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And none of this can surprise when you know the past of most police offices lies in slave patrols and union busting Pinkertons. Please provide a source for thi

And none of this can surprise when you know the past of most police offices lies in slave patrols and union busting Pinkertons. Please provide a source for this. No need to rewrite history. I believe most historians agree that American policing was based off of the London policing system: “The first police department in the United States was established in New York City in 1844 (it was officially organized in 1845). Other cities soon followed suit: New Orleans and Cincinnati (Ohio) in 1852; Boston and Philadelphia in 1854; Chicago and Milwaukee (Wis.) in 1855; and Baltimore (Md.) and Newark (N.J.) in 1857. Those early departments all used the London Metropolitan Police as a model.” If anything poor neighborhoods that have high crime need more police not less, there’s a reason Chicago and Detroit have problems and it’s not because of overpolicing. https://www.britannica.com/topic/police/Early-police-in-the-United-States https://www.britannica.com/topic/police/Early-police-in-the-...

foob 6y ago
From an article in Time [1]: The first publicly funded, organized police force with officers on duty full-time was created in Boston in 1838. Boston was a large shipping commercial center, and businesses had been hiring people to protect their property and safeguard the transport of goods from the port of Boston to other places, says Potter. These merchants came up with a way to save money by transferring to the cost of maintaining a police force to citizens by arguing that it was for the “collective good.” In the South, however, the economics that drove the creation of police forces were centered not on the protection of shipping interests but on the preservation of the slavery system. Some of the primary policing institutions there were the slave patrols tasked with chasing down runaways and preventing slave revolts, Potter says; the first formal slave patrol had been created in the Carolina colonies in 1704. During the Civil War, the military became the primary form of law enforcement in the South, but during Reconstruction, many local sheriffs functioned in a way analogous to the earlier slave patrols, enforcing segregation and the disenfranchisement of freed slaves. From Wikipedia [2]: For approximately 150 years, union organizing efforts and strikes have been periodically opposed by police, security forces, National Guard units, special police forces such as the Coal and Iron Police, and/or use of the United States Army. Significant incidents have included the Haymarket Riot and the Ludlow massacre. The Homestead struggle of 1892, the Pullman walkout of 1894, and the Colorado Labor Wars of 1903 are examples of unions destroyed or significantly damaged by the deployment of military force. In all three examples, a strike became the triggering event. These aren't the only influences on modern policing in the US, but it's hard to argue that the history of US policing isn't deeply intertwined with slave patrols, union busting efforts, and more generally protecting the interests of the ruling class. [1] - https://time.com/4779112/police-history-origins/ https://time.com/4779112/police-history-origins/ [2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_union_busting_in_the_United_States#Union_busting_with_police_and_military_force https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_union_busting_in_th...
Retric 6y ago
Policing obviously goes back ~350 years into the earliest history of the US. However, early policing in the US was privately funded and often employed individuals on a part-time basis. NYC for example setup a watch group all the way back in 1658. Somewhat independently the Fugitive Slave Act of 1793 created an income stream for groups to capture escaped slaves and return them to the south. Critically, southerners needed to fund these activities. The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 swapped this by requiring northern states to actively capture escaped slaves. It essentially mandated large scale institutions of government backed policing. The south had a separate but related system of slave patrols. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slave_patrol https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slave_patrol Interestingly at the same time the north was required to hunt for escaped slaves a trade patrol was actively suppressing the African slave trade going back to 1891. Anyway, this stuff is may be relevant in terms of the history of specific institutions, but it’s arguable how relevant this is in a modern context.
Frondo 6y ago
Here's a short history (from a university professor whose "current research areas include transnational organized crime, human trafficking and the sex industry, and drug trafficking by teenagers in rural Kentucky") that supports the parent poster's description of the origins of policing in the US: https://plsonline.eku.edu/sites/plsonline.eku.edu/files/the-history-of-policing-in-us.pdf https://plsonline.eku.edu/sites/plsonline.eku.edu/files/the-...

foob 6y ago

From an article in Time [1]: The first publicly funded, organized police force with officers on duty full-time was created in Boston in 1838. Boston was a large shipping commercial center, and businesses had been hiring people to protect their property and safeguard the transport of goods from the port of Boston to other places, says Potter. These merchants came up with a way to save money by transferring to the cost of maintaining a police force to citizens by arguing that it was for the “collective good.” In the South, however, the economics that drove the creation of police forces were centered not on the protection of shipping interests but on the preservation of the slavery system. Some of the primary policing institutions there were the slave patrols tasked with chasing down runaways and preventing slave revolts, Potter says; the first formal slave patrol had been created in the Carolina colonies in 1704. During the Civil War, the military became the primary form of law enforcement in the South, but during Reconstruction, many local sheriffs functioned in a way analogous to the earlier slave patrols, enforcing segregation and the disenfranchisement of freed slaves. From Wikipedia [2]: For approximately 150 years, union organizing efforts and strikes have been periodically opposed by police, security forces, National Guard units, special police forces such as the Coal and Iron Police, and/or use of the United States Army. Significant incidents have included the Haymarket Riot and the Ludlow massacre. The Homestead struggle of 1892, the Pullman walkout of 1894, and the Colorado Labor Wars of 1903 are examples of unions destroyed or significantly damaged by the deployment of military force. In all three examples, a strike became the triggering event. These aren't the only influences on modern policing in the US, but it's hard to argue that the history of US policing isn't deeply intertwined with slave patrols, union busting efforts, and more generally protecting the interests of the ruling class. [1] - https://time.com/4779112/police-history-origins/ https://time.com/4779112/police-history-origins/ [2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_union_busting_in_the_United_States#Union_busting_with_police_and_military_force https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_union_busting_in_th...

Retric 6y ago

Policing obviously goes back ~350 years into the earliest history of the US. However, early policing in the US was privately funded and often employed individuals on a part-time basis. NYC for example setup a watch group all the way back in 1658. Somewhat independently the Fugitive Slave Act of 1793 created an income stream for groups to capture escaped slaves and return them to the south. Critically, southerners needed to fund these activities. The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 swapped this by requiring northern states to actively capture escaped slaves. It essentially mandated large scale institutions of government backed policing. The south had a separate but related system of slave patrols. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slave_patrol https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slave_patrol Interestingly at the same time the north was required to hunt for escaped slaves a trade patrol was actively suppressing the African slave trade going back to 1891. Anyway, this stuff is may be relevant in terms of the history of specific institutions, but it’s arguable how relevant this is in a modern context.

Frondo 6y ago

Here's a short history (from a university professor whose "current research areas include transnational organized crime, human trafficking and the sex industry, and drug trafficking by teenagers in rural Kentucky") that supports the parent poster's description of the origins of policing in the US: https://plsonline.eku.edu/sites/plsonline.eku.edu/files/the-history-of-policing-in-us.pdf https://plsonline.eku.edu/sites/plsonline.eku.edu/files/the-...