Dupnik, Clarence

This interview was recorded on January 20th, 2020 in Tucson, Arizona and it covers the following themes:

b. 1936

  • Birth in a Polish farming community in south Texas. Great Depression and family migration to Bisbee, Arizona.

  • Family structure, women in the workforce, availability of credit. Father’s experience working for Phelps Dodge. Masons and Catholicism. Mother’s life and household. Childhood activities, baseball. Safety and agency of children. Paperboy. Travel to Tucson. Bisbee water systems. Dating in Bisbee.

  • Attending the University of Arizona, living in Hopi Lodge. Drinking, tobacco, and drugs in the 1950s. Dropping out of the UA and joining the Tucson Police Department.

  • TPD in the late 1950s; changing department, hiring practices, unpaid hours, wool pants and no air conditioning, police phones on telephone poles.

  • Crime in the fifties. Race and policing. Demographics of TPD. “Us versus them” mentality and different perspectives upon law enforcement from different levels of management.

  • Working at the police training academy in the late 1950s. Making bullets by hand.

  • Promotion to detective work. Pawn shop detail.

  • Interrogations and the polygraph.

  • Low wages of police officers and Dupnik’s need for promotion to support family in 1962. Challenges of being a sergeant.

  • Joe Bonanno's move to Tucson. Rogue FBI agent David Hale and bombing of Joe Bonanno’s house. Relations between TPD and FBI. Mafia in Tucson.

This interview was recorded on January 30th, 2020 in Tucson, Arizona and it covers the following themes:  

  • Miranda v. Arizona and its influence on interrogation. Emphasis on new types of evidence.  

  • Attitudes towards police during the 1960s. Vietnam protests. 

  • Firearms, police fear, bulletproof vests. 

  • Pioneer Hotel fire of 1970. Managing disasters and crowds; military tactics. Lack of interconnected radio systems. 

  • The conviction of Louis Taylor. 

  • Three nights of Vietnam War protests at Park and University in 1970. Dispersing protestors. 

  • Reflections upon the Watts riot. 

  • Drugs in the early 1960s. Early attempts at drug education. Social change in attitudes towards drugs. Law enforcement’s growing interest in prevention and education; creation of School Resources Officers. 

  • The changing approach of law enforcement towards the mentally ill. Pima County Hospital in the 1950s and 1960s. 

  • Changes in public drunkenness laws. 

  • Drugs, corruption, and pre-cartel drug importers. Aerostat balloons and low flying drug aircraft. Lil’ Abners Steakhouse. 

  • Sheriff Waldon Burr. Corruption within the Pima County Sheriff’s Department during the 1960s. 

  • Charles Schmid murders. 

This interview was recorded on February 11th, 2020 in Tucson, Arizona and it covers the following themes:

  • The politics of being in the Police Department versus the Sheriff’s Department and Dupnik’s move to the Pima County Sheriff’s Department in 1977. Working with Sheriff Richard Boykin.

  • Working with David Yetman to find better models for the Pima County Jail.

  • Campaign for Sheriff in 1980.

  • Attempting to bring more women into the Department.

  • Challenging areas for law enforcement in Pima County.

  • Lack of Tucson support for police. Comradery between law enforcement and fire in Tucson.

  • Medical care and the County Jail.

  • Federal money for local law enforcement.

  • The US-Mexico Border and the Pima County Sheriff’s Department. Immigration in the 1980s. Salvadoran refugees and the Sanctuary Movement.

  • Arizona SB 1070 in 2010 and the role of immigration in politics.

  • Changing drug landscape in the 1980s; demand, use, petty crime, Border Patrol corruption. Connections between cartels and immigration.

  • Creation of the D.A.R.E. and School Resource Officer programs.

  • Gangs in the 1980s.

  • A discussion of the first amendment, the role of the courts, and the increasing incivility of American culture across Dupnik’s life.

  • Hiring, management, public relations, campaigning. Stress of politics and law enforcement.

  • The 2011 shooting of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords.

  • Creation of mental health unit at Sheriff’s Department.

  • Homelessness. The Pima County Farm.

  • Reflections upon speaking out against SB 1070.

Aengus Anderson