Here's a short history (from a university professor whose "current research areas include transnational organized crime, human trafficking and the sex industry,

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-...