Civic discord is high on this date. In 1924, a local judge tackled the legality of a massive Prohibition raid and questioned the motives of more than one party. 1974 saw ongoing strife within a fire department board as members voted to cut their chairman out of proceedings.
100 years ago
Aug. 14, 1924
• On Aug. 4, a massive Prohibition raid was launched by a hired detective agency. Under his direction were federal agents, law enforcement and deputized citizens. Controversy followed, and today the Poplar Bluff Interstate American published a letter by probate judge D.B. Deem questioning the raid’s media coverage, necessity, methods, and local support.
“According to some local papers and the St. Louis papers, conditions are very bad and no law abiding, respectable person would want to come into our midst to raise their families or become citizen,” he said. This portrayal contrasted sharply with how Butler County was presented before G.H. Foree, the operation’s ringleader, spoke to the press. “...I was firm in my opinion that, considering our size, and population, we were above, far above, many other localities in point of morals and law enforcement.”
Foree led a private detective agency and was hired by a cadre of Poplar Bluff citizens. He performed a three-month freelance vice investigation and insisted Poplar Bluff was a hub of criminal activity. His operation concluded in the Aug. 4 raids. He lauded the operation as an unprecedented cleanup. Deem disagreed, saying each month the police and sheriff’s departments “brought in more bootleggers, illicit stills, and contraband liquor than Foree boasts he did in three months’ work.”
Deem blasted Foree for impersonating an officer while leading the raid, and declared the mass deputization of citizens bordered on vigilantism.
“...Many unthoughted will criticise [sic] any comment on...gunmen methods of enforcing the law, and charge anyone who protests as being a criminal, but I cannot help it,” Deem wrote.
He finally spotlighted two local churches’ vocal support of these methods in the weeks following the raid. “Might not the good people of the churches be used by certain designing elements in their midst, who seek thus to further an organization such as was an element in the Williamson county tragedies?”
This was a veiled reference to the Ku Klux Klan. In February 1924, a KKK mob in Williamson County, Illinois violently raided the homes and businesses in a Prohibitionist frenzy. Many of their targets were immigrants. The next two years were dubbed the “Klan War” and the National Guard was called in five times to restore order. Twenty people died.
“I believe that Poplar Bluff and Butler county is a good or better place than any other community, and I believe the officers whose duty it is to enforce all the laws are just as good, or a little better, than other communities,” he concluded. If not, “[let us] hang out heads in shame and go in the class with Williamson.”
75 years ago
Aug. 14, 1949 — No issues available.
50 years ago
Aug. 14, 1974
• The beleaguered Butler County Fire Protection District appointed a new chief last night, but its affairs are still — pun intended — a hot mess.
Bob Montague, former Poplar Bluff fireman and police chief, was unanimously appointed to lead the Butler County Fire Department. He also gathered 14 volunteer firefighters. Collectively, they fill vacancies left by a mass resignation of firefighters earlier this year.
“My only interest is to help the community,” he said. “The administration of the district’s business will be entirely up to the elected board and I have no ax to grind with anybody.”
Montague’s words came at the end of an fiery meeting where members clashed on interim pay, bills and safe deposit boxes. Board chairman Larry Hendrickson previously blamed majority members Harry Templemire and Louis Kalkbrenner for the mass exodus of volunteer county firemen. The two were also the target of an anonymous ouster filed in court over their decision to slash tax levies, but this petition was thrown out.
Templemire and Kalkbrenner questioned a $200 salary request by board chairman Hendrickson’s son Richard, who acted as interim chief of after mass resignations in July but was never formally appointed. They also questioned the payment of bills that lacked proper department paperwork.
Hendrickson was incensed and voted against all bill payments, vowing, “I’ll just question all the rest of the bills then. I’ll never sign a check.”
Templemire and Kalkbrenner then adopted a motion to allow any board member to endorse a check, not just the board chairman. In another 2-1 vote they gave themselves access to the department’s safe deposit box. When Templemire refused to turn over the only key, the two authorized calling a locksmith to change the lock.
The meeting also saw heated language in addition to hot tempers. Hendrickson’s quotes featured redacted expletives.