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| Police Officer Henry Janssen |
A patrolman steps into the dark never knowing if the next call will be nothing more than rattling doors—or the last thing he does. Most nights blur together. Fights broken up. Drunks sent home. Lives nudged back from the edge.
Then
there are nights that change everything.
At
4:10 a.m. on May 1, 1911, Davenport police officer Henry Janssen answered what
sounded like another routine call. A burglary at 330 West Fifth Street. Night
Desk Sergeant Henry Nagel dispatched Janssen and Detective Sidney La Grange to
investigate. The city was quiet, the kind of quiet that makes footsteps sound
louder than they should.
As
the two officers rounded the corner of Sixth Street, they nearly collided with
a man moving fast in the opposite direction.
He
was in a hurry. Too much of one.
The
officers stopped him.
The man—Fred Smith—had no explanation for why he was out at that hour. His answers didn’t line up. Janssen arrested him and began walking him toward the station. La Grange stayed behind to check the burglary scene.
Janssen
didn’t get more than a block.
Smith
suddenly stopped and spun on him, his voice sharp and wild in the darkness.
“I
have gone as far as I am going to go with you.”
 |
| Fred Smith |
The
gunshot echoed down the block.
Detective
La Grange heard it and ran. A bus driver named Jack Curry was nearby and helped
lift the wounded officer onto his bus, racing him to the police station. From
there, Captain Packy Phelan and Sergeant Nagel loaded Janssen into a squad car
and sped for the hospital, every second counting.
Behind
them, Fred Smith vanished into the city.
He
ducked into the Gambley residence on West Ninth Street, handed over a
collection of keys to local businesses where he’d worked as a porter, then fled
Davenport altogether.
By
morning, the hunt ended in Clinton.
Smith
was captured as he walked into Jackson’s Barber Shop. When officers searched
him, they found a revolver—an old-style .38 caliber—with one empty chamber.
They also found jewelry, stolen pieces tied to recent burglaries.
La
Grange and Officer Brady rode the interurban car to the Clinton County Jail and
brought Smith back under heavy guard. Chief Schramm wasn’t taking chances. Two
squads were dispatched—one real, one a decoy—because the department feared a
lynching.
Two
days after his arrest, Smith confessed.
He
admitted shooting Janssen because he didn’t want to be arrested while carrying
a gun. He said he didn’t stop to see if the officer lived. He barely remembered
where he had gone afterward.
He
denied the burglaries, but the evidence said otherwise.
Smith
was identified as the “peeper and sneak thief” behind a string of break-ins. He
later confessed to robbing three Davenport homes. Community leaders publicly
condemned the shooting, calling it a useless and unnecessary attempt to take a
human life.
Against
all odds, Henry Janssen survived.
Doctors
sent him home on May 10, even though air still escaped from his windpipe when
he breathed. Recovery was slow and incomplete, but he lived.
Fred
Smith eventually changed his plea to guilty. Judge Letts sentenced him to 30
years in the Anamosa Prison.
Janssen
paid a different price.
The
city refused to reimburse his medical bills. Three years later, burglars broke
into his home and stole $200 worth of jewelry. When asked about it, the police
chief made a remark that cut deeper than any wound.
Still,
Janssen went back to work. He returned to the beat before the year ended.
Later, he worked traffic duty. In 1915, the city quietly retired him at half
pay.
Henry
Janssen died in March 1927 from apoplexy. He was 69 years old and still on
duty, working at the patrol barn on Fifth and Main.
He
survived the bullet, but the job never really let him go.
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