Author and historian M. David DeSoucy is a retired veteran of 25 years of service in the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department.  He is the author of San Bernardino County Sheriff's Department, a history of that department.  The San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department is the primary law enforcement agency for the county of San Bernardino.  San Bernardino County (California) is geographically the largest in the nation, encompassing 20,186 square miles.  In 1853, the County’s first sheriff, Robert Cliff, established Central Station which current serves unincorporated areas of the City of San Bernardino as well as nearby contract cities. 

According to the book description, “The largest county in the continental United States has seen its share of colorful pursuits of suspects and fugitives, including the search for the last Native American in the United States to be tracked to his tragic end by a lawman's posse: "Willie Boy" at Ruby Mountain. San Bernardino County also was the setting for the shoot-outs at Baldy Mesa and Lytle Creek. Yet gunplay lore is only one aspect of the epic of the San Bernardino County Sheriff's Department. Today the department deploys nearly 5,000 salaried and volunteer employees to protect and serve its 20,186 square miles of deserts, mountains, forests, and increasingly urban areas. This original cow-county sheriff's office went through many developments that are detailed in these vintage photographs sheriffs' administrations, equipment, investigations, and other exploits all culled from the department's archives, private collections, the California Room of the San Bernardino Public Library, and the San Bernardino Pioneer Historical Society.”