRECB-1957-pt8/pdf/GPO-CRECB-1957-pt8-5-2.pdf

"Ultimately, the bombing of Raymond’s car became the catalyst for a major reform of the LAPD, which included the dissolution of both Earl Kynette’s “Intelligence Squad” and William Hynes’“Red Squad”—which the CPLA seems to have been accurate in seeing as instrumentally similar practitioners of political surveillance, though directed against critics of city corruption in the first case and against political radicals and organized labor in the second."

"spy squad" -

"As momentum accumulated, CIVIC members joined with a wider coalition of allies in the Federation for Civic Betterment, which formed in February 1938 to coordinate the recall campaign. Representatives claimed membership of over three hundred civic, labor, and church organizations, comprising over 300,000 individuals.46 The federation played host to some uneasy bedfellows, who nevertheless cooperated in the goal of recalling Shaw. The Communist Party of Los Angeles, for example, followed the general media strategy of the federation by exploiting the Raymond bombing to rally support for the mayor’s recall, but with their own emphases. Declaring that a “political upheaval is imminent,” one CPLApublication labeled Kynette’s Intelligence Squad the “twin brother” of the “Red Squad” run by Captain William F. Hynes, forming a neat corollary with the man

"who had been the chief antagonist of the city’s Left since the early 1920s. Moreover, like Hynes, Shaw, and Chief Davis, the CPLA claimed that Kynette was a mere puppet of the real enemy—the city’s powerful open-shop lobby headed by Los Angeles Times publisher Harry Chandler.47 CP members, urged the pamphlets, should see this latest outrage as a continuation of the decades-long repression of the Los Angeles left by the city’s powerful business elite. The federation, and the Raymond bombing, thus provided a convenient vehicle for the accumulated grievances of a variety of political organizations that had been traditionally excluded from the city politics of Los Angeles. On September 16, 1938, Los Angeles voted by an almost two-to-one margin to recall Shaw. In his place they elected Fletcher Bowron—CIVIC’s favored candidate and the manwhohadbeenattemptingtoencourageinvestigationofShawatleastsince thegrand jury of 1934.48 Though CIVIC and the Federation for Civic Betterment were certainly instrumental in convincing voters of the corruption of Shaw’s administration, a direct connection between LAPD assassins, organized crime, and a besieged city hall was never proven in court, and any truly convincing evidence collected by CIVIC remains unknown to historians."

"Sometimesworkinginopenorunofficialcollaborationwithstate surveillance agencies, economic surveillance has historically been used in the United States most often to disrupt or repress labor organizations. Through the use ofagents provocateurs, factory informants, open-shop propaganda, and mercenary strikebreakers, private-sector surveillance agencies were both widespread enough and effective enough to have significantly shaped the development of American capitalism starting in the late nineteenth century."

Isador Brooks - "In 1932, Isador was arrested by Los Angeles Police Chief William F. Hynes' Red Squad. He was so severely beaten by them that it permanently affected his health and he died two years later."

The Great Depression and Roosevelt's New Deal turned the tides against management and in favor of labor in Los Angeles: "During 1936, over 10,000 workers in Los Angeles took part in fifty strikes. That same year, a scene occurred that would have been unthinkable just five or six years earlier. Thirty-thousand people representing 142 Los Angeles unions mocked all those decades of Harry Chandler's shrewd calculations and all of those years of Red Hynes's hard work by marching uncontested down the middle of Broadway. By the year's end, membership in the city's unions had risen to 65,000."

"As one of his squad members told some reporters who began citing a Supreme Court decision when they were arrested, 'You'll learn pretty soon that the Supreme Court isn't running Los Angeles.'"

California Criminal Syndicalism Act

"Typical of these years is a little boxed story that appeared in the Los Angeles press: 'This will be a 'shove Tuesday' for the Los Angeles police. The communists plan to stage another demonstration today, according to Capt. Wm. Hynes, which means that 500 police will be held in readiness. If the communists demonstrate, the police will shove and keep on shoving until the parade is disrupted.' The 'shove days' were of regular occurrence in Los Angeles."

"For fifteen years, this squad made a mockery of the right of free speech in Los Angeles."

"Conducting a perennial witch-hunt for 'reds' and 'pinks' in all walks of life, the Red Squad drove numberless teachers and clergymen from their posts and presided, like an S.S. Elite Guard, over the City of Los Angeles."

"I have watched the members of this squad break up meets in halls and public parks with a generous use of tear-gas bombs and clubs."

LAPD/city of LA + Better America + M&M - "host of spies, stool pigeons, and informers to disrupt trade unions, to provoke violence, and to ferry out the 'reds'"

"Strikes of agricultural workers were broken in the very backyard of Los Angeles with a brutality and violence remarkable even in California"

"It was the Better America Foundation that forced the City of Angeles to establish a 'Red Squad' under the leadership of the well-known Capt. William ("Red") Hynes."

