Criminal Justice Information Services (CJIS)
SLED CJIS
There’s a good case to be made that CJIS’ birthday is June 12, 1934. On that day the SC Highway Patrol issued a press release that was published in The State newspaper:
“The assignment of Patrolman Leo Jenkins, formerly of Lancaster, to duty as special investigator and “night man” with headquarters in Columbia was announced yesterday…
Jenkins will be on duty from 5 o’clock in the afternoon until 3 in the morning in the highway department offices….He will have access to the registration files and the directory of all peace officers in the state, thereby giving information to other officers in the state when such is wanted….Mr. Jenkins is also a fingerprint expert and in case of a very serious crime where his services as a fingerprint examiner may be required we shall be glad to have you call on him in this connection.”
This event may not sound very impressive today, but it in 1934 it was a cutting-edge innovation. For the first time in South Carolina, the law enforcement community had a central hub for information sharing and fingerprint comparison. Soon a fingerprint repository was started. Then a criminal history file. Then the pro-active sharing of criminal information and intelligence. Word spread quickly, and the Highway Patrol assigned more people to keep up with the demand. This one-man operation grew into the Identification Bureau, of which SLED CJIS is the direct descendant.
The story begins in 1896, when Wallace Leo Jenkins was born in Santuc, Union County, SC, on February 18. This sparsely settled region was home to farms and timber operations, as it is today. Santuc was little more that a bump in the road (as it is today) situated in the middle of what is now the Sumter National Forest. We don’t know much about Jenkins’ early years, but when he registered for the draft in 1917 he listed his occupation as “mechanic, Overland Piedmont Co., Spartanburg.” Overland cars and trucks were popular at the time, but the company really got on the map when they started producing Jeeps for the US military.
Jenkins attended Columbia University in New York City for two years, until the outbreak of World War I. He volunteered for the US Navy, and was assigned as an officer in the mechanical division of Naval Aviation.
After the war, Jenkins returned to South Carolina where he remained involved with the Overland Company. He also ran his own bus line that served the Monarch Cotton Mills in Union. In 1930, Jenkins became a member of the first class of the brand new SC Highway Patrol.
The creation of the Highway Patrol was tied to a new law that would, for the first time, require people to have a driver’s license. Up until this time, it was generally considered that a citizen simply had the right to drive a motor vehicle on the public roads. The cost of this right, however, was staggering. In 1929 there were 14,000 motor vehicle accidents resulting in 213 deaths. South Carolina was one of the few remaining states without a driver’s license law or a highway patrol. The matter was debated extensively in the Legislature. Some lawmakers, such as Representative G. Lloyd Floyd from Horry County, were in strong opposition. From his viewpoint, the Highway Patrol would consist of “100 men riding up and down the highways, taking away the rights of the people…the patrol would have the right to take away a man’s license and he would not be able to get home.” Several compromise amendments made the bill acceptable to the skeptics. Highway Patrolmen would have to wear distinctive uniforms and drive clearly marked vehicles. They would be able to enforce only those laws that dealt with highways and motor vehicles. Additionally, “no arrest would be binding if the officer was in hiding or had set a ‘trap’ for motorists.” Fines collected would go to the county where the offense occurred, and each county would be assigned at least one Highway Patrolman.
Even though law enforcement is generally viewed as a Constitutional function of the executive branch of government, control of the Highway Patrol would rest with the Highway Commission, not the Governor. This was not surprising, given that South Carolina Governors, who were mostly figureheads, were not even elected by the people until after the Civil War. Before that, they were appointed by the Legislature, where the real political power resided.
The Highway Department was led by Chief Commissioner Ben Sawyer, arguably one of the most powerful men in the state. During this period of rapid growth, new highways were being built at a record pace to keep up with the demands of the motoring public. New roads could bring prosperity to a community, and a road being routed around a town could bring about its extinction. Sawyer’s budget represented almost half of state revenues, and he had more employees than all other state agencies combined. He did not have to lobby Legislators for funds. During Legislative sessions, Sawyer would set up a temporary office outside the Senate chambers, where lawmakers would stand in line to lobby him.
The bill passed, and the Highway Patrol was born. The first group of employees, 69 civilians and officers, fanned out across the state on a mission to save lives. Patrolmen made it clear to the local Sheriffs and Chiefs of Police that they were there to assist local law enforcement, never to compete or interfere.
