In the Name of the Law: A History of Law Enforcement in Johnson County
Public disturbance? Home burglary? Pick up the phone, call 911, and the next thing you know, a patrolman is on the scene. Modern suburbanites expect quick response from law enforcement, and they get it. But help was not always just a phone call away. Since Johnson County’s founding 150 years ago, law enforcement has changed dramatically. The sparse policing provided by part-time lawmen on foot or horseback has given way to countrywide coverage by professional law enforcement officers equipped with high-tech gear, ready to respond to trouble in minutes.
The Early Years
Johnson County presently is home to seventeen law enforcement agencies including the county Sheriff’s Office, the Johnson County Park Police (see sidebar) and fifteen municipal police departments. During the county’s first century, most policing duties were covered by the county sheriff and constables in each of the county’s nine townships. Much of their crime-fighting effort in the early years focused on theft, particularly horse-thievery. Constables tended to deal with the most minor crimes, while the sheriff looked after greater infractions of the law. In addition, the sheriff was charged with running the county jail.
By 1890, Johnson County citizens were willing to support their government by paying to replace early makeshift buildings. A fine new courthouse was completed in Olathe as well as a sturdy jail structure. The new brick jail, located half a block north of Santa Fe on Cherry Street, housed six jail cells, an office for the sheriff and living quarters for him and his family.
Both the sheriff and township constables were elected officials and had countywide jurisdiction, but town governments often hired part-time marshals to act as night watchmen and enforce town ordinances. Some marshals also performed secondary duties related to the public welfare. Gardner’s marshal lit the town’s gaslights each evening and the marshal in Spring Hill graded the town’s dirt streets with a horse-drawn scraper.
Crime and Punishment
Well into the 10th century, law enforcement in the county remained fairly routine, occasionally punctuated by a particularly spectacular robbery or attempted jailbreak. By far the most dramatic event to befall the Sheriff’s Office happened in the fall of 1916, when a mob overpowered Sheriff E.G. Carroll one dark night, removing a prisoner from the county jail and lynching him in the country-side near Olathe. The prisoner, Bert Dudley, had been convicted of brutally murdering a well-liked couple on their farm near Stilwell. Dudley was awaiting transfer to the state penitentiary where he was to serve a life term, there being no death penalty in Kansas at the time. Some citizens apparently felt that the punishment did not fit the crime and carried out their own version of justice. No one was ever arrested for the deed.
By the 1920s, bank robberies had become all too frequent a crime in Johnson County, as well as across the nation. Existing law enforcement was spread thin. Citizens sometimes tried to provide their own protection, although not to the same degree as in the Dudley case. In 1928, the Spring Hill Banking Company was robbed in broad daylight twice within four months. Residents organized to defend their town, forming an impromptu posse to chase such brazen criminals. The “Minute Men” welcomed any citizen who could get dressed and out the door in one minute flat.
Another major challenge for law enforcement was Prohibition, the law that made the manufacture and sale of alcoholic beverages illegal. This law was in effect nationally from 1920 to 1933, but the state of Kansas continued to outlaw liquor until 1948. The Johnson County sheriff conducted many a raid on those who made and sold alcohol. Targets included “joints” like the Brown Derby lunch room in Olathe, which was destroyed by a man who for many years had served as night marshal in Shawnee. The sheriff and his men seized 70 gallons of wine, three gallons of whiskey and eleven bottles of homebrew that had been hidden on the property. Apparently customers could buy more than just gas.
Policing the Suburbs
Until the mid-20th century, law enforcement agencies were very limited in size and coverage they could give. During the 1930s, they had patrolmen on the roads, but usually one officer covered the northern half of the county and one the southern part. For those living far from Olathe, response to a police call could be agonizingly slow or, all too often, non-existent. Ballooning populations in the northeast part of the county after World War II brought increasing pressure for government services including law enforcement.
Around 1950, several new northeast suburbs incorporated as third-class cities in order to provide their citizens with local services such as fire and police departments. Soon northeast Johnson County was bristling with police forces of various sizes and levels of experience.
Most city police forces began with volunteers who drove their own cars on patrol and were reimbursed only for mileage. These officers received their training on the job, in some cases reporting to part-time city marshals. Some cities were wealthy enough to afford an actual police chief and, in some cases, their own cars and equipment. Local lore has it that the City of Shawnee, although able to afford only one police car in 1953, tried their best to outwit criminals with it. On the door of the car was painted “Police No. 2” in the hope that no one would suspect there was no car No. l.
Prairie Village got a faster start on modern policing. In 1951, a three-man volunteer police force operated out of a grocery store basement in the Prairie Village Shopping Center. Within a year, the force had grown to nine, and the police department soon had one patrol car and a budget of $6,600. By 1953, the Prairie Scout newspaper reported that the city law enforcement budget had grown to a staggering sum of $15,000.
Budgets and salaries for law enforcement personnel continued to be rather low for some years. In 1957, monthly pay for an experienced police patrolman ranged from $310.00 with the Sheriff’s Office to $475.00 with the Westwood Police Department. Police officers at that time were required to buy much of their own personal gear, including a firearm.
An Era of Change
Due to a combination of factors, law enforcement in the county began to change greatly around 1970. In 1967, a new sheriff, Fred Allenbrand, was elected. Allenbrand was able to benefit from a change in the law in 1964 that removed the two-term limit on any individual sheriff’s service. He was re-elected repeatedly and remained in office until 1999. Allenbrand oversaw many modernizing trends in the Sheriff’s Office, including a civil service system that removed much of the political pressure from a law enforcement career.
Other factors also began to change the face of county law enforcement. In 1968 the state of Kansas passed a law requiring all law enforcement officers in the state to receive 120 hours of professional training. Local police chiefs, including Charles Stump of Shawnee and Myron Scafe of Overland Park, banded together to provide officer training and their efforts eventually led to a cooperative effort with Johnson County Community College to establish a regional police academy. The first class completed their 12-week training course in August, 1972. In contrast, the 2005 training course at the Johnson County Regional Police Academy will be extended from 14 weeks to 15, involving 600 hours of training in everything from report writing to crisis management. A typical new law enforcement officer in Johnson County now receives several weeks’ worth of training in his or her own department before going to the academy, and 16 to 18 weeks of field training afterward.
Civil rights legislation and social change led to big changes in the make-up of policing agencies within the county. Before about 1970, very few members of minorities joined police forces, and women were not placed in active “field” positions such as patrol officers. Over the past thirty years, agencies have come to include many more minority staff members, including African-American and Hispanic officers. Two police departments — Lenexa and Olathe — are currently headed by female police chiefs.
Law enforcement agencies within Johnson County have, in general, been well-funded and have been able to take advantage of vastly improved technology and equipment. Many patrol officers now report in via laptop computers and the sheriff’s dispatch office keeps tract of patrol car locations though state-of-the art GPS(global positioning systems) technology. Various agencies support highly specialized staff such as bomb squads, K-9 units, computer-crime investigators and SWAT teams. One division of the Sheriff’s Office is the Crime Lab, which had its beginnings in the early 1970s and is one of two county crime labs in the state of Kansas. The Johnson County Crime Lab aids in investigations by processing evidence for the Sheriff’s Office and police departments throughout the county. Law enforcement agencies within the county join in many cooperative efforts to share specialized expertise and equipment.
--ALBUM vol. 18, no. 1 (winter 2005)