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Stailing a

By Octavus Roy Cohen

A new story ‘

By lohn

‘[m 1lotu $anhancisco $oh [| The Golilen Gate city, ashamed of haoing th.e high,est percentage of arrests lor d,rwrkennesse and alarmeil by thc number of suicides in its dnanh tanl*, will soon haoe th,e nation’s.most tabulous clinic for alcoholics

By CLINT MOSHER E…,, REAorNc rrME l5 MlNurEs Lateonthe hourly check, observed the prisoner afternoon of last January 14 a sitting quietly on the edge of her housewife in Berkeley, California, eot. She wrote later in her report: observed a car parked at a crazy “She seemed quite resigned.” At the angle. A woman was at the wheel ten-o’clock check, the matron found and she appeared unable either to the prisoner had hanged herself park the car properly or to get out with a strip of cloth torn .from her of the vehicle. The observer called slip. She had used the iron grille of the police. the cell door as a gallows. And A policeman found that the seribbled on the gray wall, in the woman driver was obviously drunk. crimson markings of her lipstick, He suggested that she lock her car was this message: and go home in a cab. She became “You don’t know. I’ve gone belligerent. Having exhausted his through a thousand hells tonight.” powers of persuasion, the police- The suicide of this woman was man called for a fatrol car. the most spectacular of several The woman, wife of a minor gov- similar incidents in the San Franernment ofi0cial, was booked as a cisco Bay area in which persons drunk and lodged in a cell i:r the conflned for the night to various women’s portion of the Berkeley drunk tanks, as they are called, city jail. T\rice in the next two ended theif [ves in flts of alcoholic San Francisco’s Skid Row, looking hours she was granted permission depression. reest on Howard from Third Street. to use the telepbone, but her fran- News of the woman’s death stirred tic appeals to relatives and friends San Francisco, and at long last A good deal of the eity’s high for help were unsuccessful. At 8.55 caused to burst into flame a plan drunkennese rate (higheet in the P.M., the matron, making her for a revolutionary treatment of U. S.) stems from areas like this.

Skid Bow drinks early and often. Edmund G. Brown, district attorn€y’ and his deputy, This lruilding will be remodeled This photo was taken at lO A.M. Bmmet DaIy, leaders of the drive to aid alcoholice. as a clinic for treating alcoholics.

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alcoholics-a plan that had been todial farm, where he will be safe vitality springs from a hardy eonsmoldering for several months. from crime and accident. stitution. And as this is written, San Fran- As part of this modernized pro- “Pat” Brown, as he is popularly clsco, the ciiy with the unhaPPY cedure, the alcoholic will be able to known, can take a drink or leave it distinction of having the highest receive treatment at cost and with alone. Actually, two circumstances, percentage of arrests for drunken- the protection of- anonymity. The neither connected with the idea of ness of any large munieipality in plan is no bluenosed formula for reforEr for reform’s sake, started the nation, is well on the road to- reducing drinking, but a healthy him on the road at the end of ward the establishment of a unique arra[gement for helPing the Per- which San Ftancisco’s Adult Guiclinic to help those whose proximity son who wants to stoP and can’t. A dance Center will rlse. The flrst into the bottle has deprived them of city as robust as San !”ranciseo volves a two-block route which the power to help themselves. The would accept nothing less. Its resi- Brown must follow daily from his label of “alcoholic” will be inten- dents always like to boast that San offlce to the Hall of Justice. tionally omitted from the clinic. It Ftancisco i,s the “citY that knows The district attorney’s of0ces are will be known simply as the’Adult how,” and under this Program it ls in a building in a less expensive Guidance Center. being geared to do more to solve block of San Francisco’s financial the problem of alcoholism than any center, Montgomery Street. One O The plan iuvolves more than of its sister municipalities. block over and one block up, on the mere elimination of the drunk The man behind this crusade is Kearny Street, is the Hall. In betank. There will be provided every- the city’s district attorney, Edmund tween, the neighborhood degenerthing from psychiatry and vita- G. Brown, a 43-year-old prosecutor ates rapidly into a series of taverns mins, to lessons in what an alco- and family man who always ap- _aud tenements outside of which holic should eat to calm his stom- pears to be on.his way to or from drunks sprawl despite the nearness ach nerves, and how he can ge[ a gymnasium locker room and has of the drunk tank and the law. past the swinging doors, provided, a habit of jumping out of bed at The other circumstance was a of course, he wants help and has 6 Al\4. and exclaiming, “Boy! I feel more personal one. Liquor got the not extended his drinking career to great!” The description suggests an better of a capable lawyer on whom the point of no return. If he is not overexuberant bore who rattles the Brown depended for legal assistreadily salvageable, he will be sent ribs of less hardy. souls by slapping ance. Another of Brown’s friends, elther to a state hospital, where he them on the back and damaging also a professional man, teetered can do himself a minimum of harm their eardrums wlth sonorous greet- on the edge of ruln because he and may still recover; or to a cus- i:rgs. Such is not the ease. Brown’s (Conttnued.on page 66)

