Eugene W. Biscailuz

Eugene W. Biscailuz (March 12, 1883 – May 16, 1969) was an American police officer. He organized the California Highway Patrol, and later became the 27th Sheriff of Los Angeles County, California, serving in that capacity for 26 years, from 1932 to 1958.

Family and early life Biscailuz was born in Boyle Heights on March 12, 1883. Sheriff Biscailuz's father, Martin V. Biscailuz, was an attorney of French-Basque descent. His mother, Ida Rose Warren, was a descendant of Spanish pioneer Jose Maria Claudio Lopez, a soldier at the San Gabriel Mission. Her father William Warren was an early Los Angeles city marshal killed in a gun battle in 1870.

In 1902, Biscailuz met and married Willette Harrison, whose father was a captain at San Quentin State Prison and later the sheriff of Marin County. The couple had two children, and stayed married until Willette's death in 1950.

Career After working briefly as a shipping clerk in Los Angeles and San Francisco, Biscailuz was appointed as a foreclosure clerk by Sheriff William A. Hammel in 1907. His law background helped him rise in the ranks until he was appointed undersheriff in 1921.

In a World War II interview, Biscailuz suggested that Mexican and Hispanic criminal activity in the city during wartime was a ploy by Japanese-Americans, who had by then been removed to concentration camps, as a form of sabotage, on the basis of race alone.

In 1957, Biscailuz served as technical advisor and appeared at the end of each of the 39 episodes of the syndicated television series "Code 3" , which claimed to dramatize actual cases from his department.

Upon his retirement in 1958, the Board of Supervisors named him "sheriff emeritus for the rest of his life."