John Wilson Minto was a law enforcement officer in the U.S. state of Oregon. He served as sheriff of Marion County in the 1880s [1] and as chief of the Portland Police Bureau in the 1890s. His father, John Minto IV, was a well known Oregon pioneer and politician, and his brother Harry Minto was head of the Oregon Department of Corrections. In his memoirs, Oregon governor Oswald West related a story in which Minto, while serving as sheriff, averted a bank robbery in progress. [2]
Minto was born in about 1848 and died in 1926. He was a graduate of Willamette University. [3] His youngest daughter, Lena May, died at age 15. [4]
