The Mulligan Affair: Top Cop on the Take

Anna Leslie is an associate professor of sociology at Sir Wilfred
Grenfell College, Memorial University of Newfoundland.

Written by two journalists, The Mulligan Affair is an account of the
Vancouver city police in general and a chief of police in particular. In
1947, Walter Mulligan became the police chief of a department that,
Macdonald and O’Keefe write, “had not been performing well; its
staff was untrained, poorly paid and riddled with graft and
corruption.” Embraced by politicians and civic leaders for his
perceived ability to clean up the city, Mulligan was not well respected
within the police force.

In the early 1950s, Vancouver was a young, growing city with a high
crime rate. Gambling and prostitution supplied the funds that
facilitated police corruption. The revelation that Mulligan was a crook
provoked massive media coverage. In the words of the authors, “the
story had everything reporters wanted: graft, corruption, death,
bootleggers, bookies, vice-lords, politicians with a sudden loss of
memory, gambling squad cops who could barely remember their names, [and]
hookers.” This book about police corruption and media responses to it
will appeal to a general readership.