Bribes, bootleggers, gambling dens, police payoffs, pot parties and perfumed ladies of the evening – all were on the menu in Tacoma during the last week of November 1951.

State Sen. Albert Rosellini (who would later become governor) had assembled a panel of legislators who were visiting a handful of Washington cities to inquire about local corruption and racketeering. In Tacoma, the weeklong hearings were held at the Armory.

Crowds of onlookers filled the room. Office workers statewide listened to the hearings on a hastily assembled network of radio stations. Hundreds of thousands of viewers – those lucky enough to afford a set – watched daily on black-and-white TV.

So popular were the hearings, and so distracting the hubbub, that Puget Sound-area shopkeepers complained about the absence of post-Thanksgiving Christmas shoppers.

The hearings were organized by the Legislature only to gather information, not to try defendants. In the end, no grand jury issued indictments – but Tacoma voters did change the way the city was governed, tossing out a strong mayor in favor of a more powerful City Council.

But that would come later.

‘THE ROOT OF ALL EVIL’

In the beginning, according to The Tacoma News Tribune, there was the Rev. Harold B. Long, pastor of the Immanuel Presbyterian Church.

Quoting from his Bible, the committee’s first witness said that “vice conditions here stemmed from the love of money – the root of all evil.”

Witnesses who followed included police officials and criminals, an organizer of a gambling den and at least one woman who kept a brothel.

An early witness, Mrs. Delbert Gundstrom – who was described by the newspaper as a “smartly clad blonde” – informed the committee that she was aware of 33 houses of prostitution operating in the city.

To the horror of those in the audience, she confided that she had heard of a local man who “had become addicted to the (hemp) cigarets and was attending marijuana parties.”

A member of the General Federation of Women’s Clubs, she testified that she “knew of more than 250 teenagers using marijuana here,” and that much of the activity “was centered in a dance hall located between Tacoma and Olympia and at a South Tacoma establishment.”

Another witness, a crowd favorite, was the Rev. Loyal Vickers, executive secretary of the Tacoma Council of Churches.

Describing himself, the paper said, “Mr. Vickers, a husky man, said he had always earned his livelihood in church work with the exception of a period during which he was a professional wrestler … named ‘Shorty.’”

A GAMBLER KILLS HIMSELF

Some of the town’s vice, one witness said, was centered at “Hollywood-on-the-flats, the somewhat inaccurate designation for Tacoma’s tideflat shacktown.”

Along with that location, the witness noted that 13 establishments had been made off-limits to military personnel from Fort Lewis. Those included “the Old Orleans Hotel, the Franklin Hotel, Ford Hotel, Monte Carlo Cafe and nine rooming houses on Fawcett, Market, Broadway and other streets.”

The witness, a public health adviser at Fort Lewis, enumerated 29 cases of venereal disease in Pierce County, with “15 contacted from prostitutes.”

A woman – whose husband had killed himself after losing at gambling – later named former Public Safety Commissioner Frank Callender as the man who ran the game in which her husband lost money.

“Were the stakes high?” asked the committee’s interrogator.

“If a man’s losses ran as high as $500 in one night, that’s not a friendly game,” answered the tearful widow, who had earlier read her late husband’s suicide note into the record.

Bookies operated at the Polar Bear on Commerce Street, the committee was told. And there was a dice game at an American Legion hall.

George Buchanan, a former pinball operator, said he paid protection money – $50 a month – to police.

By Thursday, the charges spilled forth like wine at a Mafia birthday party.

Alma Jackson, “colored proprietress of a lower Market Street establishment,” said she had paid $1,600 that eventually found its way to a man recommended by police. She also said she gave “small sums of money and liquor” directly to two police officers.

Rarely were men described by the clothes they wore, but Jackson was seen as resplendently “clad in a black jockey hat, dark glasses, a chartreuse jacket, dark skirt and teeter-high heeled shoes.”

No definition was given for “teeter-high heeled shoes.”

There was a story told of a raid at the Union Hotel, where a Tacoma Fire Department hook-and-ladder unit was used to put firefighters on the roof so they could block the egress of hookers escaping police. (Alas, they hid in a closet instead.)

Anthony Zatkovich, former chief of police, later denied being a friend of reputed pinball king Vito Cuttone, although he did visit one of the drinking establishments.

Did he pay for the drinks he drank?

“I don’t know,” Zatkovich said.

The owner of a towing company said he frequently “picked up the tab for a policeman’s sandwich, but no steaks.”

One of the crowd’s favorite witnesses was Amanda Truelove, who had appeared more than once in court on charges of prostitution and operating a house of same.

$1,000 A MONTH

Truelove testified that Safety Commissioner James Kerr had visited her at the Union Hotel and, having drank from miniature whisky bottles, became “polluted and fell from a sofa.”

An admitted bootlegger, Truelove said that after the meeting, she began paying “$1,000 a month for protection of her liquor business to a mysterious Mr. Soandso.”

Truelove was variously described as a “chubby proprietress,” “the amply padded witness” and “the chubby Negro woman, adorned in attire that included a brown snood and a fur coat that persisted in overflowing the witness chair as she smilingly squirmed her way through questions.”

Witnesses testified. Those accused denied the charges. The storm that blew through town seemed to entertain the radio and TV audiences, but when it was over, it was pretty much over.

Nothing much happened, and it would be another few decades until a top law enforcement official – the Pierce County sheriff – would be accused of corruption, convicted and sent to the slammer.

Back in 1951, in the week after the hearings ended, people returned to their work, soap operas and Christmas shopping.

Proclaimed the front page of The News Tribune that Tuesday: “City Back to Normal.”

C.R. Roberts: 253-597-8535