Frank Madigan was sheriff of Alameda County, CA from 1963 to 1975. Thomas Lafayette Houchins Jr.

Thomas Lafayette Houchins Jr.

Thomas Lafayette Houchins Jr. was sheriff of Alameda County, CA in 1975-1979. He gained some notoriety as a tough sheriff in his dealings with Berkeley, California protestors in the 1960s...

 served under him during the Berkeley, CA protests. Sheriff Madigan had the Alameda County Sheriff's Department aid the University of California Police, California Highway Patrol

California Highway Patrol

The California Highway Patrol is a law enforcement agency of the U.S. state of California. The CHP has patrol jurisdiction over all California highways and also acts as the state police....

 and Berkeley Police during the Free Speech Movement in October 1964. Madigan ordered his officers to help clear protesters from Sproul Hall. During the People's Park

People's Park (Berkeley)

People's Park in Berkeley, California, USA, is a park off Telegraph Avenue, bounded by Haste and Bowditch streets and Dwight Way, near the University of California, Berkeley. The park was created during the radical political activism of the late 1960s....

 protests, sometimes referred to as "Bloody Thursday", Madigan authorized use of buckshot, rather than birdshot, against demonstrators and one innocent bystander, James Rector, was killed. In May 1970, after Kent State he ordered tear gas dropped from helicopters on the University of California at Berkeley. His authority came from Governor Ronald Reagan

Ronald Reagan

Ronald Wilson Reagan was the 40th President of the United States , the 33rd Governor of California and, prior to that, a radio, film and television actor....

. The Berkeley Barb

Berkeley Barb

The Berkeley Barb was a weekly underground newspaper that was published in Berkeley, California, from 1965 to 1980. It was one of the first and most influential of the counterculture newspapers of the late 1960s, covering such subjects as the anti-war and civil-rights movements as well as the...

 called Madigan the "Bull Connor

Bull Connor

Theophilus Eugene "Bull" Connor was the Commissioner of Public Safety for the city of Birmingham, Alabama, during the American Civil Rights Movement...

 of Berkeley". In the 1970 Alameda County sheriff election, Madigan was opposed by Stew Albert

Stew Albert

Stewart Edward "Stew" Albert was an early member of the Yippies, an anti-Vietnam War political activist, and an important figure in the New Left movement of the 1960s....

 of the Youth International Party

Youth International Party

The Youth International Party, whose members were commonly called Yippies, was a radically youth-oriented and countercultural revolutionary offshoot of the free speech and anti-war movements of the 1960s. It was founded on Dec. 31, 1967...

. He was a relative of Slip Madigan

Slip Madigan

Edward Patrick "Slip" Madigan was an American football player and coach of football, basketball, and baseball. He served as the head coach at Saint Mary's College of California from 1921 to 1939 and at the University of Iowa from 1943 to 1944, compiling a career college football record of...

External links

• Alameda County Sheriff’s Office Historical Facts

Frank Madigan is now known as "The Butcher of Berkeley's People's Park"