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:
“I am ashamed to see what a shallow village tale our so-called History is. How many times must we say Rome, and Paris, and Constantinople! What does Rome know of rat and lizard? What are Olympiads and Consulates to these neighboring systems of being? Nay, what food or experience or succor have they for the Esquimaux seal-hunter, or the Kanaka in his canoe, for the fisherman, the stevedore, the porter?”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“The history of philosophy is to a great extent that of a certain clash of human temperaments.”
—William James (1842–1910)
“Both place and time were changed, and I dwelt nearer to those parts of the universe and to those eras in history which had most attracted me.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)