The controversy over Atlanta’s Public Safety Training Center has resurrected a common claim made by critics of law enforcement, namely that American policing is a direct descendant of antebellum slave patrols....
This is echoed by a recent New York Times editorial asserting that “the origin of law enforcement in this country … is a history rooted in slave patrols and militias designed to protect white people’s lives and livelihoods from rebellion among enslaved Black people.”...
However, it has no basis in actual history.
Institutionalized law enforcement in America can be traced as far back as the 1630s with the appointment of sheriffs in counties within the Virginia colony. Colonial sheriffs were modeled after their English equivalents and functioned as the chief law enforcement official in their counties. Around the same time, the cities of Boston and New York appointed constables and watchmen to protect lives and property at night. The duties of these individuals “differed insignificantly from their English counterparts.”
While sheriffs trace their roots to medieval England and were present at the very beginning of colonial America, police departments by contrast are a relatively recent innovation in the history of law enforcement. What distinguished police departments from other forms of early American law enforcement was their professional nature. Police departments as we know them today are highly centralized and are composed of professionals who are paid to perform police duties as a career. They arose because the law enforcement needs of large cities became too great for them to rely on volunteers or individuals with minimal training, low motivation, and lack of oversight. As urbanization in American cities accelerated, so did disorder. The system of night watches that many cities had historically relied on were ill-equipped to deal with these problems.
Thus, cities created professional full-time municipal police departments that were regulated by and accountable directly to local governments. These professional agencies, which began in the 1840s, became the police departments we know today. Their immediate precursors were the night watchmen and constables they replaced....
The History Room
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Originally Posted by Chris
