George W. Wittman (1857–1950) was a San Francisco Police officer and chief of police.
[Garvey, John, ''San Francisco Police Department'', Charleston, Arcadia, 2004, p. 14.]
Wittman is the only San Francisco police chief ever fired outright. During the period before the
1906 San Francisco earthquake
At 05:12 Pacific Standard Time on Wednesday, April 18, 1906, the coast of Northern California was struck by a major earthquake with an estimated moment magnitude of 7.9 and a maximum Mercalli intensity of XI (''Extreme''). High-intensity sha ...
, business interests desired the removal of the Chinese from
San Francisco's Chinatown because the property was valuable as the city was still centered on
Portsmouth Square. The plan was to expropriate the land and move the Chinese to
Hunters Point Hunters Point or Hunter's Point or Hunter Point refers to the following places:
* Bayview-Hunters Point, San Francisco
** Hunters Point Naval Shipyard, another name for the San Francisco Naval Shipyard
* Hunters Point, Queens, New York City
** Hunte ...
. At a rehearing on Wittman's firing in 1975, both historian
Kevin Starr and city historian
Gladys Hansen stated that Wittman was railroaded.
Hansen stated that the city wanted to move the Chinese and, "to make people believe the removal was for the betterment of the city and not a lucrative business deal, someone in high office had to be blamed for allowing vice to exist in Chinatown". Wittman took the fall (SF Examiner July 10, 1975).
See also
*
San Francisco Police Department
References
San Francisco Police Department chiefs
1857 births
1950 deaths
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