[7] Stephen Powers did not serve in the Civil War, though the state sided with the Union, and the family has traces back to Ireland before 1771.
[10] He then worked as a railroad "special agent" protecting trains[9][10] and added time[9] as a deputy sheriff in New Mexico and Arizona.
[2]: p.1 Powers was hired as a motorcycle patrolman in January[10] 1928 for the Bakersfield Police Department[3] though his actual work initially was as a stenographer.
[10][12] In the US Census had the Powers family of Robert and Mildred living on 19th St, Bakersfield renting a home paying $30/mth (about $470/mth in 2021 dollars[13]), listed as a traffic officer.
[2]: p.3–4 Out of a desire to shore up an independent and capable police force under his authority he began to revise procedures and investigative techniques and at the same time revise local regulation so that the chief's position was under a civil service categorization and thus under the city manager and not directly responsible to the city council.
[2]: p.4 Powers instituted on-the-job training that included public school type curriculum like English classes so that officers would be more enabled to use words instead of weapons, and professional skills like handling fingerprints.
[2]: p.7 [12] In April 1944, Powers wrote a "letter to the editor" of the local newspaper about rules of engagement of police - that a policeman has an instant choice of killing someone or not whereas courts can take weeks or months to decide, and thus sometimes lets an apparent criminal escape.
[21] Under his review the marchers were allowed to take murdered bodies to City Hall to make their protest, noting, (when interviewed in 1970,) "Their motives may have been to turn this country 'Red', but their activities in attempting to get a living wage for the workers were certainly justified.
On hearing of the murder then district attorney Warren, who had cultivated a relationship with police in various departments and reporters, came to Bakersfield along with many friends seeking to help and there was some tension how the investigation would proceed.
[2]: p.9–18 Ultimately no one was charged with the crime - Powers ended up viewing it as a breaking-and-entering that became murder from a transient as Mathias Warren had chosen to live on a messy property while his wealth was tied up in land holdings.
[2]: p.17 Powers noted the transients of the period were the Okies, indeed The Grapes of Wrath was set in Bakersfield, and that the local establishment tried to keep them pushed out of the way.
In June 1939 Powers took the stance of supporting an initiative to get women on the police force if they were college educated and paid well.
[32] Initial efforts were aimed at training the police in human relations including trying to eliminate prejudice and present the unfairness of segregation and discrimination based on race - factors later observed to be widespread needs.
[39] Following this numerous police departments even outside California were informed of the training and a booklet A Guide to Race Relations for Peace Officers[40][32] was created and distributed,[41] (including excerpts in the Baltimore Afro-American newspaper.
[44] Out of this Powers was on a short list of leaders in the field[45] though more recent scholarship critiqued the program for not including the local minority leadership of the time.
[49] This approach was reflected in his essay for the radio program This I Believe by Edward R. Murrow entitled "I stopped carrying a gun" in 1954.
Powers first appears publicly presenting the religion in February 1948 giving a talk in Los Angeles Baháʼí Center.
[51] That year he also publicly reflected on his career in law enforcement writing two articles for the Saturday Evening Post - a two part series "Crime was my business".
I worried that I'd lose my temper, go haywire and end up before the grand jury twisting my uniform buttons nervously and begging for mercy.
[56][57] In 1950 he cooperated in an effort to integrate a school in Duncan Arizona supporting a local civilian and fellow Baháʼí - Betty Toomis - and then attorney Stewart Udall -[2]: p.64–66, 132–166 and continued to be visible giving talks on the religion in California into 1952.
[58] Powers was among the people who received votes to fill the vacancies of the national assembly created by the pioneering of Dorothy Beecher Baker and Matthew W. Bullock,[59] amidst a system that has no electioneering.
[60] Around these activities Powers was called upon by the State Assembly Committee on Crime and Correction to investigate a situation in Oakland that suggested police brutality in confronting communists and black-power protestors - issues that continued into the Berkeley riots (1960s).
In the period Powers' son, Robert Jr, was in the military and was stationed in Guam from about May 1953[62] into 1956[63] and was accorded the title Knight of Baháʼu'lláh for his service to the religion while there.
With the appointment of Earl Warren to the US Supreme Court a project to collect oral histories from those that knew him was undertaken and Powers was interviewed in Bakersfield.
"[2]: p.75 The families of father and son Powers moved back to Tucson and was visible at a program for the World Religion Day observance in 1972.
[78] In the presentation the commentators reviewed his forward thinking efforts and the wide scale of his reading across religions and they were struck by his pursuit of knowledge from an awareness of Lawrence of Arabia to actually reading the Qur'an, the way the Bahá'í quote "The earth is but one country and mankind its citizens" was emphasized in his life and was found when there were so few Bahá'ís around, and the way the New Testament inspired him to "put down his gun".