Elkton Police Blotters Added to Collection

The Elkton Police Department (EPD) carefully and meticulously chronicled day-to-day happenings of the rural Maryland law enforcement agency in five-pound ledger books from 1955 to 1993. As patrolman went on and off duty, requests for police aid came in, suspects were arrested, weather conditions changed, or accidents happened, officers filled the pages of these heavy police logs with details, completing a volume for each passing year. These valuable books, a significant source of information about social conditions and changing times, municipal government, weather, crime patterns, and individual information, were added to the archives at the Historical Society of Cecil County by the Mayor and Commissioners of the Town of Elkton. Spanning five decades, historians, social scientists, and family researchers have a long run of complete data, which can be used to understand an important period in policing. By studying these primary documents, the researcher is able to see patterns and changes in criminal justice as it occurred.

The handwritten logs, providing a cops-eye-view of daily activities, began on August 6, 1955. On that Saturday, Officer Harry Minker penned the initial entry in the otherwise blank book noting that it was clear and hot at 8:00 a.m. He scrawled nine additional notations during his watch, all unremarkable calls as police work goes. A day or so later, he penned one saying “Call [the standard method for entering a request for police action] got mayor coffee.”

The Mayor and Commissioners put a push on increasing the efficiency of their force about this time, and these records are evidence of the focus on better practices. The "thin blue line," four full time and 2 part-time men, crisscrossed the town in a new Ford patrol car, responding to calls form the water plant operator who worked the town's two-year-old radio system. In a few months, the officers would have their own dedicated police station, replacing the desk and shared telephone they used in the town hall.

At first work was by and large routine. Traffic problems, simple assaults, drunkenness, loitering, minor thefts, and disorderly conduct made up the bulk of the calls. Whatever, the old records contain the entire goings on of EPD, ranging from long-forgotten calls about UFOs over Elkton to requests to remove "beatniks" or "thugs." The details are buried in these old pages.

But serious crimes and alarming incidents sometimes jolted the routine. Take November 22, 1963. As a thick Chesapeake fog blanketed Cecil County the day-man, Officer Jerry Secore, signed on at 8:00 a.m. In the pre-dawn darkness of Friday morning, a muted calm settled on the county seat, and it continued through the morning as the sun struggled to burn off the haze while Secore handled two routine calls. Then, abruptly that afternoon everything in this Eastern Shore town and the nation changed as radios blared dreadful news from Dallas, TX. In a careful hand, someone at the police station wrote in the register: "President Kennedy shot and killed in Dallas Texas." For the remainder of that tragic day, there is something about the unsettling quiet reflected in the activity report as a deep dark, sadness penetrates the town and few calls come in for the remainder of the evening and night.

There were others. Flashes of lighting fleetingly illuminated the cold, rainy December night as Officer Brooks prowled empty streets, when, without warning, a dreadful explosion shook the town as a fireball, plunging into a rain-swept cornfield, chased away the darkness, turning night into day. The December 8, 1963, blotter notes the time as 8:30 p.m. when 81-people died in a commercial airline crash. On a quiet Sunday in May 1965, as two cruisers roamed the slumbering town, a fire ball loomed high up into the sky at the edge of the municipality. A chemical train jumped the tracks and exploded.

When storms threatened, the department was busy. Officers Hoover and Boyd settled in for a long winter night on March 19 while the great blizzard of 1958 gusted toward Cecil. With swirling snow piling up they trudged around, investigating accidents, assisting motorists, and blocking off downed wires. Street lights blinked off around 5:00 a.m., plunging the town into complete darkness. An officer then transported the chief operator to the telephone office for the switchboard needed help with the escalating emergency. When the weary lawmen signed off, the town was pitched in blackness for electricity all over the county had flickered off. Chief White, working dayside, advised wires kept falling while the wintry blast whipped up drifts, grinding the county into a complete shutdown. (Elkton's official weather observer recorded the formally tally, 37 inches of snow.) In August 1955, Hurricanes Connie and Diane charged through unleashing devastating floods. Throughout those wind-swept days, the men noted the water was rising, trees were blown down, and significant flooding was occurring. When Officer Startt signed off as midnight approached on August 12, 1955, he put pen to paper and simply said, “Bad night, off duty.” (Mr. Bouchelle recorded nearly 8 inches of rain in two days, and Diane was still approaching.)

November 17, 1993, marked the last time someone wrote a note in the old logs. The department converted to a computerized system and the journals were discontinued as the agency entered the age of digital recordkeeping. The last entry occurred at 11:32 a.m. when officers responded to a domestic disturbance. It was the 8,577 call of the year.

As one reads the blotters, you get a police-officers view of what like was like on a particular day in Elkton as you fall swiftly black in time with reach receding year. The growth and development of the Elkton Police and the community and changes in the nature of crime and social conditions, all unfold in these pages. Minor disturbances, drunkenness, petty larceny, and domestic troubles made up the bulk of the complaints in the early years, reflecting the nature of crime in a rural community in the 1950s. As that quiet decade gave way to the troubling ‘60s and ‘70s, the volumes start reflecting changes in society, the drug culture, social unrest, and the rapid increase in crime. While most of the time the men recorded routine complaints, there were a few spectacular crimes. During the 1990s, the number of notations sometimes nearly overflowed the pages because of the volume of calls.

Mayor Joseph Fisona said the town is pleased to have these valuable historical records permanently archived and made available for public research purposes. “Elkton has a great history and by preserving these types of records we are able to aid in the understanding of our community progress by making insightful data available to historians and genealogists.”

This addition to the collection is part of an initiative by the Historical Society of Cecil County to develop complete collections of papers significant to Cecil County history. In particular, the Society is focused on acquiring on acquiring complete collections of manuscripts and papers providing significant and unique information about the County’s civic, social, religious, governmental, political, military, economic, or education history.

FROM THE BLOTTERS

4/17/59 – 11:30 a.m. - Air raid alert

8/25/60 – 10:00 a.m. – With Mayor & Commissioners on North St – Radar demonstration

12/1/62 – 9:30 a.m. – presidential train guard Red Mill & RR Station; 5:00 p.m. Presidential train guard red Mill & Railroad station; 6:00 p.m. Crawford off duty

10/21/63 – 5:00 p.m. 25 cows loose in Elkton heights Hi Ho Silver

12/4/63 – 2:30 p.m. Complaint of deaf mutes acting up on Main St. Ran same out of town.

9/7/68 – 0113 a.m. – Cross Burning in front of courthouse

1/21/1970 – CALL – UFO!? (Unidentified flying object)