Tarrant County, TXGenWeb

Treasures From the City Archives
FBI Request for Crime Stats

On July 26, 1908, Attorney General Charles Bonaparte ordered 9 newly hired detectives, 13 civil rights investigators, and 12 accountants to report to his Chief Examiner, Stanley Finch, for investigative assignments in things like antitrust, peonage, and land fraud. This was the beginning of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Ninety-five years later, that small group of 34 investigators has grown into an organization of over 27,000 employees.

One of the activities of the FBI is the collection of crime statistics. On October 8, 1931, J. Edgar Hoover, then director of the FBI, wrote to Fort Worth Police Chief, W. H. Lee, asking him to send information on the homicides and manslaughter cases in Fort Worth for 1930. Police Chief Lee responded to Mr. Hoover by enclosing a copy of an article from the January 1, 1931 issue of the Star-Telegram of all the 1930 homicides in Fort Worth. Also, listed next to this article in the Star-Telegram was a listing of all of the traffic accidents in Fort Worth in 1930. This information came to the City Archives via Kevin Foster, Fort Worth Police Department Historian. Both the letters and newspaper clippings can be viewed at the library.

This page was last modified 06 September 2019.

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