The California legislature granted a charter to the new community of Oakland in 1862, and a year later, the town council appointed three peace officers. When it was a dusty Western town, Oakland's major business was raising cattle to feed San Franciscans and the gold miners north of Sacramento. Year by year, as Oakland grew in size and population, the police department grew with it. The Oakland Police Department pioneered the use of call boxes, police cars, and other technical innovations. It has served the city well through good times and bad, wars, fires, and earthquakes. A large, diverse organization serving a complex multicultural city, the Oakland Police Department today accepts the challenges of policing in the 21st century.
Phil McArdle was the Oakland Police Department's technical writer for 20 years and previously wrote a history of the police department that was published internally. He was the principal editor of Exactly Opposite the Golden Gate, a history of Berkeley, and his writing as appeared in the Baltimore Sun, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Berkeley Daily Planet, and numerous other publications. McArdle and his wife, Karen, collaborated on Fatal Fascination, a study of police work in the East Bay and elsewhere. The vintage photographs in this extraordinary compendium were culled primarily from the Oakland Police Department, the Oakland History Room of the Oakland Public Library, and the author's personal collection.