Fort Worth police Detective D.D. Sanders and his typewriter appeared in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram on Jan. 2, 1990.
Norm Tindell
Fort Worth Star Telegram Collection, UTA Special Collections
Almost every big city police department has an officer like Fort Worth’s Detective Don “D.D.” Sanders.
They’re the cops who are smart, quick-witted and funny — the cops who would rather poke fun at a situation and diffuse it with humor than take things too seriously. And they are also the ones who all too often let that humor bleed over into their official reports and case work.
Sanders was born in Houston in 1935, the son of Minnesota natives with a geologist father working in the petroleum industry. He received a solid education and often quoted Shakespeare and dabbled in playing the violin for pleasure. His vocabulary was nothing short of amazing. He was tall and athletic, winning the Texas “Police Olympics” in men’s tennis one year as well as being an avid golfer.
Sanders became a Fort Worth police officer on Feb. 24, 1964. He later claimed that when he first applied for the job, he hadn’t filed a tax return in seven years. He decided it was time to catch up and was surprised with getting a good-sized tax return.
Fort Worth police Officer D.D. Sanders, left, with citizen volunteer R.D. Sherrill on Dec. 16, 1967. The police department was the first in the nation to experiment with “citizen policemen.” Sherrill, a publications editor for Ken Davis Industries, helped Sanders make two arrests and helped break up a fight, during which he “had to use a choke hold.” Bob Draddy Fort Worth Star Telegram Collection, UTA Special Collections
Sanders got his start working in patrol as a uniformed officer. After just five short years, Sanders was promoted to detective and was assigned to criminal investigations. He remained there for the next 20 years. It was also where he would gain a reputation for injecting humor and insights into the cases he investigated and with his correspondence with fellow officers in the police department.
As a detective, Sanders went out and interviewed witnesses, examined crime scenes, made observations, and sought and identified suspects. He wrote arrest warrants and filed cases with the district attorney.
In an age when police detectives took advantage of a clerical staff to type their cases and warrants, Sanders chose to keep a 22-pound, 1950s model Royal manual typewriter on his desk, preferring to type his cases and warrants himself. He completed his own official departmental correspondence as well as his memos that travelled throughout the police department. It was his way of making sure that the message he wanted to convey was written as he intended.
Fort Worth police Detective D.D. Sanders and his typewriter appeared in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram on Jan. 2, 1990. Norm Tindell Fort Worth Star Telegram Collection, UTA Special Collections
What little remains of Sanders’ work has been handed down amongst his friends via an inch thick manila folder filled with yellowing and crumpled papers, replete with handwritten notes, occasional diagrams by Sanders, and more than a few mouse droppings littering the pages.
Sanders, apparently bored by the standard vernacular of police work and not enamored with the work of American journalist and short-story author Damon Runyon, developed his own lingo for his reports. Suspects became “chaps, scoundrels, winos, and drunkards with sodden recollections.” One suspect in custody was said to have had a recent mental evaluation. Sanders wrote in his case report that it was doubtless that he was “at least somewhat bananas.” A federal prison escapee was referred to as “Uncle Tommie,” who was AWOL from a prison in Texarkana. He described another burglar as a “part-time painter and full-time drunk, generally weaving from the grape.”
A Southside apartment next to a run-down bar was described as having a patronage of varied “hippy types, from whose quarters drifted often the aroma of spray paint and occasionally marijuana.”
Stolen property was often referred to as “loot” or “booty,” and when burglars tried to sell stolen property back to the owners, he described them as “luckless ransomers,” and himself as “swooping in like a bird of prey” to make an arrest. In a note to a fellow detective concerning the arrest of two suspects in a burglary case that Sanders was handling, he explained he would be off a few days and asked if he could “pinch hit,” and take their “simpering confessions,” taking proper measures, explaining he had seen “some keen measures in the November issue of Whips and Chains of the bondage Queens.”
In describing an arrest by S.W.A.T. officers on a surveillance, Sanders described them as swooping in “like frigate birds after newly hatched green sea turtles.” In another case, Sanders wrote he went to the jail to interview two suspects but found the trip was in vain, comparing the confusion in the jail area “as not unlike an Italian soccer riot,” and passed off the interviews to another detective. In other cases, Sanders drew detailed sketches of the crimes and suspects to include with his case files.
While Sanders’ humor endeared him to other officers and detectives, as well as amusing prosecutors in the district attorney’s office, it did nothing to please the administration of the police department. Many believed that Sanders was making fun of the department and police work in general.
On one occasion, Sanders had to respond to a negative critique from a prosecutor over a court appearance for which he was given no advance notice. His rebuttal was scathing, and he addressed one point in his own true fashion. The prosecutor claimed there were no evidence reports in the case. Sanders rebutted, “If there had been any, I would have turned them in. Commonly, these forms don’t show up for days after an offense, rather like secondary symptoms of social diseases.”
In the end, putting pressure on Sanders wasn’t worth the effort. Sanders meant no harm, did good work, and raised morale among the detectives he worked with.
In 1989, on one of Sanders’ last cases, he went to the Fort Worth Police Department’s fourth floor “chicken coop” jail to interview an inmate. Sanders wrote that the inmate spoke the “magic words” — “I need to see a lawyer.” Sanders continued: “The interview thus ended and Detective Sanders mystically disappeared in a puff of smoke.”
Not long after this interview, Detective Sanders quietly disappeared from the department, sans the smoke, and into retirement. Rumors persisted for a few years that Sanders was working on a book detailing his career, but no copy or manuscript has ever surfaced.
The legendary sleuth D.D. Sanders, as he often signed his name, passed away in 1997, but his papers still remain, now on file at the Fort Worth Public Library.
This retired FWPD officer considers it an honor to have known Detective Sanders personally and to have worked with him for a short time. The FWPD could use a few more officers like him today.
Author/historian Kevin Foster is a Fort Worth native and retired Fort Worth police sergeant with over 45 years in Tarrant County law enforcement.
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