Posts Tagged ‘Abraham Sauer’

When Aimee dived into the Pacific Ocean and emerged on the Mexican desert, thus performing a feat which will not be duplicated until babies grow on walnut trees, she reckoned that the rest of the world was as foolish as she. –San Diego Herald, July 29, 1926

The apparent drowning death of famed evangelist Aimee Semple McPherson off the coast of Santa Monica in 1926 shocked the world. Even more stunning was her reappearance weeks later in the Sonora desert. The sensational story she told of her kidnapping and miraculous escape spawned front-page news coverage that lasted for months. But for a fearless San Diego newspaper editor, the reporting of Aimee’s “ten days in a love shack,” meant Federal indictment and a lurid court trial.

The story of The Evangelist and the Muckraker.

On Monday morning, July 22, 1935, San Diegans opened their morning newspaper to see a stunning headline: “AGUA CALIENTE PADLOCKED.” The closing of the lavish resort sent shudders across the border. . .

Would illegal gaming now grow in San Diego? Police Chief George Sears assured the public that “the gambling lid was on.” But the “lid” was teetering. . .

Click here for the story of San Diego’s War on Gambling.

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.

The Police Department got the liquor, fixers got the money, and the Legionnaires laughed.  –Abraham Sauer, editor, the San Diego Herald.

San Diego is the rottenest graft ridden city of its size on the American continent. If the Mayor and the Chief of Police don’t know it they ought to be sent to a home for the feeble-minded.  If they do know it, they both should be in the penitentiary.

–Abraham Sauer, publisher, San Diego Herald.

In 1925, a San Diego City Councilman was indicted for attempting to bribe developer Ed Fletcher.  Read more about The Bribe.