L.A.'s top cop, Marshal Francis Baker, was new to the job. Baker testified before the coroner's inquest that he arrived at the scene just as Thompson was shot. He deputized an ad hoc collection of men to surround the Coronel Building.
His purpose, he said, was to prevent the escape of those involved in the shooting. But it goes without saying that recruiting guards from among the rabble who frequented the Alley was a questionable decision.
Corpses of the Chinese victims
Los Angeles at the time of the Chinese massacre
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Baker's next action was even stranger. With gunfire ringing out behind him, he went home to bed, leaving the mob in charge.
Police did little, as was evident by the actions of the two officers with probably the most experience, Emil Harris and George Gard. Both had proved their bravery during the Mexican bandit wars. Harris helped capture the dashing Tiburcio Vasquez, and the Star said he and Gard were "hard to beat on either a warm or cold trail."
But on this night, these brave officers loitered near hay scales at the corner of Los Angeles and Arcadia streets, a half-block from the trouble. Harris took custody of one fleeing Chinese man. But when he was surrounded and the victim wrenched from him by the mob, Harris simply returned to his post, later saying he was unaware that any Chinese people had been hanged.
Harris and Gard said they eventually worked their way to Yuen's store, where they stood guard for much of the night. Even this was a wasted effort, because the mob had already looted the store and Yuen's trunk.
As they stood their pointless vigil, it is likely they had one thing on their minds: reward. Both men were allied with Yuen. Just days before the riot, one newspaper reported they had received nice presents from him.
Historians have argued that no one could expect poorly trained police to stand up to an armed mob of hundreds. It's more likely, however, that police, fatally compromised by their secret deals with Chinese companies and accustomed to letting vigilantes do their deeds, simply stood aside and let the mob do its customary work.
The argument that police were powerless that night was put to the lie by Robert Widney, a former schoolteacher who helped found the University of Southern California. His technique, he wrote years later in papers preserved at the Huntington Library, was to sidle up to a mobster, yank him by the collar, shove the barrel of his pistol into the man's throat and whisper: "Get out or I'll kill you." Widney managed to save four or five Chinese people.
As the mob did its vile work, a crowd of observers gathered along the route of execution to watch. According to later accounts, some of the city's leading citizens were seen cheering on the killers.
Among them was H.M. Mitchell, a reporter for the Star. A future leader in Democratic party politics, Mitchell would serve a term as sheriff before marrying into the wealthy Glassell family and becoming a gentleman farmer and collector of Western antiquities.
A member of the crowd heard Mitchell yelling, "Hang him."
Harris Newmark, one of the most respected members of the business community, wrote years later that he heard a shot as he left work that night. Walking over to Los Angeles Street, he learned that Thompson had been killed.
Newmark said he went home to supper "expecting no further trouble."
The statement strains belief. By the time the mob learned Thompson had died, its blood was up. Given L.A.'s record of vigilantism, it didn't require much imagination to foresee what would come next.
The mood of the city, from the best to the worst, was that it was time for the Chinese to learn their lesson. As one survivor of the massacre said, according to news accounts: "When Melican man gettee mad, he damned fool. [He] killee good Chinaman allee same bad Chinaman."
The massacre finally was brought to an end by Sheriff James Burns, a colorful figure known as "Daddy" to the gamblers and whores. He pleaded that if just 25 volunteers from the crowd of onlookers stood with him, he could stop the mob. He soon was hoisted on the shoulders of the crowd and carried into the alley — and the murderers faded into the night.
By 11 p.m., the bars were going great guns as the mob slaked its thirst. At J.H. Weldon's, a man with blood on his hands and shirt bellied up to the bar with a boast: "Well, I am satisfied now. I have killed three Chinamen."
In the aftermath of the massacre, expressions of horror and disgust rained down on the city from around the world.
It was a public relations disaster for a town that was desperate to attract a rail link that was expected to, and did, bring thousands of Anglos to Southern California to sweep away what was left of the Spanish Californio culture.
City fathers believed nothing must discourage those passengers from coming. So they had very good reason to downplay the massacre as a spontaneous outbreak of rage against a hated minority.