"Moreover, nationally labor was on the off ensive in the immediate postwar years, bidding to maintain wartime gains. Open-shop advocates rose to the challenge of keeping organized labor weak in southern California, capitalizing on the postwar hyperpatriotism and antiradicalism, and indeed infl aming it. 40  Th e Better America Foundation (BAF), formed in 1920, was the primary tool for blunting any postwar surge in labor activism. A successor organization to the more staid Commercial Federation, the BAF went on the attack against threats, real or imagined, to business interests in California by touting Americanism and working to link unionism, labor legislation, and progressivism with worldwide revolutionary radicalism. Th e BAF advocated a broad rollback of business regulation and was quick to denounce government infl uence over business as evidence of “socialistic and bolshevistic” tendencies. T h e BAF also linked its strident Americanism with a professed belief in the sanctity of the Constitution, whose immutable truths subversives and their fellow travelers sought to undermine. 41 Southern California provided a receptive audience for the BAF's aggressive postwar antistatist rhetoric."

Hynes and the Red Squad were symptomatic of a broader "surge in hyperpatriotic and antiunion thinking among the state's business interests" in the aftermath of World War I. California business interests, through the state Republican Party, also promoted high tariffs and exclusion of Japanese migrants to the United States.

1919–1924: "531 men were indicted in California for violation of the Criminal Syndicalism Act. Of those arrested, 264 were tried, 164 convicted, and 128 were sentenced to San Quentin Prison for terms of from one to fourteen years. A large part of these prosecutions arose in Southern California."

"Learning of the disturbances at San Pedro, Mr. Sinclair announced that he intended to speak at Liberty Hill, on a small tract of privately owned land which had been rented for the occasion. On the night of the meeting, Liberty Hill was black with the massed figures of the strikers. Mounting a platform illuminated by a lantern, Mr. Sinclair proceeded to read Article One of the Constitution of the United States and was promptly arrested. Hunter Kimbrough then mounted the platform and started to read the Declaration of Independence, and was promptly arrested. Prince Hopkins then stepped on the platform and stated, "We have not come here to incite to violence," and was immediately arrested. Hugh Hardyman then followed Hopkins and cheerfully announced, "This is a most delightful climate," and was promptly arrested. For eighteen hours these four men were held incommunicado while their lawyer, John Beardsley, now a judge of the Superior Court of Los Angeles County, tried frantically to discover where they were being held. He finally succeeded in serving a writ of habeas corpus and the next day they were all released. A few days later, all but 28 of the 600 strikers in jail were released and, in effect, the strike had been won."

"Here in California, strikes, protests and organization are being met with savage brutality. When profits are threatened, constitution rights are pushed aside and violence is used to maintain special privilege. This violence is that of the 'constituted authorities' and are called 'Vigilantes, 'Silver Shirts, 'Safety Committees and perhaps a dozen other names. At times these bands and the police act openly together; again the vigilantes attack 'independently' —but conveniently without police interference. The police in their capacity as servants to the privileged, function in the manner of Hitler's political police, against the leaders of those who fight for the people's rights. Hundreds of those who stand to the fore in this fight of the oppressed are taken into the jails of the State of California and tortured. This is a reversion to the coercive methods of the Dark Ages. It is incipient fascism."

Leo Gallagher "Gallagher had been an early advocate for LAPD reform and from time to time paid dearly for his outspoken activism. For example, in 1934, Red Squad agents beat Gallagher, two war veterans, and the director of the American Civil Liberties Union during a Los Angeles City Council meeting. The beating was triggered by Gallagher's demand that the Red Squad be prosecuted for its wanton violence and destruction of private property."


 * STRIKE BREAKING / ANTI LABOR / PRO MANAGEMENT


 * ANTI-communism / ANTI-subversion

"At the outset of the 1930s, the Communist Party had yet to take off in Los Angeles. The local organization was composed mainly of Jewish workers from Boyle Heights, perhaps reflecting that community's direct relationship with Russia. By the end of the decade, however, the CPUSA in Los Angeles would grow to nearly 3,000 members and include significant numbers of Asian, Mexican, and African Americans."

"With Communists now the central target of a broad-based repression of dissent, the Red Squad was emboldened by the 1929 election of former Klansman John Porter to mayor of Los Angeles."

Police commissioner Mark Pierce: "Communists have no constitutional rights and I won't listen to anyone who defends them."

Police commissioner Mark Pierce: "The more the police beat them and wreck their headquarters, the better."

