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Joaquin Jackson

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One Ranger: A Memoir (Bridwell Texas History Series)
H. Joaquin Jackson  More Info

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

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.”

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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