Archives West Finding Aid

Emile Vallet's career coincided with two world wars, but also with the standardization and professionalization of law enforcement as a vocation. Anxieties about communism and anarchism in the wake of the First World War and European dissident movements, in addition to the rise of organized crime in response to Prohibition, prompted law enforcement agencies like the FBI to develop the infrastructure and complexity needed to effectively combat such threats. Local law enforcement agencies, in turn, sought to develop more sophisticated infrastructures of their own, an endeavor actively encouraged by the FBI through the Police Training School program (now called the National Academy), established in 1935. The Police Training School, of which Emile Vallet was an alumnus, trained law enforcement officers in best practices and modern techniques of investigation, crime prevention, record keeping, administration, and leadership. Many alumni of the program, including Vallet himself, would go on not only to apply what they had learned in their own careers, but to teach their colleagues and serve as modernizing agents of change in their departments.

The Seattle Police Training School curriculum reflects this move towards greater professionalization. Far from simply maintaining public order, new recruits passing through the school were taught investigation techniques and psychological profiling, and underwent intensive firearms training and military drill. In addition to these practical, on-the-job skills, the Seattle Police Training School also taught officers courses on standards of personal hygiene and court room behavior, pointing to the developing professional standards of policing.

Three letters relating to Emile Vallet and his work with the Seattle Police Training School and FBI are also included in the collection, enclosed in the case file folder. One is a letter from Representative Thomas M. Pelly congratulating him on his retirement, and two are letters of condolence to his widow following his death in 1969, from Claude A. Armour of the FBI National Academy Associates and Floyd C. Miller of the City Council.