George Potts was appointed to a two-year term as bailiff in June 1908. The salary for the man who constituted the entire police force was $50 per month and the council had an assignment ready for him when he took office. The Town had erected large signs warning of the eight M.P.H. speed limit for automobiles and it wanted the bailiff to enforce the law in the town of 2,487 residents. Within days, Bailiff Potts arrested his first speeder when he detained a Baltimorean who was fined one-dollar and court cost.
In 1923, the charter and the ordinances updated responsibilities for the bailiff. He was required to “devote his entire time to the duties of his office,” and to wear a “blue uniform and suitable badge of office” when on duty. Specific responsibilities were:
- Preserve order within the town;
- Keep a constant oversight of the streets, pavements, gutters, sewers, ditches, lights and property of the town;
- Patrol the town at least once each twenty-four hours and see that the ordinances were observed;
- Superintend all work upon the streets;
- Report nuisances to the Board;
- Act as a messenger at all town meetings; and
- Impound any horses, cattle swine, or geese found at large.4
The 1920s, a time of prosperity in the United States, were a period of improvement for Elkton law enforcement. The size of the force doubled when a full-time night officer (O. P. Humes) was added in 1928, at a salary of $50 per month. The chief still called the bailiff for one more year received $60 a month. About the same time, the Town purchased guns, belts, and uniforms for the men. As another mark of progress, the Town installed its first traffic light to regulate the flow of vehicles at two main arteries, Bridge and Main streets.
Some four months after the Great Stock Market Crash, the Town purchased its first patrol car, a Ford Phaeton from Warren W. Boulden (1930). The vehicle, complete with a bumper and spare tire, cost $493.40. A local newspaper, the Cecil Democrat, criticized the purchase: “. . . although the Elkton Police may be short in number, they are now long on equipment. A year or more ago they were furnished with impressive looking revolvers and Sam Browne belts, and now an automobile in which to dash around. Certainly, Chicago racketeers and gangsters should steer clear of Elkton.” As the essentials of a modern police department slowly emerged, the bailiff was regularly called Chief Potts by Elkton’s press corps. Nonetheless, not until 1929 did Elkton town minutes routinely confer the title of the chief to Potts, though he had functioned as the lead law enforcement official since obtaining his first appointment in 1908 when James F. Powers was president of the Council.
Elkton’s First Police Chief
Law enforcement activities were typical for a rural Eastern Shore community, in the decades leading up to World War II. For example, in 1929, while national, state and county lawmen occupied themselves with chasing “rumrunners” and “bootleggers,” Chief Potts arrested two young men in connection with the theft of money from the Express Office. One of them had a revolver hidden under his shirt. A few years later in 1932, four burglars, one of them armed with an automatic pistol, had a shootout with Chief Potts’ night officer. During that incident, Patrolman Randolph discovered a grocery store burglary in progress. When he commanded the culprits to come out, he was greeted by a volley of shots. Randolph emptied his service revolver at them, but the men vanished in the darkness. Within days, Chief Potts had the four culprits in custody, without incident.
Eight years before Chief Potts’ appointment, the first automobile punctuated the quiet of an Elkton day, and thereafter traffic enforcement matters would increasingly occupy the tiny police department. For example, one summer Sunday in 1918, a vehicle sped through town. When the bailiff held up his hand to stop it, the lady passenger waved and kept going. Potts reached a telephone in time to have Deputy Sheriff Seth detain the car when it reached the jail. At the hearing, the owner, a Miss Winwood, was asked why she did not stop when signaled and she answered she thought the “handsome officer was flirting.” The “bailiff blushed modestly,” an Elkton paper reported.
Vehicle accidents started jarring the county seat during the second decade of the 20th century. The first time it happened in 1917, the dreadful squeal of ripping metal coming from the Bridge Street railroad-crossing cut through an early summer evening. Four people (the Simmons family and their hired hand, George Foster) had been wiped out when a fast express train collided with their vehicle. This was the town’s first automobile fatality. Some fourteen months later, Elkton had its first pedestrian fatality involving an automobile. This occurred when a six-year-old, Gladys R. Vandergrift, was struck by a car.
During lulls in police work, the daily routine was occupied with public works tasks. Three days after taking office, he had a force of workmen out “dressing up the streets,” according to one newspaper. When the Commissioners were anxious to complete filling the marsh south of Main Street in 1925, the Board announced that anyone having coal, ashes, or other suitable materials should notify Bailiff Potts and he would have it removed. At a board meeting in February 1930, he was instructed to place a pipe for a driveway on the building lot of David Frazer on E. Main Street. Such were the typical day-to-day maintenance tasks of the bailiff.
The dark days of the Great Depression were a time of fiscal restraint for municipal government in Maryland. Council announced in June 1933 salary reductions of 10 percent across the board for all employees. Chief Potts’ salary, however, was reduced from $1,560 to $1,456, almost 7 per cent.
Chief George Potts Retires
Chief Potts retired in 1935, after having served the town for 27-years. The announcement first appeared in county newspapers in April when he notified the Town Council that he would not be a candidate for another term.” At the first meeting of the Board of Commissioners in June, Chief Potts was praised “for having served the town faithfully for 26 years [sic]” and he was presented with his equipment. His salary that year remained at $1,456. That last fiscal year, the town devoted $2,867 to law enforcement (almost 10 percent of its expenditures).
The departure of this tireless public servant was a time for a change. Jacob T. Biddle was hired to replace the chief. Biddle and the other officer, David J. Randolph, were to alternate between day and night work and they had identical authority. With Chief Potts’ retirement, the town also hired its first superintendent of Public Works. That official, Russell M. George, took charge of all “town work,” in addition to his previously held duty of Water Plant Superintendent. He had 10 to 25 men engaged in town activities, working for him according to newspapers.
The period after his retirement was an unsettled time for the small force. Just when it seemed a smooth transition might have taken place, the Department was involved in an international incident. On November 27, 1935, the highest-ranking diplomat from Persia (Iran) and his wife, who were traveling through Elkton in an automobile, were stopped for speeding. When the ambassador protested that his diplomatic immunity was being violated, he was forcefully handcuffed and taken to the Elkton jail by Officer Jacob Biddle. The Roosevelt Administration and Governor Harry Nice made public apologies on behalf of the United States government, but somehow the incident kept snowballing. In 1936, the minister was recalled to Persia. Furthermore, neither town officer was made Chief. At various times in the next decade, the Superintendent of Public supervised the police, President Henry H. Mitchell assumed responsibility, and an officer, W. Coudon Reynolds, carried the title.
Chief George Potts, 74, died in September 1940. Newspapers noted that he had filled his position with the town “most efficiently for about 28 years.” At the time of his passing, the Town Council attended the funeral in body and Mayor Henry H. Mitchell issued the following statement:
The Town of Elkton and the whole community, has just lost one of its most conscientious and respected citizens. I feel a deep sense of personal loss in Chief Potts’ death, and I am grateful for his friendship. He embodied every quality of honesty and integrity, and in the years he served the town, night and day, heedless of long hours of hardship and fatigue, he discharged with unfailing loyalty.
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