"Attempts to organize both rural and urban workers were dogged by state repression. bc concentrations of Japanese American workers remained in agriculture, Communists sought to reach them through the Agricultural Workers Industrial Union. party cadre Horiuchi Tetsuji ventured out from Los Angeles to agitate workers in the Imperial Valley. Horiuchi was in the midst of leading a farmer workers strike when authorities nabbed him in January 1930." 2.5 years in Folsom, "voluntary" deportation to USSR left from San Pedro Augu 1932 -

International Labor Defense

"Just before dawn on January 13, 1932, snow began descending on Los Angeles for the first time in more than 50 years. Issei Communists thus stood less than a snowball's chance of surviving in Los Angeles"

The Red Squad raided a Commie meeting in Long Beach "and captured 120 party members. Among those arrested were nine Japanese immigrants along with one Greek and one Asian Indian, who were set for deportation.

Flyer for Feb 2: "One bilingual flyer urging supporters to attend the February 2 trial of those arrested read: "AS PART of the bosses' program of hunger and unemployment a new reign of terror has been launched against workers who DARE TO PROTEST against the misery of their conditions! In an effort to still the militant voices of workers who refuse to calmly watch their families suffer the pangs of starvation, the bosses send their uniformed and plain-clothes thugs to break up workers' meetings, raid their homes, arrest them and beat them up!"

Japan Night - Feb 11 1933

"enough, even "Japan Nights" became targets of Red Squad repression. On February 11, 1933, the Puroretaria Geijutsu Kai (Japanese Proletarian Art Club), Rodo Shimbun, and the Japanese branch of the Los Angeles ILD (named after Horiuchi Tetsuji) sponsored a night of culture at the John Reed Club in Holly-wood. A handbill produced by the Japanese Branch of the International Labor Defense and the Young Communist League (YCL) claimed that "450 workers of all races and nationalities" were in attendance. The art club had just completed its play The Dawn of Manchuria, and the audience was moving into the auditorium for dancing when "Red" Hynes and his squad crashed the party. The Red Squad then shut down the event, cleared out the building, and arrested Karl Yoneda. 4 The Red Squad publicized the raid as an attack on Japanese militarist ele-ments."

Red Squad vandalized the John Reed Club and "they seem to have been especially disturbed by a mural painted by the Japanese Proletarian Art Club symbolizing cross-racial solidarity. Underneath a bilingual English-Japanese banner reading "Workers of the World Unite" was a large painting of the Scottsboro Boys. The Red Squad fired bullets through the foreheads of each of the nine defendants depicted in the mural."

Executed as infiltrators >5


 * Spy stuff "INTELLIGENCE"


 * CORRUPTION FOR $$$

Loren Miller
 * "The previous Friday, he reported, the Red Squad had prevented the John Reed Club from presenting Scottsboro Limited as part of a Paris Commune celebration. The Club paid for a hall and the audience began to gather, "when up steps the Red Squad and lets us know that the thing was off." Miller had a bitter face to face confrontation with a cop afterwards who had told him to leave the scene. The Red Squad seized a program for the event written by "one of the very bright young revolutionaries" which listed Miller as a speaker for the I.L.D. along with a speaker from the Party."

"officially known as the Intelligence Bureau of the Metropolitan Police Division, was created in the 1920S as a bulwark against radicals. It was the enforcer of the anti-union, anti-radical bias of the city's power structure. Hynes got his start infiltrating the IWW in the 1920S and became a powerful ally of the conservative elite. Hynes had offices in the Chamber of Commerce building and a private detective business on the side. He also served as a labor relations consultant and speaker for right-wing groups. (19)"

1931 - "On May 8, 1931, an Eagle reporter, probably Loren Miller, described the Red Squad breaking up a Communist meeting that protested the execution of the eight. The organizers had shifted the meeting place from a location on Adams Blvd to the U.N.I.A. hall on Central Avenue to avoid the Red Squad, but to no avail. Red Hynes and his squad arrived at the hall where more than 100 were seated and "broke in the meeting with orders for the crowd to disperse." When the crowd failed to obey, "the police brought expulsion by the usual violent means employed by the squad." Out on the street the Communists and a large crowd slowly moved down Central Avenue despite assaults by the police. Women's screams and the men's resistance attracted a large crowd. A miniature riot ensued as the Red Squad tried to force the crowd off the Avenue into a side street. When one person was arrested, the crowd surrounded the police car holding him. Finally the crowd dispersed as it moved slowly down Central. No charges were filed against the arrestee."

"Miller watched closely the burgeoning Communist movement in black Los Angeles. In August, the Eagle reported the arrest of a "colored" Red leader on Central Avenue by Captain Hynes himself after the Red Squad raided a meeting of the Young Liberators, a Communist organization, which agitated "for complete social, political and economic equality for Negroes." After the Red was charged with violation of the Criminal Syndicalism law, Miller blasted the charges as a violation of free speech, deriding the law as "a silly piece of legislation enacted by ninnies who hope to keep people from thinking by law."

