About Us

In the early days, the Posse members voted each year on the person to be Captain for the preceding year. Don Sullivan "the singing cowboy" was voted the first Captain of the Mounted Posse. The newly elected Captain selected members to hold ranks in accordance with the Posse's By-Laws. In later years, the Posse Captain became an appointed position by the Sheriff. However, the Captain remained responsible for selecting his Lieutenants and Sergeants to serve under him.

The Sheriff's Posse is a volunteer organization that assist the Sheriff with public relations, education, and emergency disaster services as needed. The Posse is comprised of citizens who volunteer their time, horses and equipment to serve their community. To become a member an interested party must make application, pass a background check, present them self before the Posse Board, be voted in by the general Posse members and pay annual dues. Members are called upon and deliver assistance without compensation from the taxpayers. Each year members of the Sheriff's Posse contribute thousands of hours of their time, the use of their horses and their equipment in support of the Sheriff's Department.

The Mounted Posse is reminiscent of the groups of mounted deputies who roamed the hills of Jackson County in the days of Jesse James. The original Posse was the first time in nearly thirty years that Kansas City and Jackson County has had a real gun-toting law enforcement group. The original group was all deputized.

The Jackson County Sheriff's Mounted Posse has enjoyed a long standing tradition of service with the Sheriffs' Department to aid and assist the Sheriff and citizens of Jackson County to preserve the peace, prevent crime, and protect life and property. The Sheriff's Posse constantly strives to give Jackson County an auxiliary force to be proud of and attends numerous community events each year as ambassadors for the Sheriff.

History of the Office of Sheriff

The office of Sheriff is one of antiquity. It is the oldest law enforcement office known within the common-law system and it has always been accorded great dignity and high trust. For the most part, the Office of Sheriff evolved of necessity. Was it not for laws, which require enforcing, there would have been no necessity for the Sheriff. There would have been no need for the development of police administration, criminology, or criminologists, etc.

However, this was not the case. Man learned quite early that all is not orderly in the universe. All times and all places have generated those who covet the property of their neighbors and who are willing to expropriate this property by any means. As such, man's quest for equity and order gave birth to the Office of Sheriff, the history of which begins in the Old Testament and continues through the annals of Judeo-Christian tradition. Indeed, there is no honorable law enforcement authority in Anglo-American law as ancient as that of County Sheriff.