Manuscripts Collection
Calvin F. Hawkinson, the son of Carl F. and Laura C. Hawkinson, was born in St. Paul on October 17, 1915. He graduated from Roosevelt High School in 1933 and was employed by Butler Bros., a general wholesale company in Minneapolis, from 1933 until he entered police work in April of 1942.
As he admits in his reminiscences, police work was not Hawkinson's first choice for a career. He stated that he had taken every civil service examination for which he was eligible and upon passing the patrolman's exam was offered an appointment in the 6th Precinct of the Minneapolis Police Department, which he accepted and which began his highly successful 36-year career as a law enforcement officer.
From March of 1945 through April of 1946, Hawkinson served in the U.S. Navy at the Great Lakes Naval Training Center in Illinois as a pharmacist's mate. Upon discharge, Hawkinson returned to the 6th Precinct's Minnehaha Station where he was later transferred to headquarters as a temporary plainclothes detective and was then promoted to the rank of sergeant on April 18, 1948.
On January 18, 1949, having placed first in the exams, Hawkinson advanced to the rank of detective and was assigned to the homicide squad with Roger Rydland and Joe Rusinko as his partners under Captain Eugene Bernath. On August 21, 1953, again having placed first in exams, Hawkinson was named captain of the uniformed force at the 1st Precinct. In August of 1954 he was asked to direct the department's training division and one year later he was promoted to deputy inspector. In December of 1956, Hawkinson advanced to the rank of detective captain and headed the department's homicide and sex division. Wishing to return to more investigative duties, Hawkinson was appointed as the inspector of detectives in August of 1961. In January of 1964 Hawkinson was appointed by Mayor Arthur Naftalin to succeed E. I. Walling as chief of the department. In 1968, after a 24-year career in Minneapolis, Hawkinson accepted the position as chief of the Plymouth Police Department where he remained for 11 years until he retired at the end of 1978.
While a member of the Minneapolis police force, Hawkinson received 11 departmental commendations and numerous awards from private organizations. A statement made by Mayor Arthur Naftalin upon Hawkinson's retirement from Minneapolis in 1968 summarizes Hawkinson's priorities and accomplishments as a law enforcement officer (Scrapbook 7, p. 28). Naftalin noted Hawkinson for his emphasis upon police training, for developing procedural manuals, and for creating a community relations unit and training police in civil disorder prevention and control at a time when racial and civil disturbances were increasing.
Hawkinson married Marian J. Fink, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Theodore Fink, of Wahpeton, North Dakota on April 25, 1938. They had two children, a daughter, Joan Laurel (Hawkinson) Shasky, born in 1939 and a son, Richard C. Hawkinson, born in 1943.
Biographical information was taken from the collection.
The collection focuses on the law enforcement career of Calvin F. Hawkinson, from his start in 1942 as a uniformed patrolman in the 6th Precinct of the Minneapolis Police Department until his retirement as chief of that department in 1968, as well as his tenure as chief of the Plymouth Police Department, 1968-1978. Included are oral reminiscences, scrapbooks, notebooks, intelligence files, surveillance recordings, procedural manuals, training materials, speeches, photographs, and sound recordings. Indexes to the oral reminiscences and to the scrapbooks are also included. The strengths of the collection are its representation of a police officer's daily work and its detailed information regarding law enforcement and crime in mid-twentieth century Minneapolis.
These records are divided into the following five series:
Three-dimensional objects have been transferred to the Minnesota Historical Society museum collections.
This collection is indexed under the following headings in the catalog of the Minnesota Historical Society. Researchers desiring materials about related topics, persons or places should
Due to the interrelated nature and varying format of the materials within this collection, researchers are permitted to use more than one box from this collection at a time.
Accession number: 15,278
Processed by: Monica Manny Ralston, December 1997.
Catalog ID number: 09-00320071
Compiled by Hawkinson and described in the order the cassette tapes were recorded, the index summarizes the major points, events, and topics covered in the reminiscences. Also provided are cross references to pages in both the scrapbooks and notebooks which document these matters in greater detail.
Recorded by Hawkinson in January and February of 1995 as he paged through the scrapbooks and notebooks (boxes 2-5) he kept while employed as a law enforcement officer. The reminiscences describe his start in police work, the cases he investigated, the criminals involved in these cases, his partners and superiors, administrative changes within the Minneapolis and Plymouth police departments, and his participation in training courses. The reminiscences augment Hawkinson's notebooks and the annotations, news clippings, and other material included within his scrapbooks.
The scrapbooks contain handwritten annotations, newspaper clippings, service examination results, letters of appointment, correspondence, greeting cards, detective magazines, photographs, annual reports from the Minneapolis Police Department, personal identification cards, membership cards, conference programs, training certificates, merit awards, other miscellaneous materials, and ephemera. A folder containing loose commendations and certificates is included following the scrapbooks.
