Dennie Deere Bazer, TX., then Caddo Parish, Louisiana

Submitted by Mike Miller
Date: 1999-2000




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Dennie Deere Bazer.  For a city of its size Shreveport is conceded to have 

one of the most efficient police departments in the United States.  In large 

measure credit for the efficiency of the personnel is due the chief of police, 

Dennie Deere Bazer.  Mr. Bazer has been identified with the police force of 

Shreveport for the past thirteen years.



While Shreveport has a population of seventy-five thousand, the entire 

personnel of the police department aggregates only a little over sixty 

employes, a smaller number per capita of population than perhaps any other 

city of the United States, and yet with no decrease in the efficiency of 

service demanded.  It has been well described as a department that is helpful, 

dependable and a source of security to Persons and property.  The police 

department is thoroughly organized, has modern equipment, a thorough system 

of police accounting and the force has been kept adequate for the heavy 

demand made in handling traffic as well as the ordinary duties of police 

protection.  Recently one of the local papers said, editorially, commenting 

on the successful capture by members of the force of two yeomen who were 

robbing a safe: "Crime of major gravity is rare in Shreveport.  There have 

been few burglaries m the last few months.  This speaks well for the 

efficiency of the department.  The Shreveport police force is smaller 

in numbers than the forces generally maintained by cities of the size 

of Shreveport.  What it lacks in numbers the force must make up in efficiency.  

The local police still operate on the single platoon system, compelling 

long hours, which make the department all the more noteworthy."



Dennie Deere Bazer has served under three administrations, during the terms 

of Commissioners of Public Safety Fullilove, Thurber and R. L. Stringfellow.  

Chief Bazer was born in Shelby County, Texas, November 19, 1884, son of I. E. 

and Josephine (Blake) Bazer, also nativees of Shelby County.



Chief Bazer grew up in Eastern Texas, and from that state moved to Oklahoma, 

where he became a deputy under United States Marshal Hartzhog.  Following 

that he became guard at the penitentiary at McAlester, Oklahoma, serving 

in that capacity three years, and was then sent by the state authorities 

to Granite, Oklahoma, to help build and organize the state reformatory.  

He used convict labor in this work, and with the service of convicts 

erected the reformatory and also secured the stones for the beautiful 

state capitol at Oklahoma City.  He was in charge while the convicts 

graded and graveled all the streets of the Town of Granite.



Mr. Bazer married while in Oklahoma and shortly afterwards came to Shreveport 

to enter the police service, acting successively as patrolman, plain clothes 

man, deputy sheriff and for the past six years as chief of police.



Chief Bazer is a thirty-second degree Mason and a Shriner, and is a member 

of the Four Square Bible Class for Men.  He married, March 3, 1910, Miss 

Kate Stiles, of Granite, Oklahoma.  They have two sons, both natives of 

Shreveport, William Edward, born in 1912, and Dennie, born in 1917.



A History of Louisiana, (vol. 2), p. 41, by Henry E. Chambers.  

Published by The American Historical Society, Inc., Chicago and New York, 1925.