The Rural Police force was founded after a group of Sharon Township men asked county commissioners in 1920 to deputize them and let them serve – for no pay.

“All they wanted was authority to make arrests,” said the Charlotte News story of Oct. 5, 1920, and to be made policemen “in order that they might be ready for instant action without having to telephone over a wide section of country to summon someone else.” Some made clear they would “try strong-arm methods” even if they were not deputized. Some had already begun “policing,” spending an afternoon and night, “armed in most cases,” searching for bootleggers along Providence Road, 6½ miles from the city – with Fesperman, then deputy sheriff, and a city police detective.

This giving of law enforcement power to white men aligns with Charlotte’s first “Patrols” — specifically to police enslaved people. In 1815, when Charlotte was incorporated as a town, five white men were named commissioners and allowed to appoint “town watches, patrols or overseers of streets.” Under commission rules, spelled out in the Charlotte Journal in 1831, the “Patrol” was to arrest, take into custody, then “inflict a punishment” — whipping — on “negro slave or slaves” who were in certain places in certain times (such as anywhere but the enslaver’s home after 9 p.m.) without the enslaver’s written permission.

In 1921, county commission minutes show, two Rural Police officers were hired by Mecklenburg County. The force was formally organized, separate from the county sheriff’s office, and charged with enforcing criminal law outside city limits, in August 1924, with Fesperman named its chief.

The Rural Police became the Mecklenburg Police, then merged with the city’s force in 1993, creating the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department.