Police Raid Opium Den; Suspect Leaps from Hotel Window
Alfred Dupre broke his leg and suffered internal injuries after jumping from a second-story window at the Pacific Hotel during a police raid on an alleged opium joint; two women were also arrested.
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.
By dropping from a second-story window in the Pacific Hotel Saturday night in an attempt to escape the police, Alfred Dupre, a negro, suffered a broken leg as well as severe internal injuries. Dupre's long drop was occasioned by the fact that Detectives Fitzgerald and Ellison had forced an entrance into the room occupied by the negro, where, it is alleged, he was smoking opium. Dupre was placed under arrest after he had dropped to the ground, but upon discovering his injuries the officers sent him to the hospital. Two women, one colored and the other white, were arrested on suspicion of being connected with the opium den and were taken to the city jail.
“Dupre's long drop was occasioned by the fact that Detectives Fitzgerald and Ellison had forced an entrance into the room occupied by the negro, where, it is alleged, he was smoking opium.”
Opium raids in early Tacoma reflect the era's criminalization of drug use and the racialized policing that often accompanied it. Dupre, a Black man, was the only person seriously injured in the raid—a reminder of how drug enforcement has historically fallen unevenly across communities.
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