The chiefs of police — from the night watch to Caudill

1863–2026 · THE MEN WHO COMMANDED THE FORCE

The first chiefs: Fort Wayne's regular police force dates from May 1863 — a captain, a lieutenant and two patrolmen from each ward, on duty from twilight to daylight — and its first chief was Conrad Pens, a German sailor. The 1889 history gives the order of the early chiefs: Pens, William Ward, Fred Limecooley, Patrick McGee, Detrick Meyer, Michael Singleton, Hugh M. Diehl, Eugene B. Smith, and Diehl again, with Lieutenant Frank Wilkinson appointed on Diehl's resignation in June 1889. The force they commanded worked out of a small brick station on Court Street with three iron cages in its cell room, and later out of the Barr Street market house — the chief's office was a room over the market stalls. The succession between Wilkinson (1889) and the middle of the next century is the thinnest span in this whole section: one firm point stands in it, a Chief Ankenbruck, who held the office at the Aveline House fire of May 1908 and told the press he believed as many as twenty bodies might still be in the ruins. The rest of the 1889–1950 line awaits the directory and newspaper record at the public library, and is named open here.

Eisenhut and the coal scandal: The next chief the record fixes firmly is Lester Eisenhut, and it fixes him in disgrace: on 10 November 1950 a grand jury indicted Eisenhut together with Mayor Henry E. Branning, Councilman Charles Boyer, Traffic Captain Gregor Klug, a City Utilities purchasing agent and a coal company president — fifty-two indictments, the key eighteen charging conspiracy to commit grand larceny of $195,461 in the city's coal purchases. The case never reached a verdict; the major indictment was ruled improperly issued on 1 May 1954 and the prosecution collapsed. But the scandal had already ended a mayoralty, recalled Harry Baals from retirement, and put the police chief's name permanently in the city's political history: the full account stands in the Government section, and the chief's part in it belongs here — the highest police officer in the city, indicted with his mayor.

The modern chiefs: The documented modern line opens with Russell "Rusty" York, chief from 2000 to January 2014, who stepped sideways into the newly created office of Director of Public Safety and handed the department to Garry Hamilton (below). Steve Reed, with the department since 1993, served as chief from August 2016 until his retirement on 12 January 2024, having climbed the whole ladder of the place — homicide team sergeant, internal affairs sergeant, investigative captain, deputy chief, assistant chief. Scott Caudill, with the department since 1994 and deputy chief of the northeast quadrant, was sworn in on 16 January 2024 by the deputy city clerk, appointed by Mayor Tom Henry; within ten weeks he was serving a different mayor, and he remains chief under Mayor Sharon Tucker. The pattern of the modern office is the merit era's own: every one of these chiefs was a career officer of the department he came to command, promoted from inside a force his predecessors had also served — a thing that could not have been said of the patronage force of 1863.

Sources:

1. Valley of the Upper Maumee River, Vol. II (1889), via the Government section — the 1863 force and the chiefs' order to 1889.
2. Griswold, Pictorial History (1917), Aveline House fire narrative — Chief Ankenbruck, May 1908.
3. News-Sentinel, "Coal scandal ended mayor's career" (egen.fortwayne.com), via the Government section — the indictments of 10 November 1950.
4. City of Fort Wayne releases via Around Fort Wayne, 5 and 16 January 2024 — Reed's retirement and service record; Caudill's swearing-in. Police1/News-Sentinel, 17 December 2013 — the York-to-Hamilton transition.