Michael Gaffey

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Michael Gaffey (b.1893- d. March, 1961) was the police chief of San Francisco police chief from 1951 to 55.

Gaffey was born in county Roscommon Ireland near Ballinasloe in 1893 and came to San Francisco at the age of twenty and joined the police department in 1921. Gaffey was decorated world war 2 veteran(purple heart).

in 1954, Chief Gaffey disbanded the "super" vice squad claiming that prostitution, gambling and bookmaking had dropped to an "irreducible minimum." (SF Chronicle, 4/16/04, p.F5)

Author N.A. Boyd writing about the San Francisco queer community before 1965, tells how as Chief of Police, Gaffey, after goading by the San Francisco Examiner, decided to “clean the homosexuals from the streets” and joined forces with federal police in 1954 to make moves on five taverns (part of this moral campaign was to connect “sex deviates” to the corruption of minors). Public morality directly translated into criminal regulation." [1] [2]

He is buried at Holy Cross Cemetery in Colma, California.