300 Years of San Antonio and Bexar County by Claudia R Guerra

Author:Claudia R Guerra
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781595348500
Publisher: Trinity University Press
Published: 2018-08-27T16:00:00+00:00

The Early Days of Law Enforcement

SAN ANTONIO’S LAW ENFORCEMENT history starts with the appointment of Vincent Alvarez Travieso as the first alguacil, town constable or sheriff, of the Villa de San Fernando de Béxar. A Canary Islander, Travieso was given the post by the Spanish Governor, Capt. Juan Antonio de Almazán, shortly after the Isleños arrived and established a municipal government in 1731. The first person to be elected, rather than appointed, was Joseph L. Hood, in May 1837, a few months after the county government formed and San Antonio adopted a city charter.

Nine years later, in 1846, law enforcement began a new chapter when City Council created the position of Town Marshal, marking the beginning of the San Antonio Police Department. The Sheriff’s Department continued to enforce the law throughout the county. Both county and town life could be rough and tumble. San Antonio was still a frontier town and attracted its fair share of gun slinging lawlessness. Bandit raids, Comanche attacks, cattle rustling, bar room brawls, and gun fights were common. Sheriffs and Marshals carried the Colt classic .45 single action revolver, the sidearm of choice for lawmen. Criminals were locked up in the “Bat Cave,” a two-story courthouse and jail built in 1850. In 1875, law enforcers began wearing uniforms signaling the first inevitable and welcome transition to the twentieth century.

Twentieth-century crime also transitioned. Gunslingers were replaced by bank robbers and mobsters, horses gave way to get away cars, and though Prohibition cut down on saloons and bar room brawls, it simply sent alcohol consumption underground. The culture of law enforcement changed as well when the first woman joined the police force in 1900 and the first female Bexar County Sheriff was installed in 1928. The introduction of cars called for new driving rules. In 1921 Commissioner Phil Wright and Traffic Lieutenant T. O. Miller presented City Council with a draft of new traffic regulations. Cars didn’t have signal or brake lights built into them, so the new mandate called for the use of hand signals. Horses were still used as a mode of transportation, but owners were no longer allowed to hitch their horses to lamp posts as a number of posts had been pulled down by the anmials.

Before traffic lights existed, police directed traffic, as they still do at times. But that duty began to change with the introduction of the first three-color traffic light system installed along Houston Street in 1923. It was followed by installations at Commerce Street and at the congested Blanco and Woodlawn corner in 1924. The Police Department that entered the twentieth century in a frontier town today finds itself in a metropolitan city of 1.5 million. They are equipped with high tech equipment that would make their 1846 counterparts marvel. The Bexar County Sheriff’s Department, one of the oldest in the nation, today has over 1,400 deputies and over 300 civilian employees, all ready to protect citizens of Bexar County.[CRG]

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