"Mulholland Falls"
It was a waterfall with no water, just wiseguys that police threw off the mountain.
A liberal, "easy breezy" lifestyle had nothing to do with the mob never getting a foothold in Cali, either. It's actually quite the opposite. Before the 1960s, California was one of the most conservative states that made up the former union "northern" states. So conservative in fact that the protestants who ran LA were reluctant to work with Irish, Italian or Jewish gangsters, despite being on the take. By the time the "City Hall Gang" was broken up and Willie Parker took over as chief, the fix in LA was done, and the east coast and midwest mobs that previously ran rackets in LA moved to Vegas.
You didn't have the huge Italian and Irish voting blocs like the Eastern cities. So you had people in power descended from the early white settlers. And as you said, different religion, too. It's not like the cops and politicians were rubbing elbows with rackets guys at Sunday Mass. One of the Manson books, I think the one by Jeff Guinn, says that one of those police chiefs, (Parker I think), would not tolerate officers who took bribes or anything, but was totally cool with them using excessive force with little to no provocation. On poor people that is. The rich and influential got off with a warning. He writes a story about some movie stars kids who were shooting out streetlights in a housing development under construction. They were sent home with a warning and their gun was not confiscated. But blacks and working class whites got their asses kicked for much less.
