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The "Boston Watch" was formed, essentially a neighborhood watch group. Watchmen patrolled the streets of Boston at night to protect the public from criminals, wild animals, and fire.

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The history of American law enforcement begins in Boston.

The people of the town of Boston established a Watch in 1631. Shortly thereafter, the Town Meeting assumed control of the Watch in 1636.Watchmen patrolled the streets of Boston at night to protect the public from criminals, wild animals, and fire.

The Watchmen's responsibilities grew along with the town, which became the City of Boston in 1822. Less than twenty years later, the City founded a police force of six men under the supervision of a City Marshall. The Boston Watch of 120 men continued to operate separately.

In 1854, the City replaced the Watch organizations with the Boston Police Department, which consisted of 250 officers. Each officer received payment of $2 per shift, walked his own beat, and was forbidden to hold outside employment. Rather than use the billhook of the old Watch, officers began to carry a 14-inch club. In the proceeding years, the City annexed several neighboring towns and expanded police services to those areas.

The telephone greatly influenced means of communication at the BPD during the 1880s, as demonstrated by the replacement of the telegraph system with telephone lines at police stations, and the installation of police call boxes.

Toward the end of the 19th century, the BPD officers began providing charitable services, such as serving soup to the poor at police stations. Police stations also opened their doors to newcomers to the city, who could spend a night as a "lodger." Additionally, police ambulances transported sick and injured individuals to the City Hospital. Some of the services founded during this time have continued into the present day, though some now under the management of external city agencies.

At the turn of the 20th century, the BPD grew to 1,000 patrolmen. At that time keeping the peace resulted in nearly 32,000 arrests annually. The role of the police also expanded, with the introduction of the automobile came new practices. Duties now included regulating motor vehicle traffic and removing unruly passengers from streetcars. The BPD purchased its first patrol car in 1903 and its first patrol wagon in 1912. In later years, police would use motorcycles to deal with ever-increasing traffic.

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The history of American law enforcement begins in Boston. The people of the town of Boston established a Watch in 1631. Shortly thereafter, the Town Meeting assumed control of the Watch in 1636.Watchmen patrolled the streets of Boston at night to protect the public from criminals, wild animals, and fire.

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Some of the first police forces in the American South were created to control enslaved black people. They would come to be known as slave patrols.

By law, almost all white men had to serve in these patrols. White men from every level of society between the ages of 21-45 were targeted to serve for a period of time up to a year as a Slave Patrolman. These men often moved between serving a stint on a slave patrol versus a local militia because it was the same population the two drew from.

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Around the American South, slave patrols enforced what were called slave codes, laws which controlled almost every aspect of the lives of enslaved people.

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The British Parliament passes a bill, the Metropolitan Police Act, creating the first modern police force to oversee life within London, England.

Police forces across American cities are inspired by their emphasis on crime prevention, control of communities, a strong visibility in everyday life by patrolling the streets and their militaristic structure with things like uniforms, rank designations and a code of command and discipline.

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A Slave Patrol Statute from Louisiana in 1835 declares that slave patrols are to...

"Arrest any slave or slaves whether with or without a permit who may be caught in the woods or forest with any fire or torch which slave or slaves thus arrested shall be subjected to corporal punishment not exceeding 30 stripes."

Ingrained into early law is the ability for any white man to inflict corporal punishment to an enslaved person and essentially act as a deputized police officer.

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As European immigration increases in the United States, immigrant groups begin policing each other.

English Americans are policing the Irish or the Germans are policing the Irish. The Irish are policing the Poles. Black people are getting policed by everyone, but their numbers are fewer. This dynamic leads to police officers as a critical feature for establishing a racial hierarchy, even among white people.

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The end of the U.S. Civil War and Slave Patrols in the South.

Congress passes the 13th Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery except as punishment for a crime.

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Even though slavery would end in 1865, the American South soon began passing restrictive and dehumanizing laws known as the Black Codes.

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Race was defined by blood; the presence of any amount of black blood made one black.

Employment was required of all freedmen; violators faced vagrancy charges.

