Early History
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The early history of the East Hartford Police Department is similar to the history of police service in all communities adjacent to a larger city. For many years, East Hartford was an agricultural town and railroad center, largely self-contained because travel to the closest major city, Hartford, was a considerable undertaking over poor roads and across the old wooden covered bridge.
Law enforcement in East Hartford began in 1699 when Daniel Bidwell was appointed as Constable for Hartford “East of the River.” Records show that a Sergeant Thomas Spencer was constable in 1723. On December 2, 1783, at the first town meeting held in East Hartford as an independent town, two constables, Kohn Wyles and Timothy Bryant, were named as the first constables for East Hartford. Public whipping was prescribed for drunkenness, and travel on Sunday was forbidden. In 1823, a workhouse was established in the Hockanum section “for the confinement of sentenced offenders…they were employed in farming operations, and in winter, were set to picking oakum.”
From about 1875 on, police service was furnished by the arresting powers of constables and deputy sheriffs, with the administration of justice through a grand juror as prosecutor and a justice of the peace as judge. Arthur P. Moore, acting as constable and a deputy sheriff, was the town’s chief law enforcement officer, available day or night for service as an arresting officer. It was a powerful sight to see him, a strong man of great stature, answering a call for service in his low-slung buggy, drawn by a horse urged along by pushing the lines. He seldom, if ever, carried a firearm, but depended upon his own powers of persuasion assisted by a small black jack or persuader to place his subject under arrest.
East Hartford’s first unpaid patrolmen were appointed on August 17, 1891. It is doubtful that the nine volunteers saw much real service. The criticism of the town’s early form of police service was that it consisted of arresting law breakers after the crime had been committed. As time went on, the citizens of the center of town felt the need of police patrolmen to protect their property and prevent crime. A group of citizens voluntarily contributed to the support of a patrolman in the person of William Marlowe, a tinner by trade. Marlowe, after a time, gave up the job because of the uncertain pay, which depended upon the voluntary subscriptions of private citizens. He was succeeded by William Hartley.
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