Madera’s first lawman to fall in the line of duty

For The Madera Tribune

Clarence Pickett, shown here, was the second Madera lawman to fall in the line of duty.

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It has become an embedded piece of Madera’s past that Clarence Pickett was Madera’s first lawman to fall in the line of duty. The young officer was gunned down on Nov. 10, 1923 while attempting to arrest a drunk driver. A second look at the record, however, casts doubt on the claim that Pickett was the first to fall, as the following story illustrates.

It was one o’clock in the morning, and the seventeen-year-old youth glanced furtively up and down Yosemite Avenue. He definitely didn’t want to run into the long arm of the law. Just a few hours before, he had stolen an automobile in Fresno, but on his way to Madera, he had a wreck. Now here he was afoot, trying to make his way to Bobbi Barns’ arcade on South D Street.

Bobbi Barnes was only an alias. She was married and didn’t want folks to know that she was really Mrs. L.D. Venable of Fresno. As far as Ben Obersheim was concerned, however, it didn’t matter what folks called her; she wouldn’t be able to help him in the darkness of that early August morning in 1919. He was about to make history by killing a Madera police officer — the first such fatality the city had endured.