The History of Police in America: 4 Things You Need to Know

Police Officer, New York, New York, 1957. Gordon Parks Foundation/ Life Magazine

The history of the police in America is long and complicated. But when we examine some common questions about law enforcement, we begin to see some uncomplicated truths. Police corruption and misconduct have existed since the existence of police. Inevitably, every generation has raised some critical questions. Who are the police protecting? Do police use reasonable force? Do they treat racial and ethnic minorities equally? Are officers held accountable for wrongdoing?

To find answers, I turned to the pages of history. Where the stories go beyond mere "good cop" and "bad cop" stereotypes. History shows us evidence of systemic racism, bias, and abuse of power set in police forces' policies and culture from past to present. 

Police corruption crawls from the pages of history like a cluster of voracious spiders. The policing institutions, born out of the enforcement of slave laws, still reeks of racial discrimination. Booze swigging night watchmen who fell asleep on the job evolved into some of the most corrupt police departments of the 18th and 19th centuries. For as many police that meant well, more were sold into a culture of corruption.

Here are four things you must know from history to grasp how the modern police force came to be.  

Police Are a Modern Invention

Historians trace the first policing organization to Egypt around 3000 B.C.E. While the Pharaoh appointed an official responsible for justice and security, the "police" were mainly responsible for collecting taxes. 

The Romans were content to let citizens hash out their own affairs. Did a neighbor steal from you? Take it up with them yourself. In tribal communities, laws and rules were usually enforced by community pressure and councils of elders. So while there have always been ways to implement social norms across history and culture, a modern police force used to deter crime is an invention of more recent times. 

So to look at modern policing in America, we must first look to England. The makings of law enforcement in the American colonies of the 18th century mirrored England's system of sheriffs, constables, and citizen-based night watch groups. By all accounts, these men were not good at their jobs. Night watchmen charged with catching criminals were often too woozy from alcohol to perform their duties effectively. With little supervision, many slept on the job. Jurist Sir William Blackstone said:

“The average constable is an ignoramus who knows little or nothing of the law.”

— SIR WILLIAM BLACKSTONE

As populations exploded in America, these groups were ill-equipped to deal with them. Thus the more formalized means of policing we know of today began to take shape. The birth of the modern American police force is less than 200 years old. The first official police department began in Boston in 1838. But even these forces were influenced by patrols from much earlier, which brings us to our next point: 

American Police Started With Slave Patrols

Most history books describing the early development of policing in Colonial America focus on the northern colonies overlooking events in the south. Yet, the hideous truth remains, American police began with slave patrols. 

These patrols were a hybrid of the night's watch and the militia, and they had a direct effect on the formation of the police in the north well before 1838. These volunteer patrols were made up of community members invested in the status quo. White supremacy. These slave patrols and militias groups harassed and killed abolitionists in the north. They hunted and killed slaves in the south. They enforced black laws and policed immigrants in the north. They enforced slave codes and contained slaves in the south. 

Modern police tactics in the north and south can be linked to the tactics of slave patrols.

In the south, they enforced codes such as this from Virginia in 1680:

“It shall not be lawfull for any negroe or other slave to carry or arme himselfe with any club, staffe, gunn, sword or any other weapon of defence or offence, nor to goe or depart from of his masters ground without a certificate from his master, mistris or overseer, and such permission not to be granted but upon perticuler and necessary occasions; and every negroe or slave soe offending not haveing a certificate as aforesaid shalbe sent to the next constable, who is hereby enjoyned and required to give the said negroe twenty lashes on his bare back well layd on, and soe sent home to his said master, mistris or overseer . . . that if any negroe or other slave shall absent himself from his masters service and lye hid and lurking in obscure places, comitting injuries to the inhabitants, and shall resist any person or persons that shalby any lawfull authority be imployed to apprehend and take the said negroe, that then in case of such resistance, it shalbe lawfull for such person or persons to kill the said negroe or slave soe lying out and resisting.”

Enslaved people couldn't move freely. They couldn't beat drums, blow horns, worship, own horses, read, write, swear, smoke, walk with a can. In

be black and to be alive was to be a criminal under the slave codes and black laws of the 17th and 18th centuries. 

Corruption has been A constant Reality in The Police Force.

Americans have wrestled with police corruption since the police departments started. Through the mid 20th century, it was common for police departments to act in the service of corrupt political bosses and enforce blatantly racist laws. They used violence to end strikes, committed wholesale robberies, took bribes, and overlooked criminal enterprises. They overlooked crime rings for pay and even headed lynch mobs to murder black people. 

 Started by president Herbert Hoover, the 1931 Wickersham Commission was a sweeping survey of criminal justice and law enforcement in America. Focusing on problems like excessive police use of force, better standards, and hiring, it hoped to cure corruption through sweeping reforms. Earlier commissions and future ones put forth big ideas, too but did little in execution. Corruption remains so widespread that commissions and police probes are still eerily frequent more than a century later. 

In short, the current controversies surrounding police departments are not new, which is part of what makes them frustrating. Like a scratchy record on repeat, it's the same track being played over and over again. 

The Present Police Policies Connect To the Past

In 1909, August Vollmer became the police department's chief in Berkeley, California, and put the final structures in place to form our modern police. How? By building the American police force into a civil-military. Serving as a soldier in the Philippines in 1898, he brought military tactics into his new role." For years, ever since Spanish-American War days, I've studied military tactics and used them to good effect in rounding up crooks," he said. "After all, we're conducting a war, a war against the enemies of society." Those enemies were the same as they had always been immigrants, black people, union organizers, and agitators. 

Now, as the U.S Justice Department looks into allegations that police officers have a pattern of unconstitutional policing, we hear the echoes of the past. As law enforcement focuses more on stopping crime than preventing it, we hear echoes of the past. When police disproportionately arrest and patrol black communities, we hear echoes of the past. When white officers routinely kill young black males and boys, we hear echoes of the past. When policing models place greater importance on the number of arrests made than the lives affected, we hear echoes of the past.

When we see the inhumane use of police dogs used on unarmed citizens just as slave patrols used dogs for hunting down black slaves, we see echoes of the past. I could go on, but you'd be reading awhile. 

So then, if we want a better future of American policing, we must learn from the past, not repeat it.