Archive for January 11th, 2011

Police Chief Harry Raymond

In the early 1900s, few jobs were more tenuous than Chief of the San Diego Police Department. The pressures of city politics kept careers short, averaging eleven months between 1927 and 1934. The tenure of Chief Harry J. Raymond was briefer than most, and maybe the strangest.

Raymond became chief on June 5, 1933. With more than twenty years of police experience, largely as an investigator for the Los Angeles district attorney’s office, he brought to the job “a reputation for efficiency in force management,” according to the Los Angeles Times.

But his appointment to the $300 per month job by City Manager Fred Lockwood was instantly questioned . . .

Read the complete story of the rise and fall of Harry Raymond.

San Diego is a very fine, secure harbour . . . within there is safe anchorage for ships of any burthen.  There is a sorry battery of eight pounders at the entrance: at present, it does not merit the least consideration as a fortification.  –William Shaler, captain of the American trading ship Lelia Byrd.

In 1803,  American sailors and Spanish soldiers went to war.  Read the story of  the “Battle of San Diego Bay.”