As a member of the “first class” of Highway Patrolmen, Jenkins was issued a motorcycle and a ticket book and sent on his way. Although training would soon become a priority with the new agency, these first Patrolmen had to “wing it.” And it worked. The Patrol was accepted by local law enforcement and newspaper editors across the state praised them for being “helpful and courteous.”
Within a year, Jenkins had three close brushes with death. On October 12, 1931, he and Patrolman Ralph Waldo McCracken were traveling south on Highway 215 near Shelton in Fairfield County. They were on their way to Patrol Headquarters in Columbia for a special assignment. As they topped a hill they saw that the road before them was completely blocked. The local mail carrier had crossed over into the opposite lane to put a delivery in a mailbox, and vehicles traveling in both directions had stopped. McCracken was killed instantly, becoming the first Highway Patrolman to die in the line of duty. Jenkins miraculously avoided the stopped cars and was not injured.
One week later, Jenkins was in a collision near Blaney, in Kershaw County, in which the other driver was killed. Jenkins’ injuries were so severe that he wondered if he would be able to return to duty as a law enforcement officer.
He did return, and by some accounts he did so before he was completely recovered. On April 19, 1932, Jenkins conducted a traffic stop on a car outside of Lancaster. The car was occupied by three escaped convicts who beat Jenkins nearly to death. One of the men was about to shoot Jenkins with his own service revolver when an oncoming car scared them off.
During his recuperation, Jenkins studied fingerprinting through a correspondence course offered by the Institute for Applied Science in Chicago. After several months, Jenkins was able to return to duty as a Patrolman once again, this time armed with a thorough knowledge of fingerprinting.
Jenkins’ newfound expertise could not have come at a better time. Just a few years before, the FBI and the International Association of Chiefs of Police had combined their fingerprint files into one operation in Washington, DC under the FBI’s new ID Division. Local law enforcement agencies around the country were urged to submit fingerprints of arrestees to the system, and each state was urged to create a state ID Bureau. The State Constabulary had been disbanded in 1932 at the height of the Great Depression, leaving the South Carolina Highway Patrol as the only statewide law enforcement agency in the state. By law, Patrolmen were supposed to enforce only traffic laws. The way Ben Sawyer saw it, however, that did not prevent them from assisting other law enforcement agencies.
The word about Jenkins’ fingerprint expertise spread quickly through the law enforcement community. He fielded one call for assistance after another, helping local agencies with crime scenes, matching latent prints, and setting up their own fingerprint systems.
When a drug store was burglarized in St. Matthews, Jenkins lifted several good latent prints from the crime scene. When nothing in his files matched, he helped officers at the Calhoun County Sheriff’s Office set up their own booking system. After a few months, Jenkins compared the latent prints with the fingerprint cards on file at the jail. Jenkins made a positive ID on the drug store burglar, who had been arrested on some minor charge and fingerprinted.
The next year, 1933, Jenkins trained all 78 Highway Patrolmen how to collect fingerprints from arrestees and how to lift latent prints. Each Patrolman was issued the equipment needed to carry out this new mission.
One success followed another and Jenkins was assigned to Headquarters as a Special Investigator. At the urging of the SC Police Chief’s Association, the Identification Bureau was established within the Highway Patrol, and several officers and civilians were assigned to keep up with the requests for assistance. Newspapers of the day chronicled the success of the Bureau, and Leo Jenkins became a household name in South Carolina. When his daughter was involved in a minor fender-bender it made the front page of The State newspaper.
Meanwhile, another South Carolina lawman, Melvin Purvis, had become famous on a national level. FBI Agent Melvin Purvis led the team that killed John Dillinger and captured Pretty Boy Floyd and Baby Face Nelson, each of whom was designated as “Public Enemy Number 1” at the time. The crime wave of gang violence that was sweeping the nation even swept into Purvis’ sleepy hometown.
On September 5, 1934, professional gangsters robbed the Palmetto Bank in Timmonsville, making a clean getaway with $115,000.00 in cash, at the time a monumental amount of money. By this time, Jenkins was being called in on every major crime in the state. This was no exception.
The gangsters had planned and executed the robbery with the precision of a military operation, waiting until after the tobacco harvest when the bank would be flush with money. After kidnapping the bank president’s entire family, the well-dressed, polite men left the children tied up at home and held their mother hostage outside the bank. The president was forced to open the safe and hand over the money. The get-away was so clean that the gangsters did not have to use the machine gun mounted in the back seat of their car.
