Technology has changed, but Salt Lake police still serve and protect

SALT LAKE CITY — To serve and protect — Utah's police officers and sheriffs have done just that over the years and the Deseret News has chronicled much of the history of local law enforcement through photographs.

From when a "Police Patrol" traveled by horse and wagon through the streets of Salt Lake City to the addition of air travel by helicopter through the skies of Utah, police have been aided by inventions.

A News photograph by Howard C. Moore, in 1959, heralds when the Salt Lake Police Department began an official "canine corps." And, yes, German shepherds were the dog of choice then, too, by law enforcement.

A Feb. 7, 1962, photograph in the Deseret News, of Salt Lake police officers Blain Clark and Frank Hanchett in their patrol car, conjures up images of "Car 54, Where Are You?" for those old enough to have grown up with that show. "Car 54" was an NBC-TV show that aired from 1961-63.

In that same era, on March 22, 1961, another photograph of Salt Lake Police Chief L.C. Crowther highlights the premiere of the first two mobile crime labs to assist law enforcement efforts.

While Salt Lake police had likely used bicycles in the late 19th and early 20th centuries in some of their efforts, bikes and pedaling police officers made a comeback decades later.

For a brief time in the early 1970s, Salt Lake police had plainclothes officers on a "silent-cycle patrol" in neighborhoods, but that idea didn't catch on.

However, on April 7, 1989, a Deseret News headline read, "S.L. readies bike patrol to tackle street crime."

Utah officers were following the lead of the Seattle Police Department, who also began using bikes in the city center. Seattle, apparently, got the idea from California police departments.

"It's the same reason foot patrol is effective downtown," said Sgt. Don Campbell, who oversees the department's foot patrol division. "Car officers have a hard time getting downtown. With bikes, they're silent, they're quick, you get around the territory more and the crooks don't expect them."

Campbell said he selected "young, athletic, very well-motivated officers and they're extremely enthusiastic about it."

The department worked with a bicycle manufacturer and some local merchants to supply the bikes and gear. Officers began wearing dark-colored athletic shoes, socks, hiking shorts, regulation shirts, gun belts and badges.