Crime Waves

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By December 31, 1920, the editor-in-chief of the Denton Record-Chronicle (Denton’s newspaper of record) wrote of a general "crime wave" sentiment in Denton County and mused about its causes. Edwards settled on the inability of law enforcement to take care of crime because each person arrested was accused of so many crimes that the judicial system did not seem to punish them correctly. 

When the nearby small city of Gainesville was awarded Klavern number 151 was announced twelve days into January of 1921 to “combat [the] possible increase of [a] crime wave” it is clear that Denton Klavern 136, too, was in operation. The countywide “crackdown on vags” (vagrants) began on January 14, 1921, but with eighteen prisoners in jail at the time, only three were Black (17% of the prison population).

This sentiment was echoed later the same week by Governor Pat Morris Neff who told the state house that “murder, theft, robbery, and holdups are hourly occurrences that fill the daily press. The spirit of lawlessness has become alarming.” Neff went on to bemoan the growth of “technicalities'' that have “sucked the lifeblood out of the penal code.” Edwards responded in print, “The Ku Klux Klan has been called into being largely in those communities where the existing authorities have demonstrated either their inability or their unwillingness to enforce the laws.” “The KKK typically justified vigilantism by charging that the police were not doing their jobs.” Because this offended police officers, Hiram Evans shifted the narrative from inept police to engaging police and thereby legalizing or legitimizing extralegal action. The Sheriff’s office responded in arrests -- twenty-three men and women were held in the county jail in August 1921 of which forty-eight percent were of color.