Houston Police Department

The Houston Police Force was established by the naming of a city marshal in January 1841. Houston Police Department historian Denny Hair wrote, As befitted a frontier community, the meeting of justice in Houston was swift and uncompromising. Trials were conducted in an informal manner with little attention paid to formal rules of evidence and legal procedure. Eventually, conditions changed and law enforcement became more sophisticated. The Bayou City population went from 44,633 in 1900 to a...