Bremer County Sheriff's Office

Sheriff’s Office Composition and History

The office of the “Sheriff” existed in England before the Magna Carta. The name is derived from two words “Shire” meaning “County” and “Reeve” meaning “keeper or bailiff”, and arrive in this country with the “common law” by the colonists who fled from England.

The Bremer County Sheriff’s Office had its first elected sheriff in August of 1853 with Sheriff Austin Farris serving a total of one year and four months. Bremer County has since had a total of 24 individuals serve its people as Sheriff.

In the early days the Sheriff provided the local law enforcement and operated the common jail. As the county grew, local law enforcement developed in those comminutes desiring more services than was available from the County Sheriff. While the Sheriff is ultimately responsible for all law enforcement activities in the entire county, he is able to accomplish this through local police agencies performing these services if available from local government. With the growth of local law enforcement, there has been a change in the role of the Sheriff.

The Sheriff’s Office has progressed towards doing those police functions that have countywide implications and are best handled county wide. These would include Sheriff’s patrol, Jail, Civil Process, Criminal Investigations, Weapons Permits, D. A. R. E. and School Resource Officers, Accident Investigators, Consumer Fraud as well as all other generalized law enforcement duties. The Sheriff takes an active role in facilitating the coordination of law enforcement activities in his county.

In Bremer County the Sheriff accomplishes the above tasks by having deputy sheriff’s carry out many of the sworn duties. A total of 12 deputy sheriff’s currently are employed by the sheriff’s office. Although all deputies are responsible for a basic understanding of all elements of law enforcement two deputies primarily focus on investigations including criminal investigations and drug investigations. Three deputies’ focus on civil process serving and the remainder work patrol. A part-time reserve deputy sheriff currently serves as the county school resource officer, serving 7 school districts throughout the county. The sheriff’s office also has two secretarial positions and 13 jailers under his direction. The sheriff also is in charge of communications for Bremer County which includes communications for all emergency services, which requires a staff of 5 full time employees and 1 part-time.