Boessenecker‘s book is also very interesting in showing just how haphazard early American law enforcement was. There was no standardized training of any kind. Hamer joined the rangers for a while, then he took other jobs as town cop, deputy, or investigator here and there, then more stints in the rangers. There was always politics, including in the rangers, and Hamer got into some of that too.

Folks like to romanticize “old-time policing”, but the reality was that in the earlier 20th century whether you got good or bad law enforcement where you lived, or maybe just enforcement of the interests of the local bigwigs, was up to luck and local conditions. Nationally, the FBI didn‘t found its academy until 1935; until then, most agents‘ only training were their law or accounting degrees.

Legendary lawmen like Frank Hamer stood out, and became legendary, precisely because they weren‘t the norm.