Tacoma Grand Jury Indicts Mayor and Officials Over 'Social Evil' District
A sweeping probe into city vice and municipal corruption concludes with calls for reform and the indictment of the mayor.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
With a long review covering the subjects of its investigations and a list of its indictments, the grand jury reported finally to Judge M. Easterday this morning and was discharged. The report explains the failure to indict in some cases where the public has looked for revelations on the ground that direct evidence is hard to get. The grand jury condemned the secret letting of county contracts, declared there should be more business and less petty wrangling in the county commissioners' office, and then glossed over "Me and Mettler" nicely with a coat of whitewash, declaring the county printing had been let to the highest bidder but that the commissioners had exercised their discretion. On the social evil, the report was voluminous. The restricted district was found to have existed in violation of law for seven years except for a short time last year. The police were scored for neglect of duty in failing to suppress the place, and the report found no other way out but to indict the mayor. The dive on Fourteenth street, which was winked at by the police, was declared by the report to be unfit for human habitation and that it should have been condemned long ago.
“The dive on Fourteenth street, which was winked at by the police, was declared by the report to be unfit for human habitation and that it should have been condemned long ago.”
Tacoma's 'restricted district' (the red-light district) was a focal point of Progressive Era politics, where grand juries frequently battled local city halls over tolerated vice. Today, this conflict resonates in contemporary debates about the limits of police power in managing homelessness and encampments near downtown housing corridors.
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