At least, this is how it was done as recently as 2001...from the Southtown Star, a south suburbs Chicago newspaper.   Seems to me this idea could still work in other areas that haven't become quite so suburbanized.

F-Men a force to be reckoned with

In a time when a crime wave amounted to cattle rustling, horse thievery and chicken snatching, the F-Men kept the peace.

The F-Men - the "F" stands for farmers - were an armed, civilian police force deputized by the Will County sheriff to be his eyes and ears in Crete Township for more than a century. On Friday and Saturday nights, they wore sheriff's uniforms with an "F-Men" patch on their sleeves and patrolled the rural roads in a police squad car.

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John Haseman was one of the Crete F-Men, a civilian police force that patrolled eastern Will County.
(Guy Tridgell/SouthtownStar)

If this sounds like a story from an ancient, bygone era, it's not.

The sheriff's posse existed as recently as 2001, until the state's attorney and sheriff determined it might not be a smart idea to have citizens moonlighting as cops with guns and badges in an area that was becoming more and more suburban.

Bitterness over the decision still remains.

"I still think they are needed out here," said Crete's John Haseman, who served as a deputy with the F-Men in the '70s and '80s. "A lot of the older people out here remember what the F-Men did. They still complain to the sheriff's department. There was a service being provided - and it was a good service."

The F-Men aren't coming back. The liabilities associated with having a posse with sidearms to work once or twice a month are too big to take the risk.

But their story is a yet another reminder of the metamorphosis that much of the suburbs have experienced in the last couple of decades.

As the name suggests, the F-Men were started by farmers who were fed up with a rash of livestock thefts and the inadequate response from the undermanned sheriff's office. Soon after they formed, the thefts stopped.

In 1936, the F-Men were chartered by the state as a law enforcement agency affiliated with the Will County sheriff's police.

The group counted about 15 men at a time. They shared a squad car but carried their own guns, handcuffs and nightsticks. All of the equipment they bought on their own. Funds were raised through an annual turkey raffle and other local events.

"We were almost like a full-time deputy, with no pay, though," Haseman said. "We were all volunteers."

The F-Men helped out with traffic control at community festivals in Beecher, Crete and Steger. They broke up loud parties and responded to domestic disturbances. They didn't write tickets. They rarely made arrests.

Mostly, they just provided a presence.

Ray Mattox compiled a history of the F-Men that's on display at the Crete Public Library. His father, John Mattox, served with the posse from 1968 to 1983.

"My Dad did it because he just liked being with the guys," Mattox said. "A lot of guys would play cards or poker at night after they were done with their patrols.

"These guys did have fun. The county wasn't quite as strict as they are now. The rules and regulations have changed. You really wonder how they did it without getting killed. Back then, life was different."

But the F-Men could wind up in the thick of things.

Haseman was the first to respond to a shooting at Cottage Grove Avenue and Exchange Street in Crete at the end of his shift.

"They had just been shot. There were two of them, one in the front seat and one in the back seat. The blood was still running out on the ground," he said. "I was that close to getting shot myself."

Another time, he noticed a strange car in the driveway late one night of home owned by a widow. All of the lights inside were on.

Haseman entered to find the woman beaten and the perpetrators getting ready to leave. He held them at bay until help arrived.

"She was all right," he said. "We got them."

Did he ever catch anyone in the act of trying to steal farm animals?

"Oh, yes," he said. "We got a few of them, too."

TAKE A LOOK

A history of the Crete F-Men is on display at the Crete Public Library, 1177 N. Main St.