Menu
Jana Mackin
Joe Beckett is a hardscrabble Missouri lawman who remembers when cops walked beats and Jasper County was the “Wild West.” At 77, he still chases bad guys despite infirmities that would bench lesser men.
With nearly 50 years in law enforcement, Beckett is a good cop who has a “BS in BS.” His mouth is his “best weapon.” He is a fast draw gunslinger, horse lover and karate expert. Just add Solomon’s wisdom, Wyatt Earp’s courage, Mark Twain’s humor and quick draw common sense, and you’ve got Beckett.
“I was born 100 years too late, because I love the rugged Western Era,” says Beckett, a sergeant detective with Webb City Police Department. He is also the oldest commissioned police officer in Jasper County.
“There’s no quit in me,” Beckett says. “I plan to work forever.”
“‘Beckett, when are you going to retire,”’ cops ask.
“‘When they run out of bad guys,’” Beckett says.
The narrative of Beckett’s life reads like something out of Tombstone meets the Untouchables. He began his career at Carthage PD in the late ’60s with his work including Jasper County and beyond.
You name it, he’s worked it – beat cop, patrol officer, undercover, detective, public relations, instructor, autopsy photographer, etc. Throughout the decades he has dealt with the requisite litany of drug dealers, murderers, bootleggers, thugs, criminals, sex traffickers, pedophiles and God know what other scumbags.
“Some here call him Father Time,” says Beverly Johnston, Webb City PD office manager.
“While Joe doesn’t wear a cape, he is a hero to many people,” she adds.
“As I have heard him say many, many times, ‘I go where the facts lead me, and the facts never lie.’”
A native of Carthage, Beckett began his career there as a city EMT/ambulance driver based out of the police department garage. In 1967, he applied and was accepted into the Carthage PD. Shortly thereafter he was assigned to an undercover detail, where he attended training to learn to be an “undercover agent.”
Beckett was loaned out to other area agencies to help investigate drugs, thefts and various other crimes. He then testified on activities he had uncovered while on assignment for a couple years.
He was also deployed as a National Guardsman at the 1968 Kansas City race riots. After that, he spoke to several organizations about his undercover experiences as part of department public relations. He was promoted to detective lieutenant and worked there six or seven years. Beckett then worked at the Missouri Pacific Railroad for a decade. However, “I knew from day one I should have stayed with my law enforcement.”
Beckett then went to work for the Webb City PD, first at the pleasure of the mayor, and then brought on full-time in April 1988. In 1990, a city police department dust-up resulted in Beckett and three officers being terminated. However, they went through the appeals process and after a two-year fight were brought back to work after being exonerated of all charges.
He has been with Webb City for 36 years which makes a total of 46 years in law enforcement. During that time, Beckett has received numerous Officer of the Year awards, for saving the life of an accident victim and numerous other accolades. He has been and remains a Jasper County Deputy and headed the Sheriff’s Posse for about 10 years.
“We are fortunate to have an officer with the loyalty and dedication like Joe Beckett working for our department and community,” says Webb City Police Chief Don Melton.
“Joe brings a vast wealth of knowledge, education training, and been-there done-that to the job. He freely passes along his knowledge to younger officers, and those officers just getting into law enforcement.
“Our officers have been blessed to have someone like Joe Beckett to serve as a mentor.”
In a world where respect for police officers is “in the toilet,” and some wish to gut and defund police, Beckett remains a lawman’s lawman, exemplifying true grit.
“To protect and serve,” Beckett said,” that’s what we do.”
– Jana Mackin is a part-time writer for the Sentinel
My first cop car in Carthage was an old beat-up green Chevrolet Caprice with well over 300,000 miles on it. No air conditioning. For red lights, I had a red bubble light that went on top and was held on by a magnet. In a chase, I was lucky if I didn’t get strangled because the light was plugged into the cigarette lighter and if the light slid back or off it came across my neck. (Good times for sure.) I did have a siren and it also had a bullhorn built in.
We had an old time drunk over in Carthage, and he and his girlfriend or wife at the time would beat the thunder out of each other. He would say something about her anatomy, and she would say something about his anatomy, and they would fight. So, then they got married, and there was a fight every day. So, we (Officer Bill Cox) got the call. It was always at the same place, so we knew what it was going to be when we walked in. So, I said to Bill, ‘I got this. Just back me up.’
So, I said, ‘You guys got along great when you weren’t married. Since you’ve been married, all you do is fight. Here’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to divorce you.’ So, I stand them up and said, ‘By the authority vested in me in the county of Jasper, the city of Carthage, and the state of Missouri, your marriage is now dissolved. You are no longer married.’ So, I divorced them, and they never fought again.
About six months after I was hired, my chief said, ‘Don’t shave, don’t get a haircut. You are going undercover.’ So, when I went undercover, I looked like an old hippie.
One of the people they put me with was Gary Black – the guy that slit the black man’s throat over in Joplin because he bumped into his girlfriend. He was a thug. After I had been with Black undercover, I ran into a girl that I arrested. She walked up to me and said, ‘I know who you are. You’re Joe Beckett and you used to be a cop.’ And I said, ‘You’re crazy. I’m not a policeman.’ Of course, Gary’s ears perked up. And I said, ‘This girl is crazy. We need to get out of here. This girl is nuts.’
So, we get out into the parking lot and this girl said, ‘I need a ride back to Carthage.’ I couldn’t go back to Carthage. Everybody knows me. So, we get to Joplin, and she starts talking and I started arguing, and so Gary said, ‘I’m tired of her crap. I’m going to slit her throat.’ So, he gets out of the car with his knife, and I said, ‘Whoa, Whoa. I just got out of prison and I’m not going back.’ So, he said, ‘Then you get her out of here.’
I told her, ‘Get out of this car. Start walking for Carthage or he’s going to cut your throat.’ She got out of the car, and said ‘I’m going to go to Carthage, and we’re going to find Joe Beckett, and we’re going to get you.’ I said, ‘That’s the thing to do because if this guy looks like me, I want to meet him.’
The only action I saw in the National Guard was in 1968 when we went to Kansas City for the riots. They started in California and just made a wave across the United States. It was a bad, bad time.
It was wild. When I got there, they were patrolling the streets with armored personnel carriers with .50 caliber guns on top. They were calling in false fire alarms, and they would shoot the firemen. They were setting their own houses on fire. They were doing all kinds of stuff.
They assigned two of us in a police patrol car, and they put two of us on public transportation buses because they were robbing the bus drivers. We were in a patrol car, and I said, ‘I need to call my wife.’ She didn’t know where I was. I got to a phone booth, said ‘I’m okay.’ No sooner did that come out of my mouth then bullets came through the phone booth. The police shot the guy on the roof and killed him but that’s what we were into up there.
After that they rotated us out of patrol cars and put us on buses, I was sitting next to an African American woman, and she got a little boy with her, and I was talking to him. She said ‘Don’t talk to him! He’ll shoot you!’ I said ‘Mam, please don’t tell him that. I’m not here to shoot anybody. I don’t want to be here no more than you want us here.’
The Webb City Sentinel isn’t a newspaper – but it used to be, serving Webb City, Missouri, in print from 1879-2020. This “newspaper” seeks to carry on that tradition as a nonprofit corporation.
© All Rights Reserved 2024
DIY website design by Bob Foos