An index compiled by Hawkinson on handwritten 3"x5" index cards provides volume and page references to named persons appearing within the scrapbooks. References to police officers, elected and appointed city and state officials, FBI agents, criminals, accomplices, witnesses, and victims are included.
This series includes notebooks, intelligence files, procedural manuals, training materials, and other items directly related to Hawkinson's work in the Minneapolis and Plymouth police departments. Also included is a copy of Hawkinson's FBI file that he requested in 1996 and received in 1999. The file contains material regarding his association with the Bureau's National Academy.
The notebooks consist of 27 pocket-size and 28 legal size notebooks, which Hawkinson used on a regular basis throughout his career to log his daily calls and activities. The most detailed notebooks from Hawkinson's post in the Minneapolis detective bureau (1947-1961). Made at the time of an investigation or when responding to call, the notebooks contain crime scene observations, interrogation notes, statements from witnesses and victims, and sketches. Hawkinson's notes often contain additional information which was not reported in the newspaper clippings contained within his scrapbooks. The types of investigations detailed within the notebooks range from minor calls involving drunk and disorderly persons to major calls involving car thefts, burglaries, homicidesk, and sexual assaults. Notebooks 5-14, dating 1947-1959, also include summarized data used for Hawkinson's monthly reports. Notebooks dating from the time Hawkinson headed the Minneapolis and Plymouth police departments are less detailed but contain notes regarding administrative matters as well as investigative cases.
The picture book was a pocket-size book containing mug shots of suspects, which Hawkinson probably carried with him throughout the 1940s and 1960s. Persons pictured in these identification photographs are identified by name on the verso with additional notes providing a brief physical description, known address, vehicle information (make, model, and registration number), prior criminal charges, and names of accomplices or family.
The address book dates from the 1960s when Hawkinson was working in the Minneapolis detective bureau. Arranged by last name, the book includes names, telephone numbers, addresser, vehicle information, and physical description of informants and suspects, as well as the names and telephone numbers of Hawkinson's contacts within the Minneapolis Police Department, the Minnesota Department of Corrections, the FBI, the IRS, and other public and private agencies.
The offense reports contain brief information related to crimes Hawkinson investigated during his early years as chief of the Plymouth Police Department.
The intelligence files contain offense reports, arrest reports, surveillance reports and recordings, interrogation notes, transcripts of statements made by witnesses, informants, or suspects, and identification photographs related to various Minneapolis investigations. Some of these cases included robberies and burglaries by a Minneapolis gang, the suspected liquor syndicate of Isadore Blumenfeld (a.k.a. Kid Cann), and the hired murder in 1963 of a St. Paul woman, Carol Thompson, by her husband, T. Eugene Thompson.
Two of Hawkinson's noted strengths were his attention to procedure and police training. The series includes procedural manuals which Hawkinson developed for both the Minneapolis and Plymouth departments as well as a file regarding new programs in the Minneapolis department prior to Hawkinson's retirement.
Also included are training materials from a three-month FBI National Academy police training course which Hawkinson attended in 1960. These materials contain course lecture guides distributed by the National Academy as well as Hawkinson's typed study notes. This course covered many aspects of police work including firearms training, physical fitness training, self-defense and disarmament methods, local police administration, record keeping, criminal law, arrest mechanics, identification techniques, investigative methods, scientific aids, traffic and safety programs, and juvenile crime. The materials also include a roster of course participants and background information regarding the FBI, as well as Hawkinson's research papers on criminal informants and investigative follow-up procedures.
"Recording of a burglar and robber and how he operates." Recorded with the permission of Collins and used by Hawkinson for police training purposes.
Public service campaign produced by KSRI Radio in cooperation with Minneapolis Police Department.
As evidenced by his scrapbooks, Hawkinson was often invited to speak before a number of private organizations. The speeches which he gave ranged in audience and topic from graduating high school students to whom he spoke about law enforcement as a career choice, to the Plymouth Optimists Club or the Plymouth Home Owners Association to whom he spoke about crime rates and crime prevention. His speech notes also contain drafts for several occasions where he spoke about drugs and drug use, as well as school and police cooperation. There are notes from a talk regarding safety and accident prevention for baby-sitters, as well as tornado emergencies. Also included within this series are recordings of a speech Hawkinson gave concerning criminal activity to motel/hotel operators and a speech concerning crime in Minneapolis.
Includes a set of 35mm color, positive transparencies showing the Minneapolis Police Department offices and its detectives (1958-1960), a group portrait of the 65th session of the FBI National Academy police training course (1960), and two additional group portraits of training conferences or classes in which Hawkinson participated.
Includes autographed portraits of J. Edgar Hoover, Hubert H. Humphrey, Clarence M. Kelley, John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, and Arthur Naftalin which Hawkinson displayed on the walls of his offices.