Freedmen could not assemble without the presence of a white person.

Freedmen were assumed to be agricultural workers and their duties and hours were tightly regulated.

Freedmen were not to be taught to read or write.

Public facilities were segregated.

Violators of these laws were subject to being whipped or branded.

Some Black Codes in Louisiana:

Any negro found drunk, within the said parish shall pay a fine of five dollars, or in default thereof work five days on the public road, or suffer corporeal punishment as hereinafter provided.

No negro who is not in the military service shall be allowed to carry fire-arms, or any kind of weapons, within the parish, without the special written permission of his employers, approved and indorsed by the nearest and most convenient chief of patrol.

No negro shall be permitted to preach, exhort, or otherwise declaim to congregations of colored people, without a special permission in writing from the president of the police jury.

Every negro is required to be in the regular service of some white person, or former owner, who shall be held responsible for the conduct of said negro. But said employer or former owner may permit said negro to hire his own time by special permission in writing, which permission shall not extend over seven days at any one time.

No negro shall be permitted to rent or keep a house within said parish. Any negro violating this provision shall be immediately ejected and compelled to find an employer; and any person who shall rent, or give the use of any house to any negro, in violation of this section, shall pay a fine of five dollars for each offence.

Some Black Codes in Mississippi:

All contracts for labor made with freedmen, free negroes, and mulattoes for a longer period than one month shall be in writing, and in duplicate, attested and read to said freedman, free negro, or mulatto by a beat, city or county officer, or two disinterested white persons of the county in which the labor is to be performed, of which each party shall have one; and said contracts shall be taken and held as entire contracts, and if the laborer shall quit the service of the employer before the expiration of his term of service, without good cause, he shall forfeit his wages for that year up to the time of quitting.

All freedmen, free negroes, or mulattoes who do now and have herebefore lived and cohabited together as husband and wife shall be taken and held in law as legally married, and the issue shall be taken and held as legitimate for all purposes; that it shall not be lawful for any freedman, free negro, or mulatto to intermarry with any white person; nor for any white person to intermarry with any freedman, free negro, or mulatto; and any person who shall so intermarry, shall be deemed guilty of felony, and on conviction thereof shall be confined in the State penitentiary for life; and those shall be deemed freedmen, free negroes, and mulattoes who are of pure negro blood, and those descended from a negro to the third generation, inclusive, though one ancestor in each generation may have been a white person.

All freedmen, free negroes and mulattoes in this State, over the age of eighteen years, found on the second Monday in January, 1866, or thereafter, with no lawful employment or business, or found unlawfully assembling themselves together, either in the day or night time, and all white persons so assembling themselves with freedmen, free negroes or mulattoes, or usually associating with freedmen, free negroes or mulattoes, on terms of equality, or living in adultery or fornication with a freed woman, free negro or mulatto, shall be deemed vagrants, and on conviction thereof shall be fined in a sum not exceeding, in the case of a freedman, free negro or mulatto, fifty dollars, and a white man two hundred dollars, and imprisoned at the discretion of the court, the free negro not exceeding ten days, and the white man not exceeding six months.

If any freedman, free negro, or mulatto, convicted of any of the misdemeanors provided against in this act, shall fail or refuse for the space of five days, after conviction, to pay the fine and costs imposed, such person shall be hired out by the sheriff or other officer, at public outcry, to any white person who will pay said fine and all costs, and take said convict for the shortest time.

If any white person shall sell, lend, or give to any freedman, free negro, or mulatto any fire-arms, dirk or bowie knife, or ammunition, or any spirituous or intoxicating liquors, such person or persons so offending, upon conviction thereof in the county court of his or her county, shall be fined not exceeding fifty dollars, and may be imprisoned, at the discretion of the court, not exceeding thirty days.

Some South Carolina Black Codes:

"No person of color shall migrate into and reside in this state, unless, within twenty days after his arrival within the same, he shall enter into a bond with two freeholders as sureties"

"Servants shall not be absent from the premises without the permission of the master"

Servants must assist their masters "in the defense of his own person, family, premises, or property"

No person of color could become an artisan, mechanic, or shopkeeper unless he obtained a license from the judge of the district court - a license that could cost $100 or more.

