History
The Office of the Sheriff for Ventura County began in February, 1873, with the election of Sheriff Frank Peterson. What began as a duty to collect taxes and catch horse thieves has evolved significantly as the county has changed and grown. Seventeen other Sheriffs have held the Office of the Sheriff since 1873. The administration of justice (and more criminals going to trial rather than the dispensing of "frontier justice") became more sophisticated during the late 19th century. Sheriff Edmund Guy McMartin, a popular and upright man who was elected Sheriff five times, was the first and only Sheriff killed in the line of duty while apprehending a murder suspect in 1921.
Public hangings and bootlegging arrests gave way to police practices and procedures commonly recognized today. The modern era of Ventura County law enforcement began in 1959 with Sheriff William Hill. The 1970s saw the genesis of community involvement programs like Community Orientated Policing and Problem Solving (C.O.P.P.S), DARE and Neighborhood Watch. Today, the cornerstone of county policing is the partnership between the Sheriff's Department and county residents.
Read more about this topic: Ventura County Sheriff's Department (California)
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“A people without history
Is not redeemed from time, for history is a pattern
Of timeless moments.”
—T.S. (Thomas Stearns)
“There is a constant in the average American imagination and taste, for which the past must be preserved and celebrated in full-scale authentic copy; a philosophy of immortality as duplication. It dominates the relation with the self, with the past, not infrequently with the present, always with History and, even, with the European tradition.”
—Umberto Eco (b. 1932)
“When the history of guilt is written, parents who refuse their children money will be right up there in the Top Ten.”
—Erma Brombeck (20th century)