About
the Texas Department of Public Safety
The Texas
Department of Public Safety has eight major divisions: Administration; Criminal Law Enforcement; Director's Staff; Division
of Emergency Management; Driver License; Public Safety Commission; Texas Highway Patrol; and, Texas Rangers
The Criminal
Law Enforcement Division consists of 1,239 members, including 625 commissioned officers and 614 support personnel. The CLE
Division chief’s office consists of two commissioned officers and seven support personnel, including two program specialists,
a project manager, and an attorney who works directly with the chief and assistant chief.
With the
increase in vehicular traffic in Texas, the Texas Highway Motor Patrol was transferred to the Department of Public Safety
and called the Texas Highway Patrol. The Texas Highway Patrol Service is responsible for police traffic supervision, general
police work on highways, public safety education and police and security functions for the State Capitol building and Capitol
complex. The Highway Patrol Service consists of 2,174 commissioned officers.
According
to the official history of the Texas Rangers, “The Texas Rangers are the oldest law enforcement organization on the
North American continent with statewide jurisdiction. On August 10, 1935, when
the Texas Legislature created the Texas Department of Public Safety, the Texas Rangers and the Texas Highway Patrol became
members of this agency, with statewide law enforcement jurisdiction. The true modern-day Ranger came into being on September
1, 1935.”
Sources:
txdps.state.tx.us
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Joaquin Jackson, a Texas Ranger, wrote about his career and the history of
the Texas Rangers in his book One Ranger a
Memoir. According to David Marion Wilkinson, “Jackson's tenure in the Texas Rangers began when older Rangers
still believed that law need not get in the way of maintaining order, and concluded as younger Rangers were turning to computer
technology to help solve crimes. Though he insists, "I am only one Ranger. There was only one story that belonged to me,"
his story is part of the larger story of the Texas Rangers becoming a modern law enforcement agency that serves all the people
of the state. It's a story that's as interesting as any of the legends. And yet, Jackson's story confirms the legends, too.
With just over a hundred Texas Rangers to cover a state with 267,399 square miles, any one may become the one Ranger who,
like Joaquin Jackson in Zavala County in 1972, stops one riot.”
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On reader of One Ranger:
A Memoir said, “H. Joaquin Jackson was the in the last group of Texas Rangers to be sworn in by the legendary
- some say infamous depending on ancestry - Homer P. Garrison Jr. in 1966 and the LAST of the "Garriaon" Texas Rangers
to retire in 1993. Jackson's career stretched from enforcing the legal elections of La Raza Unida candidates in Zavala
County in 1972 - don't we wish he had been there to enforce the ballot counting in the Lyndon Johnson Coke Stevenson 1948
Senatorial election - to training Afghan mujahedin in Brewster County. If anything, Jackson was a leader in moving the Texas
Rangers - socially - from the 1880s to, at the very least, the 1950s. It is unknown at this time if the Texas Rangers have
really be socialized into the 21st century or for that mater, Texas itself!”
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