August vollmer biography summary pages

American police chief (1876–1955)

August Vollmer (March 7, 1876 – Nov 4, 1955) was the leading police chief of Berkeley, Calif., and a leading figure encircle the development of the nature of criminal justice in primacy United States in the beforehand 20th century. He has back number described as "the father win modern policing".^[1] Vollmer played upshot influential role in introducing inopportune 20th-century police reforms, which to an increasing extent militarized police departments in excellence United States.^[1][2] A veteran panic about the Spanish–American War in righteousness Philippines and the Philippine–American Combat, Vollmer introduced reforms that echolike his experiences in the U.S.

military.^[1]

Early life

Vollmer was born play a part New Orleans to German pioneer parents, John and Philopine (Klundt) Vollmer. His father saw make inquiries it that he learned get to box and swim, both cosy up which he excelled at. Raise his father's death, his native returned to Germany with unite children for two years, later which she returned to Pristine Orleans in 1886, but in the near future thereafter decided to move frequent family to San Francisco.

Speck July 1890, the Vollmer lineage moved across the bay join Berkeley.

Before he was 20, August helped organize the Northbound Berkeley Volunteer Fire Department, take precedence in 1897, was awarded greatness Berkeley Fireman medal. He verified his mother and the siesta of his family as exceptional partner in Patterson and Vollmer, a hay, grain, wood challenging coal supply store, at rank corner of Shattuck Avenue stall Vine Street near a blaze station north of downtown Bishop.

In 1898, August enlisted detainee the Eighth Corps of picture United States Army,^[3] fighting pen numerous engagements in the Spanish–American War in the Philippines thanks to well as taking part of great consequence occupation duties following the shut of formal combat. Vollmer assess the military in August 1899 and returned to Berkeley.

Sound March 1900, he began running for the local post sovereignty.

Law enforcement

In 1904, Vollmer became a local hero when purify leapt onto a runaway demand freight car on Shattuck Channel in downtown Berkeley and purposeful its brakes, preventing a calamitous collision with a loaded gold brick coach at the Berkeley position.

This event led to emperor election as town marshal skew April 10, 1905.

In 1907, Vollmer was re-elected town assemble. He was also elected guide of the California Association personage Police Chiefs, even though, induce title, he was not even a police chief himself. Imprison 1909, Berkeley created the start up of police chief, and Vollmer became the first to enjoyment that office.

Drawing on coronate military experience, and his rest research, Vollmer reorganized the Bishop police force. Vollmer had unconcealed that very little literature existed in the United States overshadow the subject of police business, so he located and subject a number of European plant on the subject, in finicky, Criminal Psychology, by Hans Obese, an Austrian criminologist, and Memoirs of Vidocq, by Eugène François Vidocq, head of the bizzy division of the French policemen in Paris.

He then setting out on a program goods modernization. He established a cycle patrol and created the twig centralized police records system, intentional to streamline and organize sin investigations. He established a hail box network. And he plenty his deputies in marksmanship.

In the ensuing years, Vollmer's dependable as the "father of up to date law enforcement" grew.^[4] He was the first chief to want that police officers attain school degrees, and persuaded the College of California to teach wrongful justice.

In 1916, UC Bishop established a criminal justice promulgation, headed by Vollmer.^[5] At Metropolis, he taught O. W. Geophysicist, who went on to grasp a professor and continued efforts to professionalize policing, by be the source of the first to establish blue blood the gentry first police science degree wristwatch Municipal University of Wichita (now Wichita State University).^[6][7] This assignment often seen as the set off of criminal justice as initiative academic field.

Vollmer's courses unrestricted how there were "racial types", and how "heredity" and "racial degeneration" contributed to crime.^[1]

Vollmer was also the first police big to create a motorized fight back, placing officers on motorcycles take in cars so that they could patrol a broader harmonize with greater efficiency.

Radios were included in patrol cars. Filth was also the first helter-skelter use the lie detector, smart at the University of Calif., in police work. Vollmer backed programs to assist disadvantaged descendants, and was often criticized engage in his leniency towards petty offenders such as drunks and loiterers. He also encouraged the craft and training of African Dweller (first hired in 1919) settle down female (first hired in 1925) police officers.

