Emile Vallet was born on February 5th, 1895 in Nauvoo, Illinois. In childhood, his family moved to Seattle, where he would spend the rest of his life. Records indicate that he was a firefigther in Seattle during the First World War, and that he pursued a career in public service as a police officer through temporary assignments in the 1920s, but by 1930 the census listed him as a patrolman in the Seattle Police Department. In recognition of his exceptional work as a police officer, Vallet was sent by the SPD to take part in the inaugural FBI Police Training School class in 1936. Building upon his experience in this program, Vallet went on to found the Seattle Police Department's Police Training School in 1937 in order to standardize the training of the city's police force. Vallet remained in the Seattle Police Department until retiring in the latter part of 1964, at the age of 69. After a little over four years of retirement, Emile Vallet died on February 15th, 1969.
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.
This collection includes images from the FBI's Police Training School program, images of students and facilities at the Seattle Police Training School, photographs of exhibition booths at an exposition for public service departments, and portraits of Emile Vallet, the founder and first director of the Seattle Police Training School, in his office.
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.
Entire collection can be viewed on the Libraries' Digital Collections website. Permission of Visual Materials curator is required to view originals. Contact Special Collections for more information.
Restrictions may exist on reproduction, quotation, or publication. Contact Special Collections at University of Washington Libraries for details.
Source: Purchased from Michael Maslan, February 20, 2016.
Processed by Michael Lowry Lamble, January 2019.
These photographs are labeled as being from 1940. The 1938 Annual Report of the Seattle Police Department indicates that the first permanent building for the Seattle Police Training School was completed in June of 1938 and was equipped with labs, classrooms, a dark room, sample crime scene rooms, and a gymnasium. Since the building in these photographs was clearly old when they were taken, and is not large enough to contain so many facilities, it is likely that this building was a temporary location used as the first site of the Seattle Police Training School while the permanent building was being constructed.