Brazos Past: A look at Waco's first police vehicles
By Terri Jo Ryan
Special to the Tribune-Herald
American lawmen have been using horseless carriages in their work since the late 1890s, but Waco’s first mechanical pursuit and patrol vehicles weren’t adopted until the turn of the 20th century.
Almost as soon as the Waco Police Department acquired a “paddy wagon,” it also had a motorbike — as evidenced in a 1902 photograph in the department’s collection.
Starting in 1902, Waco police have used motorcycles for traffic control.
The motorcycle patrol endured for more than half a century, only retiring in 1958.
Officers were allowed to buy their old work wheels and many took up off-duty assignments providing funeral escorts.
A decade earlier, the city acquired some three-wheeled motorbikes for downtown patrols and to use as parade escorts. And the three-wheelers weren’t the only “fun time” vehicles area officers put to more serious use in crowd control or monitoring movement. The city also had a bicycle patrol operational for about eight years in the 1990s.
But patrol cars or cruisers of several stripes have been the main transportation of law enforcers and their suspects for many decades.
During the days of the Great Depression, Waco officers drove their own cars, but the city supplied the gasoline to operate them.
tjryan@wacotrib.com
757-5746
MORE IN WACO HISTORY: BRAZOS PAST »
Waco History ProjectIn My Opinion
Magazine
New issue!
- Check out June's issue
- Summer swimwear, great teachers, El Conquistador & more
- Link: View the magazine as a virtual flipbook
