Baltimore got its first call box in 1885. In Baltimore, it is hard to talk about the call box without also talking about the patrol wagon. They are obviously two very different law enforcement tools, but when it comes to Baltimore Police history, they will forever be linked by a Deputy Marshal and a date. Baltimore's first call box came to Baltimore in 1885, and as already mentioned, it was part of a package deal dreamt up by Deputy Marshal Jacob Frey that was made up of both the call box and the police patrol wagon. The date that these things went into service, according to Sun Paper accounts, was 18 October 1885, and it is believed to have made Baltimore only the second city in the country behind Chicago to use patrol wagons.

The "Barrel Head" often mistaken for the “Handle” and perhaps at one time may have been the handle, until guys like Carl Hagen, Edward Bremer, and Joseph “Nightstick Joe” Hlafka, put their spin on things. A "Swivel" was added (to aid in spinning the stick), Size was increased giving us what quickly became an acceptable “Oversize" stick. At some point the handle (Barrel Head) became the striking end, with “Nibs” “hardened/squared off edges for poking/jabbing, and "Size" for stopping power.  Looking back we see Baltimore’s sticks quite possibly became the biggest sticks in Law Enforcement Thanks to guys like Nightstick our own Nightstick Joe.

While researching Marshal Farnan of the Baltimore Police Department we came across a 1907 newspaper report that would indicate Baltimore's Police Department was the first in the United States to use fingerprinting to catalog criminals in our country officially. The 1907 article went on to report the following; "In line with this tendency in the ancient trade is the fingerprint method of identification, invented by E. R. Henry, of Scotland Yard, London.