TYPICAL textbook red squad - "our years of record keeping, he saw one of the men with a large cut under his eye from a beating.

The suspect had been given the "third degree," that is, beaten when he refused to answer questions. Gallagher had to file a Writ of Habeas Corpus in order to speak with most prisoners and was called vile names by a Federal immigration inspector. A female prisoner, Ida Rothstein, saw several women beaten by police women. When one woman refused to answer questions, a male officer told one of the women officers: "Make her black and blue, choke here till she coughs up." When a male prisoner said he would not answer questions without an attorney, he was told: "I will split your head if you insist on your legal rights." Another man was kicked when he claimed constitutional rights and was taunted: "We will give you your constitutional rights." 82 persons, allegedly, were held incommunicado for more than 3 days. In the end, 44 were charged with unlawful assembly and 12 held by the Feds for deportation. (95)

Several religious groups and the I.L.D. complained about the raid to the Los Angeles City Council, particularly the brutal treatment and humiliation by the Red Squad and the calling of prisoners by vulgar and obscene names. "The lawless enforcement of law," one complainant wrote, "is the beginning of the destruction of freedom and should not be tolerated." Another called it a "barbarous inquisition." (96) The Police Commission completed its investigation on February 24, 1932, approving the LAPD Chief's finding that there was no evidence of undue force and violence or conduct unbefitting officers. The rejection was not unexpected; in October 1931 it had rejected a complaint by Mrs. Bass and Minnie B. Fareiri on behalf of the Los Angeles Forum to investigate discrimination against the colored face by the LAPD. A Police Commissioner was quoted as saying about the Reds: "The more the police beat them and wreck their headquarters, the better. Communists have no constitutional rights and I won't listen to anybody who defends them." (97) Loren Miller criticized the Red Squad for the raid and arrests, saying it gave a black eye to "free speech and free assemblage," while the prosecutions, at a cost of $25,000, was a waste of Depression-era money.

"By World War II, the scattered, sometimes competing, sometimes amateurish anticommunist efforts of the American Legion, red squads, the National Guard, MID, and INS during the 1930s had all largely given way to the programs of the FBI-which were typically more centralized, better funded, and often more professional.

"Los Angeles and Portland red squads disappeared from sight after the late 1930s."

"Insofar as they left a record of their reasons for opposing Communism, they nearly all indicated that they considered Communism to be un-American. Beyond that, they varied in their purposes, methods of operation, and relations to the state. The most prominent anticommunist groups were the American Legion, police red squads, the National Guard and Military Intelligence, business leaders and organizations, and organized labor (both AFL and CIO). Others, including some officials of the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS), non-CP leftists, and the Catholic Church, were involved at less prominent levels."

"labor spy before joining the LAPD in 1922, Hynes became head of the red squad in 1927."

"An appearance before the Fish Committee in 1930 catapulted him into the nation's headlines and led other cities to seek his advice in setting up their own red squads."

"LA red squad savagely assaulted virtually any leftist meeting or demonstration and meted out much the same to union picket lines."

Spring 1938 - Kynette attempted murder trial - recall mayor Shaw "For the democratic front elements in the FCB. the principal objective of the campaign, in addition to the recall of Shaw, was the ouster of the violently anti-CIO police chief, James Davis. This, in turn, would almost certainly result in the abolition of the "Red Squad," led since the early 1920s by Lieutenant "Red" Hynes. The Red Squad, a long established branch of the police department, had for fifteen years used open violence and intimidation in its campaigns against alleged "subversives." These now ranged, in its view, from the broad-based FCB to the Communist Party itself, both groups containing at all times at least one police informant"

"The appearance on the picket line of Hollywood writers, actors and directors such as Dorothy Parker, Marie Wilson, Frank Capra, John Ford, Ring Lardner Jr., Philip Dunne, Lionel Stander, and others, not only gave some national publicity to the strike, but also precluded the possibility of Red Squad attacks on the strikers. Indeed, for the first time in many years, "Red" Hynes and his men were to find themselves virtually impotent in the face of hundreds of middle-class picketers. Confronted with what often seemed like a sidewalk party. Hynes was reduced to the occasional arrest, each of which was turned into a major event by the Guild's strike paper and the People's World" Communist Party's West Coast newspaper

RAID AND KIDNAPPING etc - whew boy

"While the police were unenthusiastic in their search for the perpetrators of the June 14 raid and kidnaping"

