![]() ![]() On July 7, 1936, he issued a "Shoot to Kill" order, claiming "This is no fight between orchardists and pickers. Sheriff Jackson believed that the labor unrest, caused by the depressed wages of citrus workers, was fomented by Communists. The sheriff also had to deal with the Citrus Riots of 1936, an agricultural labor dispute that led to a strike and subsequent disturbance so large that Sheriff Jackson swore in over four hundred special deputies to help control the violence. In 1938, a week of intense rain overflowed the Santa Ana River, causing a massive flood that caused over $30 million in damage. The Long Beach earthquake of 1933 caused widespread damage throughout the county, especially in Santa Ana. Sheriff Logan Jackson assumed office in 1931, and for the next eight years guided the department through a turbulent decade. The county's population was approaching 119,000, over half of which was scattered across a mostly rural landscape. By 1930, the department had grown to include eighteen full-time personnel with an operating budget of $49,582. Jernigan remained in office until the end of the decade. Thanks to Jernigan's diligence, many of them ended up serving time in the new county jail on Sycamore Street in Santa Ana, a building that would serve as OCSD's main jail and headquarters for the next forty-four years. ![]() Suppressing illegal liquor operations became a major focus for the department over the next decade.īy the time Sheriff Sam Jernigan took office in 1923, rum runners and bootleggers were commonplace along the coastline and in Orange County's harbors, using them as a base of operation for smuggling Canadian liquor into the country. When Congress passed the 18th Amendment in 1920, Prohibition became the law of the land. Raids of "blind pig" businesses that served as fronts for illegal liquor sales were commonplace. Most of the county had outlawed liquor by the time Sheriff Calvin Jackson took office in 1915. The county's growing population brought new challenges. But the county's frontier past returned to haunt it on December 16, 1912, when Undersheriff Robert Squires became the first member of the department to be killed in the line of duty while part of a posse attempting to apprehend a violent fugitive. ![]() When he took office in 1911, Sheriff Charles Ruddock commanded a staff of eight full-time deputies and jailers, serving a county of nearly 34,000 citizens. Sheriff Theo Lacy (the second and fourth sheriff of Orange County, who served from 1890 to 1894 and from 1899 to 1911) was able to move from borrowed office space in Santa Ana to a dedicated headquarters in the courthouse that remained in operation until 1924. The Spurgeon Square Jail was opened by Sheriff Joe Nichols in 1897, and the Orange County Courthouse followed in 1901. Since the county was expanding, the department grew with it. The problems faced by the first sheriff were typical for a frontier county – tracking down outlaws, controlling vagrancy, and attempting to maintain law and order across 782 square miles (2,030 km 2) of farmland and undeveloped territory. They served a sparsely populated county of 13,000 residents, scattered throughout isolated townships and settlements. The entire department consisted of Sheriff Richard Harris and Deputy James Buckley, with an operating budget of $1,200 a year and a makeshift jail in the rented basement of a store in Santa Ana. The Orange County Sheriff's Department came into existence on August 1, 1889, when a proclamation of the state legislature separated the southern portion of Los Angeles County and created Orange County. Orange County was split from the Los Angeles County in 1889 Early years ![]()
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