A new book chronicling the history of the Sarnia Police Service hits store shelves this weekend.
Keeping the Peace: 160 Years of Policing the Imperial City will be available March 22 at the Sarnia Historical Society and The Book Keeper.
The book, published by the historical society and written by Phil Egan, is a follow-up to Egan's bestselling book on the history of Sarnia Fire Rescue, Walking Through Fire: The History of Sarnia's Bravest.
Egan said writing a book on the local police service seemed like a logical next step.
"I was aware of the fact that at one point in their past they looked at the idea of having somebody write their history, which had never been done, but it didn't turn out to be viable at the time, so it was a project we were looking forward to doing. We thought that it was an interesting story to talk about, our first responders, I don't think they get enough appreciation."
Egan said there's a lot of history in the book that doesn't specifically relate to Sarnia police.
"Well I discovered when I was writing the history of Sarnia Fire Rescue that you really couldn't tell a story like this that encompasses almost two centuries without talking about what was going on in the city at the time. So it's not only a history of the Sarnia Police Service, it's also really Sarnia's newest history book," said Egan.
"We open up the book with a story of what happened to Jack Lewis back in May of 1936, he was the first police fatality here in Sarnia. And then we take it back even further to the very origins of policing back in the days of old England back in the 1600s and 1700s, to the formation of the Metropolitan London Police Service and the Bow Street Runners," he said. "And then eventually to that concept of policing being founded in Canada, first in St. John and then in other cities, and how it took form here in Sarnia back in 1857 with the formation of the town."
Egan said the book also takes a look at some of the most notorious crimes in the city's history.
"The death of Karen Caughlin and Morag Davies, and more recently, Jessica Nethery and Noelle Paquette. We talk about the Holmes Foundry riot in the 1930s and some interesting legal cases -- we actually traced the origins of the court system from the very early days in Sarnia, so it's a little bit of everything."
Egan said the entire project took about 26 months to complete.
"Certainly the police officers that I talked to about it, and I interviewed probably 40 retired and current officers, were a huge help in helping me navigate those particular files [related to unsolved cases]. The rest, I had huge cooperation from the Sarnia Police Association, Sarnia Police Service and the Sarnia Police Board of Commissioners, they all seemed to bend over backwards to help me write this story."
Today, in its 163rd year, the local police service is staffed by 115 sworn officers, forty-nine full time and twenty-two part-time civilian staff.