The Real History of Police in America
- Editorial Team
- Jun 6, 2020
- 3 min read
Photo: Smithsonian Mag
With all of the protest against police brutality, it is important to take a look back into how police forces came to be in this country. Many people have been recently claiming that the police in America are built on racism and discrimination. With the growing movement of Blue Lives Matter, I wanted to dig into the real history of how police forces in this country came to be.
In the early days of the original colonies, the “police” was more of just a night watch to prevent gambling and prostitution, mostly. As cities began to grow a bit more, compulsory service was introduced. This basically meant that everyone had to join and sign up for a certain time to watch. Being a part of this was not something many people enjoyed, and in fact, the rich often hired criminals to take their place.
As more and more people started moving to cities though, the night watch was practically useless. The first publicly funded police force was in Boston in 1838. This was created mostly to protect the shipping ports since Boston was a large shipping city so it was important to keep their businesses safe.
The South is a completely different story though. The creation of police forces in the South was heavily centered on maintaining the slavery system through Slave Patrols. In fact, the first slave patrol was created in Carolina in 1704. There were three main tasks assigned to these slave patrol officers. (1) to chase down, apprehend, and return to their owners, runaway slaves; (2) to provide a form of organized terror to deter slave revolts; and, (3) to maintain a form of discipline for slave-workers who were subject to summary justice, outside of the law, if they violated any plantation rules.
During the Civil War, these slave patrol officers moved into the military, which became the primary “police” during the time. After the Civil War, slavery became illegal so slave patrols were no longer necessary. Instead, local sheriffs became the new law enforcement for the towns. These sheriffs though, acted in a similar way as the slave patrols, enforcing segregation and the disenfranchisement of freed slaves via Jim Crow.
As urbanization became more popular within America, more immigrants started coming here from Italy, Germany, Ireland, and more. The American people were offended by these new lifestyles and thought that all of the new immigrants would ruin their America. Disorder began to rise as white Americans would target these immigrants and African Americans with violence and discrimination. Cities began to think that something needs be done to “keep the peace”, hence creating modern day police forces.
The rich people at the time wanted to invest in a safe way to control the social order rather than solve the crime issue. According to Stephen Spitzer, “The emerging commercial elites needed a mechanism to insure a stable and orderly work force, a stable and orderly environment for the conduct of business, and the maintenance of what they referred to as the "collective good"’. The powerful business owners often had ties to politicians so when large waves of immigrants started coming into their cities, the business elites pushed for a more centralized law and order system to keep the status quo.
In the late 19th century, policers chiefs were often picked out by the local political party leaders, ensuring that the police would act according to the politician. They party leaders also often ran bars and gangs so with the police on their side, they could pay the police off to turn a blind eye to their illegal dealings. They would also use the police to intimidate and harass those who did not agree with the politician.
This is only an introduction into the formation of law enforcement and police forces in America. It is clear that from the very beginning, police forces were corrupt, unethical, and discriminatory. Many were created as a way to enforce segregation and keep the powerful, elite, white men in charge. The police in America is flawed to its very core. They have grown more corrupt while eating away grossly large amounts of tax payer money.
I am not going to get into the more modern history of police as I mainly wanted to show everyone the real history of police in this country. Over the years they have grown more militant and more corrupt. There needs to be an institutional change to how America policies its citizens.
All information has been pooled from these resources.
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