Leo Jenkins was unable to find a single fingerprint. Because of the smooth way the robbery was carried out, Jenkins was sure these gangsters had been involved in similar crimes. He extensively interviewed everyone in Timmonsville who had any contact with the men and developed very detailed descriptions of each, including physical appearance, mannerisms, and patterns of speech. Armed with this information, Jenkins returned to Headquarters and pored over his files. After painstaking research, Jenkins narrowed the field down to sixteen men who appeared on various BOLO’s and flyers from around the country. He then determined that eight of the men were in jail or prison at the time of the robbery. Jenkins took photos of the remaining eight men to Timmonsville, where numerous witnesses positively identified the red-headed, polite, soft-spoken gang leader, Frank English.
Jenkins obtained an arrest warrant for English and put out a nationwide alert. English was located and taken into custody in Louisville, Kentucky. On the ride back to South Carolina, English told the officers that a few days earlier he and his wife had eaten breakfast in a restaurant in Omaha, Nebraska. English said he looked to the next table, and there sat Melvin Purvis. Controlling his panic, he and his wife quietly slipped away.
The ID Bureau was on a roll. More and more local agencies were submitting fingerprints and the state file grew exponentially. Forensic specialties were added to the repertoire to include the examination of questioned documents, ballistics and firearms, and micro-photography for trace evidence. The future of the unit, and control of the Highway Patrol itself, came into question in an unfolding political battle.
Olin Johnston ran for Governor in 1934. His platform consisted mainly of attacking the Highway Department as a corrupt and out-of-control organization that was misusing the hard-earned tax dollars of ordinary citizens. It worked. When he took office in 1935, Johnston fired Ben Sawyer and replaced the Highway Commission with his own people. This gave the Governor de facto control of the Highway Department and the Highway Patrol. Johnston then stationed a National Guard machine gun company on top of and around Highway Department headquarters to prevent the ousted Commissioners from returning. Over the next several weeks, the SC Supreme Court heard arguments and then struck down Johnston’s coup attempt and re-instated Sawyer and the Commissioners. The Legislature stripped the Governor of the power to appoint Highway Commissioners, a law that stands to this day.
Governor Johnston, however, was not finished with his campaign. He called for the Highway Patrol to be disbanded and replaced with a state police agency under his control. In 1937, Johnston seized on an opportunity to publicly attack Leo Jenkins and the ID Bureau.
During the early morning hours of July the 4th, Lancaster Officers Hoyt Barton and Frank Sowell approached a suspicious vehicle parked downtown. When they questioned the driver, he said he had done nothing wrong and drove off. The officers pursued the car for several miles on the highway leading to Charlotte. The driver side-swiped an oncoming truck and crashed into the woods. As Officer Sowell approached the wreckage, the man crawled out and killed him instantly with a single blast of his shotgun. He commandeered a car belonging to some folks who had stopped to help and disappeared into the night.
Jenkins lifted latent fingerprints from the back of the rear-view mirror on the wrecked car and matched them to Bobby Smith, an extremely violent convicted killer who had recently escaped from a North Carolina prison. Jenkins put the word out to law enforcement agencies that he wanted Smith for the murder of Officer Sowell. For tactical and safety reasons he did not make the identification public.
After a few days went by, Governor Johnston dropped the hammer on Jenkins and the ID Bureau, telling the press that “the whole case has been badly muddled,” and that “it is not the proper function of the Highway Department to hunt down criminals.”
The Editor of The State newspaper answered, “perhaps it is not, if one engages in hairsplitting. But if the Legislature is willing then it is a proper function. The fact is that the department has gone ahead and developed this important organization to operate against outstanding enemies of society; nor is any other department prepared to attempt it. Unquestionably, the major criminals are against this feature of the highway department’s activities. The State hopes that Governor Johnston will recognize that a grave injustice has been done to some of these men through untimely criticism, and he will give public recognition, as governor, to this latest notable achievement.”
The “latest notable achievement” referred to the apprehension of Bobby Smith. Nine days after he shot down Officer Frank Sowell, Smith was captured by Highway Patrolmen and Horry County Deputies after he led them on a 30 mile high-speed gun battle from Myrtle Beach to Georgetown. After Smith’s car flipped and burst into flames, he crawled out of the wreckage and pointed his pistol at the officers, then passed out from loss of blood. He was convicted of murder and spent the rest of his life in the state penitentiary.