"The San Pedro general strike failed completely." membership collapse - "s clear, however, that the Marine Transport Workers Industrial Union 510 of the Industrial Work ers of the World was also the victim of local external forces- the determination of employers, police, press, and vigilantes to drive the I.W.W. from Los Angeles harbor. Employer blacklists, police harassment, press incitement, and vigilante raids- all these in duced local Wobblies to defect and encouraged footloose fellow workers to depart" - van valen 169

San Pedro strike: "Implicitly admitting its failure, the Los Angeles police aban doned the campaign to halt the growth of the I.W.W. through the policy of selective arrests of the most active members, and inau gurated a new policy, that of mass arrests of rank and file mem bers. A week before Christmas, the police raided an I.W.W. meeting and arrested all of the sixty men present, transporting them to the Lincoln Heights jail in chartered "big red cars" of the Pacific Electric. All those arrested were alleged to have been carrying red cards. The police vowed to continue the policy of mass arrests of rank and file members until they had driven the I.W.W. from the harbor. Actually, no further mass arrests were made for several months, presumably because of crowded jails and crowded court calendars"

Ship owners and warehouse operators were able to employ strikebreakers almost completely free from harassment by strikers, principally because of the support they received from municipal agencies, particularly the Los Angeles Police Department









anti-picketing ordinance to court Leo Gallagher

"ACLU lawyers should be thrown out of 10 story windows"

kynette - confidential squad

hynes - "intelligence"

photo - not sure is hynes - Arcadia

Reppetto 2018 - good detective department but goal was not solving crimes but playing politics and economics and media games

Hynes also surveilled local Nazi-aligned groups using funds provided by the Jewish Federation of Los Angeles. In 1939 Marxist muckraker John L. Spivak alleged that both the Italian and Japanese intelligence services had paid Hynes for reports on assorted California communists and trade-unionists.

Misread Hynes's loyalties

"Police riot" - "with their fantastic and hair-splitting free speech rights" page 38

payment from street railway + expert on communism

every week

Frank G. Boneli

"cities." What does the record show? Certainly a major element of the city machine was the police department. How evenly and smoothly did this work under Shaw and Davis? As far as Chandler was concerned, quite well. Davis granted Hynes and his "Red Squad" and Kynette and his "Confidential Squad" autonomy. This permitted Hynes to turn the men under him into a private police force, working for various special interests, among them anti- labor groups and Santa Anita race track, both close to Harry Chandler's heart. Konette was able to turn his men loose so that they could pry into the private affairs of labor officials, anti- Shaw and anti-Chandler leaders, and others who might"

Capt. William F. Hynes, of the Los Angeles police force, testified before the committee, as follows: "Practically all the arrests made by the Los Angeles police department are the result of communist mass demonstrations, picketing in connection with communist-inspired or communist-led strikes, and distribution of communist-propaganda literature, handbills, circulars, etc., on the streets. These mass demonstrations and picketing activities frequently result in riots, assaults, and batteries, and other breaches of the peace."

During the past six months the communists have evolved a system of "red defense squad," sort of semi military "red defense corps," whose duty it is to oppose and fight the police. Each squad has a regular captain, and their strategy and tactics, defensive and offensive, are worked out prior to the mass demonstration or strike disturbance. Arrests and prosecutions are usually made under the provisions of the State State penal code against riot, rout, assault, battery, disturbing the peace, and interference with officers. Los Angeles has ordinances against blocking the side walk, parading without permit, distributing handbills and dodgers without permit, and an anti-picketing ordinance. These are constantly violated by the communists, resulting in many arrests. "acting captain" - salary - Spivak - what were LAPD RANKS IN 1930s?

Garment workers - paid US$769.50 lunch dinner to Hynes - garment workers

1939 - asked Bowron to detach Hynes from LAPD completely

Los Angeles Jewish Community Committee

"See also pt. 15-D, exhibit 3579, p. 6998, a report of salesman D. J. Wright, of Federal Laboratories, Inc., dated May 15, 1934, stating that Captain Hynes; of the Red Squad of the Los Angeles Police Department placed a small order for tear gas, and added "the harbor com. panies gave him the money to pay for the equipment when they couldn't buy it for themselves."

Orange, California "One of the grenades thrown had been recovered, undischarged, and a firm of attorneys had sought to ascertain from Federal Laboratories the name of the purchaser and the source of the Ere de. do all abortes, he sondan is of the grin des sold to them. In this case the grenade had been sold to the Orange police department, but the company refused to divulge this infor- mation to the attorneys who had requested it. Mr. Cake expressed his gratification. * * * I am very glad you did not supply the desired information to the Law firm in Santa Ana, as they are no doubt up with the radical bunch seeking the information to ause aybe or the polingeles Police Red Squad of the affair and he told me that this man Carter is an attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union and very communistic. As it is a felony in California for a person to be in possession of tear gas without a permit, the police department planned on arresting this man on that charge.

