The story behind this photo of VPD detectives that appeared in the Vancouver Daily World on January 25, 1924
Joe Ricci’s Vancouver:
One of my favourite characters in Sensational Vancouver is Detective Joe Ricci who joined the Vancouver Police Department in 1912. Joe was a kick-arse cop from the old school who didn’t get too hung up on legal niceties such as warrants or evidence, but would take to the doors of opium dens and gambling joints with axes, fists swinging and shooting first, asking questions later.
Most of the material that I used in that chapter came from Joe’s daughter Louise. Louise still lives in the house that Joe built in 1922 and has kept all her father’s memorabilia including boxes of newspaper clippings, photographs and letters.
The photo (above) was in one of those boxes, but unfortunately wasn’t dated or labeled. I recognized Joe holding the knives and his partner Donald Sinclair from a photo hanging in the Vancouver Police Museum, but I couldn’t identify the other men or find out what the story was behind the photo until this week.
Jason Vanderhill kindly sent me some clippings about Joe that originated from the long defunct Vancouver Daily World.
The clipping has the same photo taken from a different angle, but it’s clearly the same event and it ran with the quite wonderful caption: Officers Battle with Slayer of Seamen.
It turns out that on January 25, 1924, Ben Baba, a Maltese seaman had armed himself with two stiletto knives and gone on a rampage onboard the Pilar de Larringa murdering the captain and a crew member and injuring four others before police arrived to stop him.
Sergeant George McLaughlin shot Baba with the sawed-off shotgun that he’s proudly displaying in the photo (they called it a riot gun), and according to the story, Baba then slit his own throat.
The story doesn’t say what set him off.
For another photo mystery that was solved, see Women Police Officers on Patrol
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