Los Angeles lawman William Hammel tamed one of the West’s wildest towns with hard work and Horseless CarriagesPolice Chief Hammel, courtesy J.R. Sanders Los Angeles, California. Not everyone’s picture of a wild-and-woolly Western town—even though Wyatt Earp, who spent his last years there, claimed Tombstone in its heyday “wasn’t half as bad as Los Angeles.” Policing the City of Angels, and the 4,000-square-mile county of coastline, desert and mountains encompassing it, took a special breed of lawmen. Men like Billy Hammel. Native Angeleno William Augustus Hammel was born March 13, 1865. The son of a doctor and educated at Santa...