1935 - cabinet workers and furniture trades vs open shop pages 291 & 292 1935 - anti war demonstration at UCLA

1935 - "watched by red squad but dispersed without disorder"

1936 - strike violence feared Imperial Valley lettuce Page 164 "Police spies also attended the business meetings of Local 128 in Long Beach, as well as recruitment meetings held at the Standard oil refinery at el Segundo"

COMMUNIST PARTY IN CALI (SO) "Despite these efforts, the Communists failed to develop a mass following in Southern California. This was partly because the esoteric Marxist jargon the party used during its revolutionary Third Period frightened off more workers than it attracted. it was partly because the party started off with a very small group of active members, consisting of a few hundred garment workers, some students and hollywood intellectuals, and a number of Jewish tradesmen and eastern european sympathizers from Boyle heights. and it was partly because the LaPD’s red squad had no hesitation about breaking up the CP’s street demonstrations wherever and whenever they appeared. The LaPD regularly beat up the marchers and took many of them into custody, making it risky for all but the most dedicated demonstrators to turn out in support."

1933 " oil company executives from as far away as Taft negotiated with Captain hynes of the LaPD’s red squad to supply confidential agents who could infiltrate the oil workers’ meetings and report on their activities. Before the end of 1933, several of these agents infiltrated union recruitment meetings called by officials of the Bakersfield Central Labor Council in Taft, Coalinga, Maricopa, and other San Joaquin valley oil towns."

1933 " oil company executives from as far away as Taft negotiated with Captain hynes of the LaPD’s red squad to supply confidential agents who could infiltrate the oil workers’ meetings and report on their activities. Before the end of 1933, several of these agents infiltrated union recruitment meetings called by officials of the Bakersfield Central Labor Council in Taft, Coalinga, Maricopa, and other San Joaquin valley oil towns."

"on october 30, 1931, Captain hynes’s men broke up a mass meeting of radicals at the Philharmonic Auditorium that had been called to demand freedom for Tom Mooney, a labor agitator jailed for allegedly throwing a bomb during the 1916 San Francisco Preparedness Day parade. numerous demonstrators were arrested on charges of “criminal syndicalism,” and several were hurt. only when it became clear that these serious allegations would not hold up in court were the charges reduced to disturbing the peace."

1932-01-93 red squad "dispersed a legal demonstration of unemployed workers by wading into the ranks of unarmed men and women with clubs, slingshots, and brass knuckles and beating many of them to the ground."

Intelligence Bureau of the Police Department - Red Squad

James E. Davis chief of police 1932 appointment - opposed open shop - "soon after Davis' appointment, the anti-union and antiradical activities of the Red Squad under Captain William Hynes intensified"

March 4 1933 - "a group of the unemployed, under the auspices of the National Federation of Unemployed Workers League of America, arranged a demonstration in honor of President Roosevelt's inauguration, but the police, led by Captain William F. Hynes, were present to disband the participants."

Hynes - "uncanny ability of appearing inopportunely with his men at the meetings of groups likely to disturb the peace or with objectives contrary to those of supporters of the"

"open shop. Members of the Red Squad also frequently supervised the conduct of picket lines and other public demonstrations by individuals and organizations. The squad was heartily disliked by local labor leaders, who were often arrested for disturbing the peace while conducting strikes."

Los Angeles Garment Workers strike of 1933 - "The police arrived shortly after the strike was called, and under their protection a number of factories resumed operations with non-strikers. Numerous demonstrations occurred during the walkout, and a large number of pickets were arrested. ILGWU leaders charged the police with deliberately placing strikers under arrest in the afternoon so that they could not have police court hearings until the next day, thus forcing the union to bail them out in order to prevent their staying in jail overnight. The disorders on the picket line were publicized in the Times, which also sought to minimize the impact of the walkout by quoting Captain Hynes of the Red Squad to the effect that only about sixty plants were affected by the strike, with 1,375 workers out "on the bricks" and 1,095 on the job."

"The Trade Union Unity League, an arm of the Communist Party, took advantage of the unrest caused by the depression to try to organize a number of firms, including the General Cable Corporation, then under contract to supply the cable for the Hoover Dam power line. Chief of Police Davis, through the Red Squad under Captain Hynes, endeavored to control these radical activities. Not only was the Red Squad present at all strikes, but an elaborate spy system was put into operation and means"

"were contrived for police representatives to attend meetings and conferences of designated radical groups as well as of AFL unions. Union leaders accused the Red Squad of being so zealous in arresting strikers that AFL pickets were frequently jailed as radicals. Secretary Buzzell of the Central Labor Council protested to Mayor Shaw, and a formal request was made for abolition of the Red Squad, but to no avail. A subsequent protest to the grand jury was rejected on the ground that this body did not have jurisdiction over the Los Angeles Police Department."