Prohibited whites from marrying any Negro or any descendant of any Negro to the third generation inclusive. Penalty: Felony, punishable by imprisonment in the state penitentiary up to five years.

School district trustees given right to create separate schools for black children.

Railway companies to provide equal but separate accommodations for white and colored passengers. Penalty: Passengers or conductors not complying with the law subject to a fine of $25 or imprisonment for 20 days. Officers and directors of railway companies that fail to comply guilty of a misdemeanor and could be fined between $100 and $500. Law did not apply to streetcars.

Unlawful for whites and blacks to buy and consume alcohol on the same premises. Penalty: Misdemeanor, punishable by a fine between $50 to $500, or imprisonment in the parish prison or jail up to two years.

North Carolina Jim Crow Laws:

Prohibited marriages between whites and Negroes or Indians or persons of Negro or Indian descent to third generation.

White and black children shall be taught in separate public schools, "but there shall be no discrimination made in favor of, or to the prejudice of, either race."

Seats on all buses to be segregated by race.

Raleigh, N.C. repealed a portion of the city code which required racial segregation in public cemeteries.

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Black Code and Jim Crow Law examples - Black Codes and Jim Crow

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Race was defined by blood; the presence of any amount of black blood made one black. Employment was required of all freedmen; violators faced vagrancy charges. Freedmen could not assemble without the presence of a white person. Freedmen were assumed to be agricultural workers and their duties and hours were tightly regulated.

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The growth of big cities on the East Coast leads to bigger police departments.

In the more rural South, vigilante groups are empowered to surveil and police the black populations.

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Growth of Cities - The History of American Metropolitan Areas

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1866: The Birth and Growth of the Ku Klux Klan

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1866: The Birth and Growth of the Ku Klux Klan

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The growth and importance of southern vigilante groups lead to the birth of the KKK in Pulaski, Tennessee.

Many members of the Klan represented property and business owners, some political elites, and many either directly involved or aware of and complicit in the violent attacks on blacks in the South. The KKK took about the business of terrorizing, policing, surveilling and controlling black people.

The Klan totally dominates the machinery of justice in the South, upholding justice in what has been called "Klan courts."

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To battle the violent racism in the South, Congress passes the 14th and 15th Amendments to ensure equal rights and voting for black citizens.

Even though these measures created a generation of relative peace and prosperity for black citizens, it would quickly change again as Southern states adjusted by creating the Jim Crow laws, state and local laws ensuring white supremacy and racial segregation in America.

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Black Codes

The roots of Jim Crow laws began as early as 1865, immediately following the ratification of the 13th Amendment, which abolished slavery in the United States.

Black codes were strict local and state laws that detailed when, where and how formerly enslaved people could work, and for how much compensation. The codes appeared throughout the South as a legal way to put Black citizens into indentured servitude, to take voting rights away, to control where they lived and how they traveled and to seize children for labor purposes.

The legal system was stacked against Black citizens, with former Confederate soldiers working as police and judges, making it difficult for African Americans to win court cases and ensuring they were subject to Black codes.

These codes worked in conjunction with labor camps for the incarcerated, where prisoners were treated as enslaved people. Black offenders typically received longer sentences than their white equals, and because of the grueling work, often did not live out their entire sentence.

Ku Klux Klan

During the Reconstruction era, local governments, as well as the national Democratic Party and President Andrew Johnson, thwarted efforts to help Black Americans move forward.

Violence was on the rise, making danger a regular aspect of African American life. Black schools were vandalized and destroyed, and bands of violent white people attacked, tortured and lynched Black citizens in the night. Families were attacked and forced off their land all across the South.

The most ruthless organization of the Jim Crow era, the Ku Klux Klan, was born in 1865 in Pulaski, Tennessee, as a private club for Confederate veterans.