In the Annual Report of the SC Highway Department published on June 30, 1938, Lt. Jenkins reported that “with the cooperation of all law enforcement agencies in the state, a special file was established recording in alphabetical order, in addition to traffic violations, all reported convictions for misdemeanors and felonies.” For the first time, South Carolina had a central criminal history repository. Jenkins further reported that the ID Bureau had added 5,135 fingerprints, conducted 521 investigations, made 119 identifications, and provided an extensive array of forensic lab work for agencies around the state.
Despite the success of the ID Bureau, or perhaps because of it, the movement to reorganize state level law enforcement continued. In the past, bills had been introduced to eliminate the Highway Patrol altogether and replace it with a “state police system” under the control of Governor Johnston and his successors. In the Joint Legislative Committee Report published on April 19, 1938, it was recommended that the Highway Patrol be left intact and a new State Bureau of Investigation be created by combining the ID Bureau with SLED, which had been created by Act 232 of the General Assembly in 1935. This recommendation did not make its way into the bill, which continued to call for the replacement of the Patrol by a state police agency under the control of the Governor.
The SC Sheriff’s Association came out squarely in support of keeping things the way they were. The Sheriffs issued a statement on March 3, 1939 saying that “we know what the Highway Department will do, but we don’t know what the Governor might do.” That same year the SC Police Chief’s Association bestowed their highest award on Lt. Leo Jenkins for his service. People lined up at the State Fair to see his “Crime-Fighting” booth. He was the featured speaker at the LeConte Scientific Society at the University of South Carolina, and he was in demand at Rotary and Civitan Clubs across the state.
In 1940 the nation turned its attention to the wars in Europe and Asia. Military preparedness was stepped up, and Jenkins began helping to screen recruits at Ft. Jackson. Using fingerprints and communications with law enforcement agencies across the country, Jenkins and his team identified those men that were wanted or had serious criminal records.
World War II changed every aspect of life in America. All of the country’s resources were directed towards supporting the war effort, including the ID Bureau. For the duration of the war, the Annual Report reflected the unit’s focus on matters of “internal security, selective service, espionage, and murder.” During the war the Bureau began publishing the “Daily Bulletin,” a criminal intelligence publication shared nationwide.
Law enforcement in South Carolina was dealt a severe blow in 1941 when Lt. Leo Jenkins passed away at the age of 44 following a very brief illness. Jenkins’ friend and protégé, Joel Townsend, became the leader of the ID Bureau. In a speech to the Columbia Rotary Club on May 14, 1946, he made it clear that Jenkins’ vision for the unit was intact:
“It is not a body charged with general law enforcement, and takes the initiative in no case. It only assists and cooperates with other law enforcement agencies throughout South Carolina.”
On March 26, 1947, the South Carolina Legislature voted to move the ID Bureau to SLED. They did so by passing a “concurrent resolution,” a political maneuver by which both the House and Senate enact a measure that does not require the signature of the Governor. As such, continuing resolutions do not have the effect of law, but remain in effect as a sort of “gentlemen’s agreement.” After the move was made official on July 1, 1947, Lt. Townsend became the Chief of SLED. After years of debate, the two law enforcement entities were finally combined.
In his first official act as Governor in 1951, James F. Byrnes further solidified the role of SLED and the ID Bureau as one of service to local agencies. In an open letter to Chief Townsend’s successor, Chief O. L. Brady, Byrnes wrote “I shall name no employees of the law enforcement division except you as its chief,” and instructed Brady to “employ experts in ballistics, finger-printing, photography and accounting, and some investigators. These experts and investigators would be available at all times to assist local law enforcement agencies when called upon to do so.” Byrnes had, by a simple memo, created a de facto state bureau of investigation, something the Legislature had debated for years. SLED operated as a division of the Governor’s Office until it became a statutory state agency in 1974.
The way that Leo Jenkins handled requests for assistance, from his assignment as the “night man” forward, has been proven to be an effective model for all members of the South Carolina law enforcement community. This philosophy has been passed down through the years to this very day. The current mission statement for SLED reads: “The primary mission of the State Law Enforcement Division is to provide quality manpower and technical assistance to law enforcement agencies and to conduct investigations on behalf of the state as directed by the Governor and Attorney General.”