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tom is to lock up drunks at the station house until another wagon arrives from downtown to take them to the drunk tank. If the drunk cau pull himself together in the interval between his arrival and that of the wagon from headquarters, he goes free. Otherwise he faces a night in the tank. At times there have been alternat6 results, as happened one night when two drunks, collected at separate places, were lodged in a single station-Irouse cell. The jailer observed they were too stupefled to engage even in the jail-house chatter. He expected no trouble. But later, one of the two made a noose out of his shirt and hung himself while the other stared glassily at the proceeding. But ttre drunk whom Daly followed to the station house had no suicidcil intentions. Neither could he pull himself together. T’lre wagon from the Hall arrived and the drunk tank automatically became his destination. The tank is not a single enclosure, as its name suggests. It consi,sts of a block of 14 cells, each six by seven feet. Frequently seven or eight men are put in a single cell, for the average drunk catch a night is more than.100. firere are no cots for the reason that a drunk might roll off and fracture his skull on the hard floor. The men flop on mats, some of them sitting up against the walls of the cell, their legs overlapping their neighbor’s in a spectacle of Dickensian bleak* ness.

O The morning after Daly had watched his particular drunk from the Row placed in a cell in the tank, he went to court to see what would happen next. “The drunk tankwas bad enough, but what I saw in court the next morning was even worse,” he remembered. “I took one look at what was going on and called the district attorney, telling him to come over and see for himself.” HOW SAil FBENCISCO SOBERS ‘EM UP cont. lrompose jS Tank occupants are herded into a corner of the courtroom and their couldn’t stop drinking. fwo others, of several bottle-clustered blocks cases disposed of ahead ofthe day’s one a newspaperman, were. in the south of San Francisco’s broad regular calendar. The clerk of the same predicament. Market Street. court rattles ofi a half dozen names, Brown, of necessity, had to walk Even the most cloistered clubman and their owners shufte inside the around the drunks who lay in his on plushy Nob Hill is vaguely fa- railing and stand before the bench. path as he went from his ofEce to miliar with what happens to the There is a low-voiced mumbothe llall. With his friends, he tried men on the wrong side of the Mar- jumbo during which Pleas of guilty tactful advice. When that failed, he ket Street trolley tracks when they are entered and the panel is disdecided something had to be done, panhandle 30 cents for a pint of missed with a brief admonition not both for the street drunk and for wine and proceed to gulp it down. to return. The second Panel is the alcoholic who is coming apart But a district attorney needs more called, and so on until the last in a less public but equally fatal than a notion to win a case. Daly drunk has been disposed of. manner. went out after the equivalent of “Drunks are not flngerPrinted,” IIe began by persuading a friend, the corpus delicti. said Daly, “so there is no waY to Emmet Daly, a former F.B.I. agent He had no trouble flnding drunks keep track of how.often theY come and recently released Naval Intelligence of0cer, to become a special in Skid Row. They were sprawled back. After talking to several hunin doorways and some lay in the dred of them, I’m satisfied nineassistant to the district attorney, gutters. He stood near one who had tenths of those sent to the drunlr with the job of flnding out how collapsed in a doorway and waited tank are repeaters. The average drunk San Ftanciscans get, how until the paddy wagon arrived to drunk can be in and out of court they are treated, and what ihould haul the man to the precinct sta- two or three times a week and still be. done about it. Daly, in his oldest tion. He followed to see what would nothing is done for or against him.” suit, headed tor Skid Row, a stretch happen. He learned that the cus- But it was the handling of the

