Citizen Sousveillance and Cinematic Disinformation, Hard-Boiled

Formed in 1936 by an alliance of anti-vice crusaders, communist victims of police violence, Hollywood liberals, and led by a celebrity restaurateur, Los Angeles’ Citizen’s Independent Vice Investigating Committee (CIVIC) were unlikely bedfellows for a populist campaign to “clean up city hall”. Yet after a well-publicized investigative campaign marked by citizen journalism, midnight raids on brothels and illegal gambling halls, a bombing campaign at the homes of their staff, and sensational dramatizations of their work broadcast over public radio, CIVIC concluded that the administration of Frank Shaw was running a protection racket for organized criminals on the seedy streets of Los Angeles. By 1938 they had convinced enough Angelenos to eject Mayor Frank Shaw from office, and his replacement ushered in a period of police and municipal reform that sent the mob packing to Las Vegas.

The CIVIC story has become part of Los Angeles folklore, sometimes cited as a real-life counterpart to the familiar tropes of sunshine and noir that suffuse cinematic and literary LA. But is fact really stranger than fiction? This paper examines the surveillance operation built by CIVIC and suggests the opposite: That while the organization’s multimedia exposé may have persuaded voters, its investigation failed to turn up evidence to substantiate their allegations about Frank Shaw. Yet for CIVIC, truth was cinematic: by presenting the results of their investigations across the popular mediums of photography, radio, and the newspaper, CIVIC spread a disinformation meta-narrative that anticipated the consolidation of film noir a few years later. While CIVIC’s leaders may have at first seen surveilling the city as an investigative task rooted in detective and archival work, their organization ultimately functioned as a kind of scriptwriting workshop, rewriting the history of Los Angeles in the process.