Excerpt from an oral hisory of

Deputy Chief
James Stanford Griffin

Part II - More History

Years ago when a police call went out, they’d have a gong that would go off on WCCO and a guy would call headquarters and they’d give him the assignment, things like that. Then, of course, there were boxes, call boxes, all over town, about every six or eight blocks, according to the neighborhood. In business places they were a lot more frequent, but in residential neighborhoods they weren’t very frequent. You called in every hour, and if something’s going on, why they’d say there’s a problem down at such-and-such a place. You’d ride a streetcar free. I might have to go six or seven blocks and so forth to go down there, then they’d have a squad there to communicate with headquarters on calls.

Matter of fact, when I went on the job, the motorcycles only had one-way radios. They could put a call out, but the motorcycles couldn’t respond. They’d get the call, they’d give it three times. Guy would go handle that call; when he got free he’d go to a telephone tell them he was back in service.

If you needed to arrest somebody, you were on your own. When I first went on the job, if you were out in a neighborhood and you pinched a guy, as a rule when the police were there that would always draw a crowd. You’d tell a guy in the crowd to call headquarters and tell them to send somebody out here on this corner or this address.