"the local Chamber of Commerce is not involved in labor relations and the Merchants and Manufacturers Association, which until about 1937 supplied firm employer leadership in belligerent opposition to unions and collective bargaining, nowadays plays at most a minor and ambivalent role,"

América Tropical: Oprimida y Destrozada por los Imperialismos - "In 1932, Mexican art invaded Los Angeles, and there was a great deal of excitement over the controversial Siqueiros mural. “Red” Hines’s “Red Squads” were running rampant, raiding union headquarters and homes and creating havoc among the liberals. The forces behind him were using the general agitation to keep the mural from being executed. However, Siqueiros was able to muster a small force and get a wall high above the..."

Olvera Street wall - assisted by Reuben Kadish, Fletcher Martin, Sandy McCoy

"Not long after the Siqueiros mural was destroyed. Like everything else in Los Angeles, it seemed to make no permanent impression."

"joined the LAPD in 1921 after long army service"

"assigned to duty as an undercover operator and penetrated the IWW"

"15 years as leader of Red Squad"

"In 1938 a reform administration broke him to patrolman and sent him to walk a beat in the sticks. In 1943 he retired from the LAPD and worked as a private security consultant."

"Through the '30s, the LAPD maintained a faithful antiRed force headed by Captain Red Hines, whose squad broke up Communist and other radical meetings with gusto and spied on dissidents."

1934 San Pedro dock strike - "The shipowners also signed a secret contract with the Burns Detective agency and Captain William “red” hynes of the LaPD’s red squad to supply extra police and guards in the event of violence"

" second half of the strike witnessed a broadening and deepening of the struggle. on June 8, Secretary Buzzell of the L.a. Central Labor Council established a special support fund from the aFL’s constituent unions, which raised $1,947.00. The San Pedro iLa local followed this up by holding a number of benefit shows and dances at its headquarters on Fifth and Palos verdes streets.41 as food supplies became scarcer, striker alfred Langley recalled, he and his friends went over to Catalina island to shoot wild goats for meat. “all over San Pedro, Palos verdes—they used to pick vegetables; butchers used to give ’em meat; guys would go out in trucks and pick the stuff up.” 42 The shipowners and the Los Angeles Times tried to tighten the screws by pressuring the county board of supervisors to stop disbursing unemployment relief to the strikers. Buzzell retaliated by urging Mayor Shaw and District attorney Fitts to have the L.a. grand Jury investigate the increasingly transparent links between the shipowners, Captain hynes’s red squad, and the weapons that found their way into the hands of the strikebreakers. But the grand Jury failed to respond."

1923 San Pedro maritime strike

Imperial Valley lettuce strike of 1930

Black Legion scare

LAPL PHOTO COLL: Hynes w cig in Black Legion robe

UCLA DIGITAL: broken glass door

Patt Morrison: "The catch-all charge was a fairly new California felony banning 'criminal syndicalism.' Syndicalism is a workers' political movement to put business ownership into workers’ hands, but in California, its criminal application extended not just to actions, including peaceful picketing, but to teaching or advocating anything resembling it. The law was broadly used, often at the insistence of business owners, to prosecute not just true syndicalists, but also the many ordinary workers striking for better wages and working conditions — and a repeal of the syndicalism act. (It was ruled unconstitutional in 1968.)"

Junks anti-red squad

"In the late thirties, Hynes became involved in a variety of activities spreading the word of the gruesome red menace, including a period of service for the Los Angeles business establishment. His most notable contribution was the huge 1937 Report to the California Peace Officers' Association, "The Communist Situation in California," drafted by Hynes, who headed the association's Subcommittee on Subversive Activities. The report is not only noteworthy because it projects Hynes's scary style and rhetoric but is graced with illustrations, "Subversive Exhibit Panels of Banners and Placards" seized in raids by the Hynes crew."

Modesto Bee The Communist Situation in California - part 1 part 2

"the 1938 general election, a coalition of business and conservative groups tried to use the initiative to put stringent limits on the state’s robust union movement. Those who created Proposition 1 included the Industrial Association of San Francisco (which the La Follette Committee called "an example par excellence of...success in denying labor its collective-bargaining rights"), the Associated Farmers (which Carey McWilliams labeled "farm fascism" and which the La Follette Committee accused of "flagrant and violent infringement of civil liberties"), the Merchants and Manufacturers Association of Los Angeles (the state's oldest and, until the 1930s, most successful advocate of the open shop; the La Follette Committee claimed that it had "arrogated to itself the determination of what constituted law and order"), the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce, and Southern Californians, Inc. (a arch-conservative group dedicated to "the preservation of industrial freedom")"

