sentences:  As a result, the office of constable began to diminish in importance, and the better-equipped county sheriffs began to assume a leading role in law enforcement.Still, a number of prominent Texas peace officers of the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries began their careers as constables or deputy constables, including Thomas R. Hickman, George A. Scarborough, and Jess Sweeten.In 1896, while serving as a United States deputy marshal, Scarborough shot and killed the controversial El Paso constable John Selman, who had himself gunned down the notorious John Wesley Hardin in 1895.