The department officially formed in 1850 during The Great Western Gold Rush, shortly after the city, with an official population of 873 at the time, incorporated. Its primary purpose wasn't so much to keep the peace of the newly incorporated city and serve and protect its citizens as it was to corral the bedlam that resulted in having 50,000 people stream westward in search of easy fortune.
Even at this early stage in its development, politics had a prominent role in Capital City. The city fathers realized that with such a sundry, condensed, and driven population murders would occur - and they did, at a steady rate of one per day during the height of the gold rush. But, as long as the primary tax paid for any claim was paid promptly or, more importantly, the supplemental tax that could be paid directly to the politician to reduce the burden of the primary tax was paid at an even more expedient rate, the city would have a greater chance to reach its growth potential despite the sacrifices.
Should a fair citizen of Capital City and its environs be discovered not to have contributed to the appropriate government or extra-government payment, the CCPD would step in to enforce swift civil justice in the name of city pride.
As time passed, the gold claims began to dry up, but the population continued to swell - both due to prospectors still convinced that a hidden vein was yet to be discovered and by those who realized it was easier to make money from the prospectors than from the gold. Capital City officials recognized these same revenue opportunities and began to institute the appropriate taxes independent of gold claims to support the citizenry and their humble public servants. These taxes included a city entry fee, several variations of lodging fees, and exit fees - whether of the emigrant's own accord or that of a friendly undertaker's.
Capital City was able to levy such onerous taxes with little protest due to its prime real estate surrounding the calm waters of the bay. Those who attempted to circumvent civic justice by incorporating outside of the established city limits and promising "fairer" tax structures were visited by expeditionary arms of the CCPD who were readily able to convince the new town's founders that it was in their best interest to return to the city proper as the locations of the new towns were often subject to even higher rates of violence that coincidentally occurred just prior to the arrival of the expeditionary force.
CCPD staffing followed similar trends of other US police departments. Irish immigrants came west along with everyone else at the mention of gold and faced the same derision and scorn every step of the way as they had back east. Due to their ostracism in the community, they were often left out of larger excavation parties into the gold-rich areas outside of the city and denied employment within it.
Capital City politicians took note that the Irish were sitting idle and, literally, hungry in the city and decided to provide them opportunities to shape civil justice within the city at a reasonable wage.
During the same period, Polish immigrants, who'd interacted with well-traveled Russians reaching Capital City by way of Canada and heard about great opportunities, also began to appear. Though they didn't face ostracism for the same reason as the Irish, they were often excluded from excursions and jobs due to their rough sounding language and inscrutable alphabet. The politicians again noticed a ready supply of recruits for the newly formed CCPD and extended the appropriate job offers.
After successfully instilling a sense of civic pride in the residents in and around Capital City, the city fathers realized that further use of the police force in its current form would reflect undeservedly on the city's reputation for potential settlers. As a result, Capital City hired its first police commissioner - William Ignatius Barnes, referred to colloquially as "the Professor."
Barnes, who reputedly held PhDs from several institutions on or near the East Coast, was a practitioner of modern methods and science well-positioned to lead the police department in its next incarnation. He applied these modern methods in organizing the police force by taking advantage of the steady stream of settlers that continued to head toward Capital City in conjunction with the construction of the transcontinental railroads. Using his expertise in phrenology - and building on the cultural ties of the current population of CCPD - he was able to determine that the Irish railroad laborers would continue to serve as fine specimens for the police force while the equally abundant and hard-working Chinese laborers would be unable to comprehend the complexities of modern police work.
Polish laborers, who now began expanding their sphere of influence into the city's docks, were deemed adequate for the police department's requirements and permitted further employment.
Barnes added further concepts to the police force such as the para-military hierarchy present in other departments, a division of beats to better patrol the city and engage in community policing, and a rigorous two-week training course including, but not limited to the following:
- a comprehensive introduction to the Capital City and state penal codes
- intensive firearms training
- crowd control
- public relations
- an introduction to liberal arts topics to better round out the policeman's mind including literature, music, and physics
- the fundamentals of medicine
- modern investigative and police methods
- political science
It was during this continued Golden Age of Capital City Policing that Charles Henry Tannehill, a grandson of Scottish and Irish immigrants, moved west from Chicago and joined the Capital City Police Department in Anno Domini 1913.
[Author's Note: Oops, it's Labor Day Weekend here in the US, so I'm a day late (but it's early Monday). This week's chapter is 963 words for a running total over five weeks of - Ta Da! - 5039 words.]
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