Cass County Sheriff's Office History

Cass County was named in honor of Lewis Cass, and was organized as a county the first Monday in March, 1853, with County Judge Benedict and three Commissioners. Francis E. Ball was elected as Cass County’s first Sheriff at the time of the organization of the county. He resigned in august of 1853.
The first man hanged in the county was Mike Kelley who killed a man named Tom Curran in a saloon. A mob took Kelley from the Town Constable and hanged him to a locust tree near Grove City Iranistan was the first town in Cass County, two and a half miles west of the present town of Lewis. Lewis was started in 1853, and made the county seat. Lewis was the county seat until 1882, when the seat was moved to Atlantic. The Lewis courthouse is still standing, but in need of repair.
The jail sat to the southeast of the courthouse and housed twenty-two people. The living quarters for the sheriff was a two-story house attached to the jail.
On March 15, 1932, the fifty-year-old courthouse was destroyed by fire. The county offices moved to the Atlantic Motors Company building at second and Poplar.
In 1934, the new courthouse was opened. The jail, which held twenty-one inmates, was on the third floor, along with the living quarters for the sheriff.
In April of 1984, a new 16 bed, ground level jail was built on the west side of the courthouse with no living quarters for the sheriff. The old third floor jail was renovated into office spaces.
The largest seizure of cocaine in Iowa was in Cass County on March 28, 1988. Grizzley, the county drug dog was used for probable cause to obtain a search warrant on the stopped California car. After the search warrant was executed, 189.2 pounds of cocaine was seized with a street value of $40,000,000.
Grizzley joined the Department in June of 1986. Grizzley was donated by the Atlantic Elks Lodge #445.
On June 30, 1989, this office was called to the County Home, south of Atlantic to help look for a man that had wandered off. Such a call was not out of the ordinary, however what happened at the end of the afternoon will never be forgotten by the law officers in this area. While a ground search was under way, Trooper Pilot Lance Dietsch and Trooper Stan Gerling were in the patrol plane looking for the 66 year old walk away. At 5:41 p.p., Dietsch radioed Sheriff Jones to say he would make one more sweep before calling it quits. One minute later, Dietsch radioed that he found the man and would circle the area. The next radio message was that the plane had crashed. Dietsch was removed and taken to Cass County Memorial Hospital where he was pronounced dead. Gerling was killed instantly. This was the first plane crash involving a patrol plane that resulted in a fatality.
Rewritten article from the Atlantic News Telegraph, August 7, 1918:”Those who leave this county always feel pride that they came from grand old Cass in preference to the other counties of the state, and are always willing to welcome anyone from the old home county. In everything that makes a land worth living in, Cass County leads. Its roads are kept, its schools are as good as the best of them, and its land is among the most valuable land in America.” That feeling lives on today.