About the Indianapolis Metropolitan
Police Department
In September 1854, thirty-three years after
the City of Indianapolis was founded, Mayor James McCready appointed 14 men to the first police force, under the command of
Captain Jefferson Springsteen. Prior to 1854, peace was maintained in Indianapolis by a town marshal, the sheriff and a few
deputies, a volunteer night watch, and a small number of constables and justices of the peace.
The Offices of the Marion County Sheriff,
Marion County Prosecutor and Justice of the Peace were created under Indiana's Constitution in 1816. The first Sheriff of
Marion County was Hervey Bates and he was elected to a two-year term beginning in 1822. The first Marion County Jail was a
log cabin built on the northwest corner of the intersection of Market and Delaware in downtown, Indianapolis. The county had to pay $59 to have the woods at the corner cleared before construction could begin.
The Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department
was established on January 1, 2007, by General Ordinance 110, consolidating the former Indianapolis Police Department with
the law enforcement division of the Marion County Sheriff's Department. The ordinance assigns responsibility for the police
department to the sheriff who appoints a chief of police, under whose direction the department operates.
Source:
indygov.org/eGov/IMPD