“A flne thing!” DalY, who exPectel there. he will be flngerprinted so drunks in Panel,s instead of singlY tiat’a record of his case maY be tfr”f * OisturUeA DalY that he sent ttrat iort of =reaction when he took tept. The clinic will have no cells iJi-e”ow”. Because bf subseguent itJ iou with Brown, rePlied, “Let’s oi’bars. but wards. The fact that nuUUcity, this feature of the sYsso Eet a drink and talk it over”‘ bati-convinced the man the surest itre oruhf is in custodY will not be ;”;-il;’been eliminated,thebut the emnhasized. After he has been proc- -av to Drevent the return of Proiivolving-door nature of tilition’is to solve the Problem of loeied in, he will be given whatever eis-arrEsted today, dismissed to- tfre cnronic alcoholic, and another im”irediate medical attention is ne- *orrow. back next daY-Persists’ San Franciscan was iogged 9u! 9l If he is lucid, the doctors After’ their morning in court, trit-tetfrargy and prejudice’ He told *iu “”ssarv. titt to him. If not, that Part oaiv and Brown decided to follow rrii irienOT and a chain reaction of tfre procedure will come later’ of ihose who had been freed, Ueean.Brown and DalY kePt it go- Within twenty-four hours a Pre- “”””iee wtrat he did. They selected- a io liminary appraisal of his case will man aUout 60 who bore unmistak- iri witt, soeaking engagements behave been made. If he is a oneaUie eviOence of having been .tn 9′ toie ctubs bf housewives and indus- niEfrt arunt, he will be shooed out, ;cune before he reached the tank iiiat ieaoers and educators and city nu”t aOvisea to return for consultaolanners. ‘ itre night before. After walking sev- While all of this was in Progress, iibns ana help if liquor is becoming the man sagged a-nd J nroblem. If he has been on a twoi”if irrio tlie gutter’ Brown called “iaf–n”fosks, Dalv was sending letters to every w6lt ring” and hasn’t eaten much’ irr ttt” countrY which had made an -1’Oiambulance. “itu tttu*Pt to treat the alcoholic ,”, ne wUf 5e given fi.ve daYs in bed course, the point of all this is and -‘-ihe fed a diet high in vitamins’ thai nothinf is being done about ai”a meOiial Problem. The replies one-nighter who is released the alcoholic, and we are sf,ul [o ttroietters and the data gatheted in the morning, or the man who is ;t ift interviews were then distilled ipenOine $500,000 a Year in Police hospitalized for flve days, will have man-hours alone, wlth no return,” iritJ-u procedure for an alcoholic nistate determined bY a judge who iaiO grown. “The number of alco- clinic. –U”4″” the San Francisco Plan the will sit at the center-not table’ on a rrolics in the streets lras increased afcotroiic who is arrested will not be Oenctr but at a conference l”-trr” point where theY can’t be as a misdemeanor ofien- Ttre patient and the doctors will be innoteO. even though there might “iaitin”oi california legislature is tt” ‘witnesses. The judge will be nt tnos6 who would attempt it’ i”r.-it in the law’ .rided by what theY have to say’ “Here is all this money being ;;i.i”s such a change for quar- ” The ciinic will concentrate on wasted on a worthless system when itre Oiunt< will be heldsame rela- ttroie who accept helP and are saltoi half the amount, say $250,000′ u”ti””. IIe will be in the vaEeable. During the flve-day perioct il an oPerate a flrst-classa-clinic [ivJ position as a Person roaming of irospitalifation there will be simfor a yeai. And the $5oo’ooo Year i-ne itieets with a communicable nle lessons in dietetics: The course in poiicu man-hours now being Ai6e a hazard to himself and ioitt Ue elementary. A drunk’ the ex- .oeril tot handling alcoholics ob- [o–otftu”t. The Purpose of grve this o”its empnasize, is a man trYing to oioustv doesn’t include the cost of chanqe in classiflcation is to i'”etJ?;”og”ition to the theory that iearn to-walk again after having ciiro”-o, familY PovertY stemming -” ii”nt iJ a sick Person, not a law- Ueen beAriaden for a long time’-I.n iio* o”” preseht arrangement for breaker. [fr” of the alcoholic, it is his gettine th6 drunks ofi the streets”‘ –ir.io “ute Processes which have to irrinting nutson will be given employment it the clinic, from the PsY- be retaught. – -fn a On a national basis, the latest ciriut”itt. to the elevator oPeralgrs.’ netween lessons and baths and deures on arrests for drunkenness ilto aout not flrst give ProoJ that wholesome meals, the psychiatrists ttre Year 194?’ San Francisco -wittt cdver he believes a drunk is a sick Per- witt attempt to sell the patient–o-n teA 6,m0 arrests Per 1O0,000 i-on ana not a moral lePer,” said tiiu iA”u that it is not only possible oooutation. Thirteen of the larger Brown. “This proposition is the cor- noi verY Pleasant to live without Ii-ti”t-*.t” included in the in count’ the nerstone of the whole Plan'” .– Oiinfins, if a man is an alcoholic’ il”t” it scant local Pride –Wt e” a drunk is arrested, he-will ftrev w-iit tell him very emphatiiuit tt tt Los Angeles is second’ be taken directly to the clinic’ Once catty tfrat an alcoholic cannot drink *’it s.fOe arrests Per 100,000′ The ottruts,’in the order of descendency’ aie W6,strineton, D. C’, New Orleans’ eoito”. Mlinneapolis, Cleveland’ oqtloit’ il,ru*urit””, PhiladelPhia, iilri;i;; Biltimore, and New York’ – picture before them’ Witft’tt full Srown and ” DalY began a furious ;r*h for the iight Pieces to Pul ionuitu, to make-a Plan to correct th; situation. TheY intervrew-ed Oo”toi. and psychiatrists from the iiiehbo.t ooci io the state level’ ivr6-_uiit of the clergy were called ‘r’ne on and asked for suggestions’ leaders of Alcoholics AnonYmous weiJ souet t out for their views’ Business men who take an oecasionai Orint and drunks who hit [ir”-6-otttu all the time, police who at” PfaeueO with alcoholics and *-u”i to- be rid of them,n-umbe-rteachers of ilrrro-nira an inereasing iii”ir–otout students red-eyed at ilJt”it e roll call, everyone who had I”u-t”ito”uble notion about what [o ho auout the alcoholic was given to sPeak his Pie-ce’ “a ct utt”” ntering r;it-“ohe the lobbY of his cfuU daY, was accosted bY a il”mner. “SP’ You’re becomine a’

