Gayola

According to historian Christopher Agee, the San Francisco Police Department in the 1950s "maintained a decentralized organizational structure that gave patrol officers great autonomy in their daily activities. Police leaders prioritized their own political power over professional policing, and they therefore refused to either coordinate their policies across station lines or add the supervisory positions needed to monitor the officers on the beat."[1] As a result, policing in the city was subjective and disproportionately targeted the city's black and gay populations.

The 1951 California Supreme Court case Stoumen v. Reilly found bars and establishments could legally cater to homosexual clientele. The majority opinion ruled in favor of the Black Cat Bar, a popular bohemian and gay hangout. Phil S. Gibson wrote, "Unlike evidence that an establishment is reputed to be a house of prostitution, which means a place where prostitution is practiced and thus necessarily implies the doing of illegal or immoral acts on the premises, testimony that a restaurant and bar is reputed to be a meeting place for a certain class of persons contains no such implication."[2]

Regardless of the court's decision, the San Francisco Police Department's officers continued to demand payments from gay bar owners in order for them to avoid raids. Bob Ross, who would go on to found the Tavern Guild, an organization which helped dismantle the Gayola system in San Francisco,[3] was quoted by Christopher Agee, saying:

[Upon entering, the police officer asked,] "Hi Bob, are you the manager?" And I'd say, "Why yes." "Hi, I'm Lieutenant So-and-so." "You don't say, Lieutenant So-and-so." "Yes, the San Francisco Police Department." And right away you'd go "Oh shit." You know, "What are we up to now?" And the first time he came in he was soliciting for the . . . Police Athletic League. And I said, "Oh." I said, "I just sent them $25 or something." And he said, "Oh." He said, "This is actually the Police Officer's Retirement League section of the Police Athletic League." I said, "I never heard of that." He said, "You will; let me show you." And I said, "What do you need, $100?" He says, "No, it's gonna be $500 a month." And he says, "The captain'll be by to collect it next Tuesday at 7:30." That's how brazen they were. The captain walked in at 7:30 to collect his money."[1]

According to Ross, he also needed to buy dinner for the captain and provide him a female prostitute.

This corruption was allowed due to SFPD's decentralized structure. In 1950s' San Francisco, district station captains held substantial political power. Police officers aided conservative politicians in the city, "allowing thugs to intimidate voters in precincts with large black or liberal voting populations."[1] As a result, there was little incentive on the part of downtown elites to demand substantial police reform against corruption, and even if they were so inclined, it would have proved difficult, as the Gayola system was largely operating at the ground level, rather than a high brass operation. In his historical analysis of the period, Agee writes, "As the only officers who left their desks and monitored the patrolmen on the streets, the department's two hundred sergeants held the most policing power in the SFPD. It was therefore the SFPD's two hundred sergeants who exerted the most control over the department's gay bar policies."[1]

Serious changes would not occur until the early-1960s, when the "gayola scandal" raised public awareness of this practice. A group of gay bar owners revealed the SFPD's practice of extortion, and this made front page news. Mayor George Christopher came out publicly against the practice.[4] The new reform-oriented chief of police, police professionalization organizations, and the gay civil rights movement collectively pushed to end the Gayola practice.

Gayola was also a common practice for New York City's gay bars in the mid-century.[5]