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Crusey, Arthur B.
Crusey, Arthur B.
Rank: Policeman
Serial Number:Unknown
Division: Unknown
Date Killed: Thursday, May 25, 1911
Cause of Death: Shot by a Robbery Suspect
Bio:
It was late May 1911. There were forty-six states in the union as Arizona and New Mexico awaited statehood. Los Angeles’ population, still a modest 320,000, would soon burgeon into a major metropolitan area. William Mulholland promised to deliver water, that most precious commodity, to a city whose growth had been limited by the chaparral covered semi-desert terrain. Mulholland, true to his word would complete an aqueduct, carrying water from the Owens valley, to Los Angeles, by November 5, 1913. With water, growth was unleashed and Los Angeles’population grew at a seemingly exponential rate.
Arthur B. Crusey was born around 1887 in Indiana to John and Mary F. Crusey. Arthur grew up in the 31st Ward in Chicago, Illinois, where his father was a brickmason. His maternal grandparents were born in France and his mother also spoke French. By 1910, the Crusey family had transplanted to Los Angeles, where the senior Crusey found work as a bricklayer. Arthur now aged twenty-three, appeared set to follow in his father’s footsteps in the brickwork industry until fate stepped in.
On February 8, 1911, Arthur B. Crusey joined the Los Angeles Police Department. His boyish looks earned him the name “baby faced policeman” amongst his peers. His youthful appearance made him a perfect candidate to work a plainclothes detail in the Metropolitan squad, where Crusey worked the many clubs and saloons which littered the area now occupied by the Los Angeles Children’s Museum and United States District Court building. It was in the infamous Miami Club where Crusey had busted one of the many gambling operations that went on inside the saloons.
However, Crusey was also a newlywed and his young wife Elsie, dreaded his undercover assignment. She purportedly begged him to work what she perceived as the “safer” detail of patrolman. After three months of undercover work, Crusey relented and asked for a patrol assignment. In early May 1911, Crusey was reassigned to patrol and given a footbeat in the area of north Main Street and what today is the Hollywood freeway, but what was then Commercial Street.
On the evening of May 25, 1911, Arthur Crusey was walking a footbeat on north Main Street, working what today would be a “late PM” watch. Around 10:00 p.m. he observed a tall thin man, later identified as a parolee from San Quentin prison, named John I. Crossley, removing a bicycle from a pawnshop. When Patrolman Crusey ran at Crossley and yelled at the parolee to halt, the suspect instead answered with a shot from a .38 caliber revolver, which was loaded with dum
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