The police chief gets his man

JERRY PERSON

It was in 1920 that our oil boom began and in a very short time, men

poured into town looking to get rich quick from the black gold. Along

with these rough-looking oil workers came the con artists, hotel

girls and crime.

Our reputation as a quiet beach community began to slip as more

and more people arrived. Prohibition violations were, to put it

mildly, not strictly enforced by the police.

On April 1, 1921, our town’s board of trustees -- or city council

-- appointed Jack Tinsley as our City Marshal for a second term.

Marshal Tinsley was authorized by the trustees to hire a “speed cop,”

named Carl Malchow, but Malchow had to furnish his own motorcycle.

One month later, the city fathers changed Tinsley’s title from

town marshal to police chief.

But it was in the year 1924 that Tinsley would prove that the

chief could “get his man.” He would use common sense, logic, a little

Sherlock Holmes deductive reasoning, and a hunch to bring his man to

justice.

It was dinnertime on the evening of Jan. 18, 1924, and most of our

residents were sitting down to eat when the telephone rang down at

police headquarters inside city hall. It was 7 p.m. when Chief

Tinsley answered the phone.

The call was from a neighbor of the St. John family. The caller

told the chief that he saw two suspicious characters loitering about

his neighbor’s house at 403 16th St.

The chief asked the caller to describe the men, but was told it

was to dark to see them clearly and that the St. John family was not

at home. Mr. St. John was still at work in our oil fields, and his

wife was visiting friends in Los Angeles.

While the chief was on the phone, City Attorney Lew Blodget walked

in. The chief asked Blodget to watch the office and to call some

patrolmen to meet him out at the St. John home.

The chief got into his car and raced over to 16th Street. When he

arrived in front of the St. John house, he noticed a suspicious man

appearing to be a lookout.

The chief rushed the man and forced him to put his hands in the

air. The chief handcuffed the suspect to a tree and turned his

attention to the man inside the house.

Tinsley quietly stepped onto the front porch and found the front

door locked. He went to the back door and found it unlocked, and he

entered the house.

The burglar must have heard the door open, and with sack in hand,

he bolted out the front door.

The chief ordered the man to halt, and when he didn’t, gave chase

and fired two shots at the suspect. The burglar dropped his loot as

he ran across several vacant lots toward 17th Street.

This time, luck was on the side of the burglar, and the chief lost

his man in the shrubbery.

The chief searched all night, but the frightened burglar had

gotten away. The bundle the man dropped contained a suit of clothes,

other clothing and trinkets.

Tinsley returned to the handcuffed man and took him to jail, where

he was later identified as 24-year old Francisco Valencia from Los

Angeles.

When Mr. St. John returned home, he found a note from the police

that his home had been broken into and that one of the burglars had

been captured. St. John rushed to the police station and identified

the stolen items. Later, he would find that a watch and a child’s

ring were missing.

Valencia told the chief he didn’t know the name of his accomplice.

Later that week, St. John’s son found a string of pearls near

where the first man was handcuffed to the tree. St. John told police

the pearls were not his.

After questioning Valencia, the chief learned that the second man

considered himself quite the ladies man in a certain district of Los

Angeles.

With a description of the man supplied by Valencia, the chief

played a hunch. He and Officer Rowley Choat headed up to Los Angeles

with a warrant in hand.

This time, the burglar’s luck ran out as the chief spotted the man

on a street in Los Angeles on the night of Jan. 25.

The chief arrested Carmen Velasquez and brought him back to

Huntington Beach, where he was reunited with Valencia.

The chief learned that the Givens family house at 512 16th St. had

also been burglarized that same night, and that the string of pearls

belonged to Givens’ wife.

The two would-be burglars were later found guilty. In less than a

week, the two burglars were behind bars and all their ill-gotten loot

had been recovered, all thanks to the great detective work of

Huntington Beach Police Chief Jack Tinsley.

* JERRY PERSON is a local historian and longtime Huntington Beach

resident. If you have ideas for future columns, write him at P.O. Box

7182, Huntington Beach, CA 92615.