We don't find records of how someone notified the city marshal when he was needed, but suppose that for many years someone had to be sent around town to find him. This probably didn't present much of a problem when the town was first founded due to its size, but over the years as the town grew it presented problems - especially if he was needed quickly.
In June, 1937, almost a year after oil was discovered in Talco and the town's population (and crimes) quickly increased, we found two news articles describing what seems to us to be a poorly thought out plan to make law enforcement more accessible to the citizens.
The city and county ordered an auxiliary police telephone that was installed on the northeast corner of the square so people could call it when they needed to contact a deputy or city marshal. At the time, the telephone company's central office was located upstairs on the same corner. The telephone was installed on a light post at the corner of North Jefferson and East Second Street by Thursday, July 8.
Reserved parking spaces were marked on the curb near the telephone for sheriff's and constable's cars, and an officer was stationed near the phone 24 hours a day. Anyone else parking in the reserved spaces would be fined, and the newspaper warned residents not to use the telephone.
Now all anyone had to do to summon an officer was to dial "13" (no joke) if no one answered the telephone at the sheriff's or constable's offices, which were not always manned. The telephone was also equipped with a loud alarm bell that could be heard for a distance when it rang.
It seems to us that it would have been much simpler (and cheaper) to just station a dispatcher or an officer out of the weather inside one of the city or county law enforcement offices to answer the phone, but who are we to question the logic of the powers that be. However, we still find the lack of logic to be comical.
We are not exactly sure how it worked, or when the system was used, but Chief B. C. Sustaire often said that when he started with the Mt. Pleasant Police Department (which wasn't officially formed until 1949), a red light was mounted on a pole over city hall. When the police department had a call, someone turned on the red light and they returned to the station to find out where they were needed. We suspect this system was used somewhere between 1937 when the telephone on a pole was installed and 1951, when two-way radios came to Titus County.
Two-way public service radio finally reached Titus County in 1951. The Titus County Commissioners Court and the Mt. Pleasant City Council agreed on January 16, 1951 to install a jointly sponsored radio system for use by local police agencies, and the equipment was installed on March 24, 1951.
A 60-watt Motorola Low Band FM base transmitter and receiver were installed in the sheriff's office at the court house. A remote console that operated the main transceiver was installed in city hall for the police department. The system's antenna was installed on the court house roof.
Four tube-type mobile transceivers were installed in patrol cars. Two 12-watt mobiles were installed in city units, but since deputies ranged further from the base, the county's two mobile radios had 60 watts output.
The new city-county radio system operated on 37.260 MHz, and the police and sheriff's departments shared the frequency. To insure continuing cooperation, the FCC licensed the base station to the Sheriff's Department and the mobile units to the city. This was later changed, but for the next 20-plus years both departments still shared the frequency.
In addition to Titus County's departments, most Northeast Texas police and sheriff's departments shared the 37.260 frequency at the time. This would be impossible today simply due to the volume of traffic.
The Texas Department of Public Safety, or Highway Patrol, operated on 42.900 MHz. In order to communicate with the sheriff's department and police department, the Highway Patrol installed a 42.9 receiver in City Hall and at the court house, and installed 37.260 receivers in their cars.
The system of "cross-banding" made it possible for the police units to contact area Highway Patrol units, but the DPS could not transmit on 37.260 to talk directly to city and county mobile units. Later, the city and county installed 42.9 receivers in their mobile units to solve the problem.
Finally, not only could the station call the cars, but could talk directly to adjacent and distant towns to obtain warrant and stolen vehicle checks. The cars could talk to each other and call for help if they needed it.
Later, the radio system was improved. A 300 watt base station, the most powerful in Northeast Texas, with the call sign of KBT-811 and operating on 37.260 MHz was installed. The transmitting antenna was moved to the top of the Edwards Street water tower, and the city upgraded its mobile radios to 60 watts output so they could reach further. We have not located the exact date yet, but this occurred before the mid-1960s.
A considerable part of total radio traffic results from an officer noticing a car in a suspicious location or needing to know who owns it for some other reason. Until the 1970's, each county in Texas was assigned a specific series of license plate prefixes. The number of prefixes assigned to a given county depended on its population.
Once a week the Titus County Tax Assessor's office provided the Police Department with typewritten copies (copied by carbon paper on onion-skin paper) of all new vehicle registrations and transfers in the county. Dispatchers typed the information onto two sets of 3" x 5" paper index cards, one listed by license number and one listed by owner's last name. The cards were then filed and had to be manually searched when a local vehicle check be needed.
When an out-of-town registration check was needed, the dispatcher contacted the next major department with a radio in the direction of the suspicious vehicle's home town (Texarkana, Paris, Longview, Tyler, or Dallas), and the information was relayed in a hop-by-hop manner to the home town department or state police department where the vehicle was registered. The information was retrieved, then relayed by the same hop-to-hop radio traffic between stations until it again reached Mt. Pleasant.
A check on a vehicle as close as Dallas might take two or three days, unless it was an emergency, when the local department would call Dallas by telephone for an expedited return. Out of state checks were radioed to the Texas Department of Public Safety station in Tyler, Texas. They would enter the inquiry on the national teletype system and return the answer by radio to Mt. Pleasant when they received it. This, too, could take a considerable amount of time.
Because of its central location, powerful radio for the day, and the fact that the Mt. Pleasant Police Department was the only department in about a 60 mile radius that was open 24 hours, they were the area's main dispatch center. In addition to handling its own radio traffic, their dispatcher handled traffic for the Titus County Sheriff's Department, the area's Texas Highway patrolmen, Mt. Pleasant Fire Department, game wardens, liquor control board, and local ambulances. After midnight when some of the area's smaller town's stations closed, they also handled radio traffic for the City of Pittsburg, Franklin County, and deputies in Omaha and Naples.
The radio relay method of obtaining vehicle and warrant checks improved considerably when the Texas Department of Public Safety opened their Sulphur Springs office and dispatch center. Most of this traffic was then radioed to them, where they entered the inquiry on the new statewide computer system, and returned the results by radio.