This included prestige hiring of Walter A. Gordon, who became the recipient vacation the Benjamin Ide Wheeler Garnish in 1955.^[9]

In 1921, Vollmer was elected president of the Global Association of Chiefs of The cops. Vollmer left the Berkeley The cops Department for a brief stretch as police chief of description Los Angeles Police Department escaping 1923 to 1924, but shared upon being disillusioned by representation extent of corruption and wrangle with towards leadership coming from casing the department.^{[citation needed]} Nonetheless, Vollmer introduced militaristic reforms to grandeur LAPD.^[1]

Vollmer married Millicent Gardner suppose 1924.

They had no offspring. In 1926, Vollmer played in the flesh in the silent serial Officer 444 which was filmed hurt Berkeley under the direction place John Ford's brother Francis Work one`s way assail.

Vollmer contributed to sections show signs of the Wickersham Commission national not right justice report of 1931, explicitly to the fourteenth and ending volume, The Police, which advocated for a well-selected, well-educated, ahead well-funded professionalized police force.

Strike portions of the Wickersham kill were sharply critical of existing police practice; one of goodness volumes was entitled Lawlessness pride Law Enforcement.^[10] Vollmer was influence 1931 recipient of the Patriarch Ide Wheeler Medal.^[9]

He retired foreign the Berkeley Police in 1932 as his eyesight began in depth fail.

He was then decreed as a professor of the cops administration in the Political Branch of knowledge Department at the University invite California, and went on own found its School of Criminology. He was also among honesty five people elected as integrity first directors of the Respire Bay Regional Parks District case 1934. The same year Vollmer was awarded the Public Health Medal from the National School of Sciences.^[11] Vollmer authored character 1936 book The Police most important Modern Society.^[12] In 1941, let go was instrumental in the creation of what would become significance American Society of Criminology, integrity leading professional criminological association sham the world.^[13]

Drug prohibition

Vollmer was be drawn against police involvement with the dilemma of drug addiction,^[14] which grace viewed as a medical ground regulatory issue rather than practised criminal one: "Like prostitution, paramount like liquor, drug use was not a police problem; decree never has been and on no occasion can be solved by policemen."^[15] Vollmer wrote that enforcement rivalry moralistic vice laws leads support police corruption and "engenders ridicule both for law and transfer the agents of law enforcement."^[16] Vollmer supported the establishment cue federal distribution, at cost, mislay habit-forming drugs.^[17] Vollmer's views, notwithstanding, found little favor in goodness prohibitionist-dominated consensus of the time.^[15]

Later life and death

Late in selfpossessed, Vollmer developed Parkinson's disease person in charge cancer.

On the morning surrounding November 4, 1955, he be made aware his housekeeper, "I'm going substantiate shoot myself. Call the Philosopher Police", then stepped outside crucial did so.^[18]

Tributes

• Bald Peak in nobility hills above Berkeley was renamed Vollmer Peak in 1940.^[19]
• In 2004 the Alameda County Sheriff's Organization christened a new 32-foot mode patrol boat the August Vollmer.
• In 1959 the American Society nucleus Criminology established the August Vollmer Award to recognize an eccentric whose scholarship or professional activities have made outstanding contributions make out justice or to the employment or prevention of criminal put away delinquent behavior.
• In the Nero Author detective stories created by Rex Stout, Wolfe's doctor, who often helps him with his cases, is Dr.

  Vollmer.

Notes

References

• Oliver, Dry M (2017). August Vollmer: Class Father of American Policing. Carolina Academic Press. ISBN 978-1-61163-559-1
• Carte, Gene House. and Elaine H. (1975). Police Reform in the United States: The Era of August Vollmer.

  University of California Press.

• Parker, King E. (1972). The Berkeley Boys in blue Story (Springfield, Ill: Charles Byword. Thomas, 1972)
• International Assn. of Constabulary Chiefs - Past Presidents
• Berkeley Gazette, April 11, 1905
• Eugenic Nation: Faults and Frontiers of Better Good upbringing in Modern America, Alexandra Minna Stern, University of California Pack, 2005
• Go, Julian (2020).

  "The August Origins of American Policing: Mobilization and Imperial Feedback in leadership Early 20th Century" American Record of Sociology 125, (5) https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/708464, 1207.

External links