The Gazette-Enterprise

SEGUIN — Much has been written about law enforcement and what it was like in the days when Texas was part of the old Wild West.

But if anyone has ever wondered what’s happened since and how Texas law enforcement evolved from those days to these, Ray Martinez, a retired Texas Ranger who used to work in New Braunfels and Seguin, has researched the issue and just two weeks ago published his findings in his second book, “Creating the Professional Texas Lawman.”

The 272-page hardcover book relies on more than two years of research Martinez did in the archives of the Sheriff’s Association of Texas, as well as interviews and recollections.

“I hope anyone interested in law enforcement or in Texana would find this an interesting book,” Martinez said.

Martinez, whose long career in the Rangers and DPS Narcotics Service brought him to New Braunfels, is perhaps best known for his part in ending the University of Texas Tower shooting rampage on Aug. 1, 1966, in which sniper Charles Whitman gunned down 14 and wounded 32 others before being killed by Martinez and fellow Austin police officer Houston McCoy.

Martinez began his law enforcement career with the APD in 1960, completing its police academy, and always had an interest in what came before him.

“I began thinking after I retired about what it was like before 1960,” Martinez said.

His new book chronicles some of the history of Texas law enforcement from 1900 to 2000, including plenty of his own observations and a few anecdotes lawmen in Seguin and New Braunfels will recognize, as well as many, many clippings from “Texas Lawman Magazine,” the monthly magazine of the Texas Sheriff’s Association, which date back to 1933 and refer back to much of the history Martinez chronicles.

“The early issues caught me up on the 1920s,” Martinez said.

In the bad old days, Martinez said, lawmen didn’t get much respect, either from the public or their employers. Hours were long — Houston police officers worked 12-hour shifts, seven days a week and were only allowed one day a month off in 1900, for the less-than-princely salary of $60 a month.

“They were often appointed because they knew someone or someone knew them, and were not considered professionals until they began to train them,” Martinez said. “Their pay and benefits have always suffered accordingly, and they were considered replaceable in those days. If you stepped on somebody’s toes, you could be gone. You didn’t have any continuity.”

Also, good honest lawmen were perhaps a little more rare than they are today, Martinez said.

“You get what you pay for,” Martinez said.

The book begins with 1900 because that about coincides with the introduction of the automobile, which changed law enforcement dramatically and bought with it a need for a whole new body of law.

“Before that, law enforcement was very basic, even primitive,” Martinez said. “Before that, it was basically just the horse and buggy. The automobile was a big headache for law enforcement, and still is.”

For the problems it brought, the motorized vehicle brought positive change to law enforcement in Texas.

“It is amazing that the automobile was the catalyst to jump start the drive to improve the quality of law enforcement in Texas and raise the status of the profession,” Martinez wrote. “While it may be true that there were laws in place to protect the safety and welfare of the citizens, it was the increasing lack of traffic regulations, which turned the public spotlight’s first beam of light on law enforcement.”

The first state traffic laws were adopted in 1907. They required that vehicles be registered with the county clerk, that no motor vehicle be operated at speeds above 18 mph or at any speed “greater than reasonable or proper” for road conditions and that no one race on a public road or highway.

Each vehicle was required to carry a warning bell and a lighted lamp — if operated at night — and every driver was required to yield the right-of-way to horses.

The law allowed for fines of between $5 and $100 — a hefty penalty in 1907.

Martinez said he was lucky when he went into the field because the Austin Police Department had a training academy.

“Then, only the Department of Public Safety and the metropolitan police departments had academies,” Martinez said. “Other agencies just put a badge on them and put them to work.”

The Highway Patrol begun in the late 1920s — then part of the Texas Highway Department — created a six-week school in 1930, mostly to teach rules pertaining to traffic law and truck enforcement, Martinez said. Texas A&M started a school in 1934.

Later, came training for dispatchers and other administrative personnel, standardized “10-codes” for communication, and in the 1960s, statewide training standards with continuing education requirements and other training that have created the cadre of law enforcement officers seen today.

The book follows Martinez’s first effort, an autobiography called “They Call Me Ranger Ray,” which tells his life story from growing up in rural Texas in the 1940s and ’50s.

If Martinez has a third book in him, he hasn’t said.

“I’ve enjoyed this,” he said. “It opens up a lot of avenues, and you meet a lot of people. But I’ve told my wife, VerNell, that this time next year, I’m really going to be ‘retired’ retired.”

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