"During the fourth week of the San Pedro strike Sinclair's growing indignation reached the poinit where he felt compelled to ask his wife to release him from his promise not to get involved. Before she gave her answer, he telephoned a dozen potential allies. The 44-year old novelist found it difficult to concentrate on his writing while a short distance away men were being herded into lice-infested tanks in Los Angeles jails on charges of blocking traffic or on suspicion of criminal syndicalism. He was convinced that police were acting as agents for the Merchants' and Manufacturers' Associat"

" on March 6, 1930, for example, when the Los angeles Communists led a hunger march on city hall (which was coordinated with similar hunger marches elsewhere in the country), protesting unemployment and demanding more state relief, the red squad deployed a thousand police on horseback as well as on foot, clubbed and beat many of the demonstrators, and put more than fifty of them in jail." SF cops escorted marchers to a public rostrum "The greater harshness of the LaPD against these protest marches was, of course, consistent with its earlier history"

1938 - "Mayor Bowron abolished the LaPD's infamous red squad, opposed a municipal anti-picketing ordinance, and saved L.a.’s city employees from retaliation by supervisors who were under investigation for corruption"

"The Committee served the CIO by exposing four antiunion practices which had frustrated labor organization for decades: espionage, industrial munitions, strikebreaking, and private police"

"The Committee's West Coast investigation and hearings elicited its most comprehensive statement of its philosophy of civil liberty."

The right of workers to associate "has a fundamental bearing upon the economic, social, and political welfare of the people...." The Committee did not care to weigh property and personal rights; "where rights of per sons do not exist," it stated, "rights of property are in danger. "beliefs and political affiliations are not unlawful under our present system of laws." It declared unequivocally "that a person possesses certain rights of free speech and assembly under the Constitution which must be observed, regardless of his political affiliations, no matter how strongly these political affiliations may be disapproved.'

According to an obituary published in The Nation in 1952, Hynes was "one of the first of the mercenaries in the crusade against 'communism'".

holy heck - LA sheriff intervened to keep LAPD from inciting a riot etc etc - McClellan 188–189

Influence


By the end of the 1930s, "the LAPD would become far less a policy arm of the city's business establishment and the mayor than it had been before. But the tradition within the department of intolerance of political dissent, and of spying and keeping dossiers on anyone who criticized the status quo, would remain an integral part of the department's culture, one that would rise up again and again."

"'Red' Hynes made dozen radicals in Los Angeles for every arrest he ever made."

"Cruz had immigrated to the United States from Guanajuato, Mexico, and had worked on the railroads, eventually settling in Los Angeles. During the Depression, he looked for work in the orange groves, located east of the city, and it was there that he received, as Rodriguez recalled, a "rude awakening." When he joined the organizing efforts by the workers to form a union, he incurred the growers' wrath. The growers "came down hard on them," she remembered. "They hired the Red Squad from Los Angeles to quell that rebellion. They beat the hell out of him. They cracked his head open several times.... Boy, they treated him so bad [that] they made a Communist out of him."

1960s LAPD - "Community relations officers were not always what they seemed. As programs aimed at pacification, they built on the department’s long history of using undercover intelligence, the Red Squad (the moniker for the department’s intelligence unit which focused on combating communist and other left-wing organizations), to police morality, temper dissent, and regulate social order"

Personal life
His father worked as a saloon keeper at the time of the 1910 U.S. census.

served April 6 1917 to April 2 1919 - Us army WWI as 2LT in Q.M.C.

dec 28 1923 Los Angeles married

list occupation as detective on son's birth certificate 1924

Often called Red Hynes, his nickname was either a reference to his "anti-communist activities" as captain of the Los Angeles Police Department's intelligence division during the 1920s and 1930s. Or maybe bc of his hair - page 2932

Hair red -

Hair color was brown per draft card

According to his World War II draft record, Hynes was 5ft 11in and had "thumb off left hand"

Divorced per Bloom and census

1938 kid ran away to be a horse jockey

Died May 16, 1952 at Good Samaritan Hospital in Los Angeles of "hepatoma, primary"

In popular culture
Red Hynes was the subject of a 2013 experimental documentary by Travis Wilkerson called Los Angeles Red Squad: The Communist Situation in California. According to Sight & Sound magazine, in the "stripped-down, essayistic" film Wilkerson characterizes Hynes' organization (and the 1920s–30s LAPD generally) as a "paid political militia, systematically breaking up left-wing meetings". Manohla Dargis described it as a "restrained if outraged" examination of how "explores how business interests and the police wielded power like a cudgel to prevent ordinary working people from congregating, organizing and speaking up".