History
Voters approved the creation of Pinellas County Sheriff's Department in 1912. The early Pinellas County Sheriff's Office reflected the rough and rural nature of the peninsula at that time. Bootlegging, moon shining, and gambling were daily occurrences and the Sheriff's Office was kept busy running after a host of colorful criminals. Jail escapes were not uncommon. Newspapers reported how inmates sawed their way through the iron bars with tools smuggled in from the outside.
From the early days until the late 1950s, deputy sheriffs drove their own cars, wore plain clothes and carried their own weapons. The county was divided into several districts, each of which had a Justice of the Peace, to supervise legal matters. There was no centralized jail system. The Sheriff's Office enforced the laws alongside the County Patrol and various municipal police departments. When judges ran short of citizens in a jury pool, deputy sheriffs were sent out to round up citizens to serve. It wasn't until 1959, during the tenure of Sheriff Don Genung, that the sheriff's office took on a modern identity.
Read more about this topic: Pinellas County Sheriff's Office
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“There is nothing truer than myth: history, in its attempt to “realize” myth, distorts it, stops halfway; when history claims to have “succeeded” this is nothing but humbug and mystification. Everything we dream is “realizable.” Reality does not have to be: it is simply what it is.”
—Eugène Ionesco (b. 1912)
“There is no history of how bad became better.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“English history is all about men liking their fathers, and American history is all about men hating their fathers and trying to burn down everything they ever did.”
—Malcolm Bradbury (b. 1932)