so much as a jigger; that it isn’t his visits cost the city. I{e will not the last drink that is important but be booked, nor will his employer or the flrst one. friends be advised of his problem. “I may be an optimist, but I’m “We hope these people will come satisfled a lot of cases that now into the clinic the same as they look hopeless will make some prog- would to another clinic if they felt ress when the problem is put to ill,” said Brown. “There are several them as a medical one,” says Pat of my friends who I hope will be Brown. “Alcoholics Anonymous has among the flrst.” proven that. Of course, Alcoholics The clinic also will be open to the Anonymods doesn’t pretend to helP wife who can’t take another of her everyone. For those cases in which husband’s binges and who otherit is not the answer, we will try wise would visit a divorce lawyer. psychiatry. If that doesn’t work, She will be given guidance. we’ll try something else. And all the “We’re not getti:rg fancy or retime it will be cheaper for the tax- formish; we’re just gettlng sensipayers and inflnitely better for the ble,” said Brown. “I’ve sent a lot of drunk.” people to jail since I’ve been in of- Brown ls equally concerned about flce. I hope when I get through f helping the drunk who doesn’t get ‘will be able to say I’ve mirde a lot arrested. It will be possible for a of people happler.” man who believes liquor is gettturg San Etancisco is movlng fast to him down to go to the clinie, have escape remaining at the top of the an examination and diagnosis, and list for a,rrests for drunkenness. It return for outpatient eare bY the would just as soon forgo that dusimple process of paying whatever bious honor. a a