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1 1 Baghdad on the Bayou M uch of the early history of peacekeeping and law enforcement in Houston has been lost to fire, floods and poor record keeping. Not until the 1840s does the dim outline of what would become one of the nation ’s largest police departments begin to take shape. The earliest references and anecdotes dealing with law enforcement can be traced back to the early 1830s. By most accounts, the origins of Houston policing can be traced back to the efforts of an Anglo settler named John W. Moore in the years leading up to the Republic. Moore was appointed Alcalde of the Eastern Province, a position that covered everything from local judge to sheriff. However, most law enforcement was community-based in this era. In fact, as far back as Anglo Saxon England prior to the Norman Conquest of 1066, community residents were called on to bring local troublemakers to justice in lieu of formal policing. And so it was in Houston almost eight centuries later; when a crime was committed, someone alerted the community and the familiar posse composed of local residents of western lore would set out to bring the malefactor to justice. Typically the suspect would be held in confinement until the arrival of the Alcalde, who would conduct the trial and dole out punishment. There was no need for a penitentiary in the 1830s since punishment usually took place immediately after the trial, whether it was physical or financial in nature. Few of the inhabitants of what would become the fourth largest city in the United States could have predicted the future stature of what in 1836 was barely a clearing on the bayou with several cabins in the woods. In 1833, one early visitor to the “Town of Houston” noted that “it was hard work to find the city in the pine woods” and that when one managed to actually find the site it was little more than “one dugout canoe, a bottle gourd of whiskey and a surveyor’s chain and compass and was inhabited by four men with an ordinary camping outfit.” When this visitor returned to Harrisburg, he reported 2 Houston Blue “mosquitoes were as large as grasshoppers” and found his companion’s attempt to bathe in the bayou cut short by alligators.1 Following independence in 1836, the Republic adopted a constitution that would influence the development of local policing in Texas. According to Article 4, Section 10 of the 1836 Constitution of the Texas Republic: There shall be appointed for each county, a convenient number of Justices of the Peace, one sheriff, one Coroner, and a sufficient number of Constables, who shall hold their offices for two years, to be elected by the qualified voters of the district or county, as Congress may direct. Justice of the Peace and Sheriffs shall be commissioned by the President {of the Republic]. Many Western historians consider Texas sheriffs as “the first legally qualified sheriffs of the American Far West.”2 Houston was situated on the “the south side of Buffalo Bayou, at least sixty feet above the water and about one hundred miles from the coast.”3 Founded just two months earlier, on January 1, 1837, and incorporated as the city of Houston on the following June 5, the city, with a sheriff as its first principal peace officer, held its first official election in August of the same summer. Turnout was reportedly low, due in no small part to the voter qualifications of the day, which required anyone voting for aldermen or mayor to be a free white male, citizen of Texas, a resident of Houston for at least six months, and the owner of at least $100 worth of city real estate for at least three months prior to the election.4 Houston, from the very beginning, was besieged by extreme weather events that have since made the city famous. In April of that first year, the town was flooded with seemingly endless rain, followed by a hurricane in October that made the bayou rise four feet to the edge of Main Street. The following February, Houston was jolted with its coldest day when temperatures dropped to sixteen degrees below freezing on February 2 and six degrees colder two weeks later. It was indeed a rare sight to see even Galveston Bay covered with ice and the streets of Houston covered with snow and ice.5 Weather did little to dampen the spirits of settlers headed...

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