December 12, 1947
Van Nuys
What turns a brother against his own kin? For 20-year-old Harold Berry, who is on County relief to the tune of $128 monthly and resides at 14359 Erwin Street, it was brother Murrill, 27, suggesting that Harold's bride Colleen was available to anyone who asked. The lady responded by tossing a knife, but since she threw like a girl, Murrill was able to duck. He knocked Colleen out, and Harold threw Murrill out.
Furious Harold steamed for a time, then grabbed his revolver and stalked off to find his brother, who was not, as he'd first guessed, passed out in his car. So he stormed several blocks to 14657 Calvert Street, where big brother maintained a lean-to. Without thinking, he later told police, he pumped three bullets into the sleeping man's head.
As Colleen sobbed, Harold learned he'd have his formal murder charge on Wednesday morning.
1 comment:
Half of Police
Work Caused
By Drunks!
Officers Disclose
Scope of Problem
at Crime Hearing
Executive police officials and other top law enforcement men yesterday scored drunkenness as giving rise to more than 50 percent of all police activity and added that arrests for that cause among women are steadily mounting.
Appearing before the governor’s special crime study commission in the State Building, Los Angeles Police Chief Clemence Horrall said that the city’s average jail population now is 1,705. Proposed new jail facilities would bring total prisoner capacity to 3,506.
Following Horrall, Assistant Chief Joseph Reed said that police now recognize alcoholism as a disease which the department is not equipped to treat.
For this reason, Reed declared arrests for drunkenness follow the pattern of release of the prisoner “when he or she sobers up.” They are thereafter allowed to return to former haunts, a fact which the assistant chief decried.
“Most of the time of approximately 1,700 policemen, one-half of the police force, is taken up with problems connected directly to drunkenness,” Reed disclosed. “Many of these inebriates have been arrested 60 or 70 times.
“There is a tremendous increase in drunkenness among females and this rate is growing steadily.”
Reed advocated a statewide program for the treatment of alcoholics.
“It is recognized that narcotic users are medical cases,” he told the commission. “Addicts are treated by medical methods. Alcoholism, as seen by the working police officer, is as bad or worse than narcotic addiction.”
Bonus factoid: Gabriel Puaux accepted the Nobel Prize for Literature on behalf of Andre Gide, who was too ill to attend the ceremony.
Quote of the day: “The atomic bomb was characterized yesterday as ‘the greatest blessing ever to befall the Japanese.’ ”
Col. Herbert L. Herberts, making the point that only after the Japanese surrender did the country get American occupation and a Bill of Rights.
www.lmharnisch.com
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