While conducting off-duty historic research, Rebecca Hannon, of DPSST’s Standards & Certification Section, found online newspaper articles about a line-of-duty death of a Harney City Marshal Zachariah H. Stroud on Wednesday, September 11, 1912. She could not locate his name on either the Oregon Fallen Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Wall at the Oregon Public Safety Academy in Salem or the National Fallen Officers Memorial in Washington, D.C.
DPSST staff reached out to Harney County Sheriff Dan Jenkins and Lt. Brian Needham regarding this matter who contacted the Harney County Museum for assistance. The Museum was able to conduct historic research which gleaned more details including an eyewitness statement from a local oral history collection.
Harney City Marshal Zachariah H. Stroud had encountered four individuals carelessly firing weapons in front of the post office. He cautioned the group to stop or else they would be arrested. The group resisted resulting in a fusillade of gunfire, injuries to several of those involved, and the death of Harney City Marshal Stroud. Stroud was 44 years of age at the time of his death, unmarried, and left behind his mother and father. Three of the four individuals involved in the incident were found guilty of manslaughter.
At its meeting last week, the Police Policy Committee of the Board on Public Safety Standards and Training (BPSST) unanimously approved the request to add the name of Marshal Stroud to the State’s Fallen Law Enforcement Officer Memorial through its historic recognition process. The nomination now moves forward to the Board for review and consideration at its July 23, 2020meeting. Once approved the name of Marshal Stroud will be added to the State’s memorial during the 2021 ceremony in May in Salem. The Harney County Sheriff’s Office has also submitted a nomination for recognition of Marshal Stroud on the National Fallen Officer Memorial in our nation’s capitol.
DPSST’s Director Eriks Gabliks said “thanks to interest in Oregon’s history by a member of our staff, with follow-up work done by Harney County, we will be able to recognize Marshal Stroud more than 100 years after his death while serving his local community. The historic recognition process was created specifically for incidents such as this so that all of the men and women who have served as law enforcement officers who died in the line of duty are honored and remembered for their sacrifice to keep Oregonians safe.”
The Oregon memorial is inscribed with the names of 187 law enforcement officers who have died in the line of duty since the 1860s. This includes officers from city, county, state, tribal and federal law enforcement agencies who have served as law enforcement officers, corrections officers, and parole and probation officers.
