The village had neither police department nor jail of its own, borrowing a neighboring lock-up when a rare occasion demanded. After the first Outagamie County jail was built in April of 1854, the story goes that Appleton's first paddy wagon was a wheelbarrow, use mostly to trundle drunks off to jail.
Records show that the city was reluctant to organize a police department.
At the insistence of the county board, the 1869 council voted in January of that year to establish a permanent police department. As the city grew, so did the need for more police officers. The idea of hiring a night policeman was launched in the fall of 1873, but not without a fight. The first motion to hire a night patrolman for the city at large was rejected by the city council. By 1884, the department had three patrolmen besides the marshal, and by 1886, the force had grown to eight men.