Inspector John J. (Jack) Manion (1877–March 1959), San Francisco Police Department, was a veteran officer assigned by Chief Dan O'Brien in 1921 to head up the notorious 16-member Chinatown Squad which had been established in 1875. In the 1920s, San Francisco's Chinatown covered eight city blocks between Bush and Broadway, and three blocks up Nob Hill from

Kearny Street Kearny Street () in San Francisco, California runs north from Market Street to The Embarcadero. Toward its south end, it separates the Financial District from the Union Square and Chinatown districts. Further north, it passes over Telegr ...

to Powell Street. Grant and Stockton streets were the main north-south thoroughfares. As early as the 1850s, Chinese immigrants began organizing into protective associations based on family, business, or their home districts. Shunned and fiercely discriminated against on race as well as economics by the wider community, the people in Chinatown, a segregated population, banded together in associations, companies or the label applied by the press, ''

tongs Tongs are a type of tool used to grip and lift objects instead of holding them directly with hands. There are many forms of tongs adapted to their specific use. The first pair of tongs belongs to the Egyptians. Tongs likely started off as b ...

.'' Five of the district associations formed the Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association in the late 1850s, known as the Five companies by non-Chinese in California. In 1862, a sixth association was added and the grouping became known to outsiders as the

Chinese Six Companies The Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association (CCBA) ( in the Western United States, Midwest, and Western Canada; 中華公所 (中华公所) ''zhōnghuá gōngsuǒ'' (Jyutping: zung1wa4 gung1so2) in the East) is a historical Chinese association ...

. Manion was set to the task of controlling the ''tongs'' that controlled illicit gambling, lotteries, narcotics, prostitution and other criminal enterprises with hired gunmen and the so-called "hatchetmen."

References

*Jerry Flamm, ''Good Life in Hard Times''. Chronicle Books

External links

Manion at San Francisco Virtual Museum
{{DEFAULTSORT:Manion, Jack American police detectives Chinese-American history 1877 births 1959 deaths San Francisco Police Department officers People from Chinatown, San Francisco