William "Big Bill" O'Hara was Chief of the San Francisco Police Department from 1878, succeeding Benjamin Atwood. O'Hara had previously headed the "Chinatown Squad" as a sergeant, and he occasionally moonlighted as a debt collector for the Fung Hai Tong before the Fung Hai's destruction.
Biography[]
William O'Hara was born in Ireland, and he emigrated to the United States prior to 1863. After serving in the Union Army during the American Civil War, including at the Battle of Gettysburg, he settled in San Francisco, California, where he married Lucy O'Hara and fathered five children. He rose in the ranks of the San Francisco Police Department and, in 1878, was entrusted with leading the newly-formed Chinatown Squad to keep watch over the Chinese Tongs and the Irish Workingmen. O'Hara, a degenerate gambler, was known for his corruption and was forced to work as an enforcer for the Fung Hai Tong, and he later arrested Hop Wei Tong member Ah Sahm for attacking a couple of drunken Irishmen before sending henchmen to murder him in his cell, which failed. O'Hara was devastated by the death of his old colleague Jack Damon that same year, and he later rescued Ah Sahm from a duel with Li Yong to soothe his guilt. He continued to work as muscle for the Fung Hai, making more money and buying his wife new jewelry and steak for the first time. O'Hara later led an SFPD manhunt for Jacob Fok, a Chinese servant who murdered Mayor Samuel Blake, only for Fok to be lynched by the Workingmen. On Chief Russell Flannagan's death, O'Hara hoped to become police chief, as his wife and children had left him because of his corruption; ultimately, Benjamin Atwood became the new Chief of Police. O'Hara was put at odds with the new chief, and Horace Clark later offered O'Hara a job at his cement factory. O'Hara, expecting to be a bookkeeper, found himself working an unskilled labor job, but his wife rejoined him after he promised that he would be a better man now that he was off the force. Eventually, his sister-in-law persuaded Clark to make O'Hara an accountant.
O'Hara as police chief
O'Hara was later recruited by Workingmen leader Dylan Leary to help him secure the freedom of two Irishmen from prison, and Atwood agreed to do so if O'Hara could beat him in a fight. O'Hara knocked out Atwood, and, the next day, Mayor Buckley offered O'Hara the job of Chief of Police after his coworkers testified that Atwood had fallen down a staircase. With the approval of his wife, O'Hara accepted, and he was acclaimed by his old colleagues.
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