Carroll County's reputation for low crime and an aggressive approach to public safety is not a recent phenomenon.

On July 16, 1925, the editor of the American Sentinel newspaper in Westminster, Joseph D. Brooks, wrote that "years ago Carroll County was known to criminals all over the state as an 'open door to the penitentiary,' and many there were who entered by way of that door."

Yet the county's history is replete with colorful conflicts, many of operatic proportions, between the boards of county commissioners, delegations to Annapolis, the state's attorney's office and the sheriff.

In the most recent act of this opera, on Oct. 4, 2007, the current board opted to move forward with a plan to form a county police department headed by an appointed chief of police.

Not willing to disappoint future historians, troubadours from far-flung regions of the Carroll County Empire entered the stage and chaos ensued. I read several news account with the modern soundtrack of "Les Misérables," Victor Hugo's 1862 classic tale, playing in the background.

As with any good storytelling, "La Policía," the current epic over the future of the policing, has many layers, story lines, strong personalities and plot twists.

The first act of "La Policía" is borrowed from Les Misérables. As the curtains rise, the scene before the bewildered citizen audience is the barricaded County Office Building. It is Aug. 7, 2008, and the commissioners have voted to not move forward with the county police force plan.

The three commissioners are standing atop the barricades. Commissioners Mike Zimmer and Dean Minnich are on either side of Julia Gouge; holding her steady as she waves an oversized Carroll County flag.

As the smoke rises from the stage, there is a break in the action as members of the Sheriff's Office storm barricades.

Historian Jay Graybeal emerges from the fog as a narrator and begins to tell the story of the history of the sheriff's department.

When Carroll County was founded in 1837, he explains, one of the first task of the government was to elect a sheriff.

As with many aspects of early American government, its origins date back to the history of mother England. It goes like this:

Some 1200 years ago, England was inhabited by Anglo-Saxons. Groups of 100 would ban together and form a "tun," from which we get the word "town."

Every "tun" was led by a "reeve," the forerunner of what we now know as a chief of police.

Groups of "tuns" banned together to form a "shire" -- what we now know as a county. The leader of a "shire" was a "Shire-Reeve."

That's where we get the modern word "sheriff."

Fast forward to 1925, and even this piece of the opera was noted by own Sentinel editor, Mr. Brooks, who explained that the shire-reeve "was the king's reeve, or steward over a shire -- a distinctive royal officer, appointed by the king, dismissible at a moment's notice ..."

With that, we'll take an intermission.

Opera makes me hungry. Maybe there's some ice cream at the concession stand.

Name that 'Shire-Reeve'

For this week's Sunday Carroll Eagle trivia quiz, who can tell me the name of the very first "Shire-Reeve" of Carroll County, a.k.a. the first sheriff after the county was formed in 1837?

Think you know? Drop me an e-mail at kdayhoff@carr.org with "Sunday Carroll Eagle" in the subject line.

Meanwhile, Anna Walsh and Dr. Patrick Turnes of Finksburg; Dick Snyder of Taneytown, Richard Siehler of Sykesville; Sam Greenholtz, Bob Miller and Ruth Anderson of Westminster; Don Huber of Manchester; and Sylvia Jacobs (from an undisclosed location) all knew the answer to last week's trivia question -- that it was President Warren Harding who died in 1923 and was honored by the Westminster government.

Sylvia Jacobs is this week's winner of the famed Sunday Carroll Eagle mug.

When he's not humming opera, Kevin Dayhoff can be reached at kdayhoff@carr.org.

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