The KKK grew into a secret society terrorizing Black communities and seeping through white Southern culture, with members at the highest levels of government and in the lowest echelons of criminal back alleys.

Jim Crow Laws Expand

At the start of the 1880s, big cities in the South were not wholly beholden to Jim Crow laws and Black Americans found more freedom in them.

This led to substantial Black populations moving to the cities and, as the decade progressed, white city dwellers demanded more laws to limit opportunities for African Americans.

Jim Crow laws soon spread around the country with even more force than previously. Public parks were forbidden for African Americans to enter, and theaters and restaurants were segregated.

Segregated waiting rooms in bus and train stations were required, as well as water fountains, restrooms, building entrances, elevators, cemeteries, even amusement-park cashier windows.

Laws forbade African Americans from living in white neighborhoods. Segregation was enforced for public pools, phone booths, hospitals, asylums, jails and residential homes for the elderly and handicapped.

Some states required separate textbooks for Black and white students. New Orleans mandated the segregation of prostitutes according to race. In Atlanta, African Americans in court were given a different Bible from white people to swear on. Marriage and cohabitation between white and Black people was strictly forbidden in most Southern states.

It was not uncommon to see signs posted at town and city limits warning African Americans that they were not welcome there.

Ida B. Wells

As oppressive as the Jim Crow era was, it was also a time when many African Americans around the country stepped forward into leadership roles to vigorously oppose the laws.

Memphis teacher Ida B. Wells became a prominent activist against Jim Crow laws after refusing to leave a first-class train car designated for white people only. A conductor forcibly removed her and she successfully sued the railroad, though that decision was later reversed by a higher court.

Angry at the injustice, Wells devoted herself to fighting Jim Crow laws. Her vehicle for dissent was newspaper writing: In 1889 she became co-owner of the Memphis Free Speech and Headlight and used her position to take on school segregation and sexual harassment.

Wells traveled throughout the South to publicize her work and advocated for the arming of Black citizens. Wells also investigated lynchings and wrote about her findings.

A mob destroyed her newspaper and threatened her with death, forcing her to move to the North, where she continued her efforts against Jim Crow laws and lynching.

Charlotte Hawkins Brown

Charlotte Hawkins Brown was a North Carolina-born, Massachusetts-raised Black woman who returned to her birthplace at the age of 17, in 1901, to work as a teacher for the American Missionary Association.

After funding was withdrawn for that school, Brown began fundraising to start her own school, named the Palmer Memorial Institute.

Brown became the first Black woman to create a Black school in North Carolina and through her education work became a fierce and vocal opponent of Jim Crow laws.

Isaiah Montgomery

Not everyone battled for equal rights within white society-some chose a separatist approach.

Convinced by Jim Crow laws that Black and white people could not live peaceably together, formerly enslaved Isaiah Montgomery created the African American-only town of Mound Bayou, Mississippi, in 1887.

Montgomery recruited other former enslaved people to settle in the wilderness with him, clearing the land and forging a settlement that included several schools, an Andrew Carnegie-funded library, a hospital, three cotton gins, a bank and a sawmill. Mound Bayou still exists today, and is still almost 100 percent Black.

Jim Crow Laws in the 20th Century

As the 20th century progressed, Jim Crow laws flourished within an oppressive society marked by violence.

Following World War I, the NAACP noted that lynchings had become so prevalent that it sent investigator Walter White to the South. White had lighter skin and could infiltrate white hate groups.

As lynchings increased, so did race riots, with at least 25 across the United States over several months in 1919, a period sometimes referred to as " Red Summer." In retaliation, white authorities charged Black communities with conspiring to conquer white America.

With Jim Crow dominating the landscape, education increasingly under attack and few opportunities for Black college graduates, the Great Migration of the 1920s saw a significant migration of educated Black people out of the South, spurred on by publications like The Chicago Defender, which encouraged Black Americans to move north.

Read by millions of Southern Black people, white people attempted to ban the newspaper and threatened violence against any caught reading or distributing it.

The poverty of the Great Depression only deepened resentment, with a rise in lynchings, and after World War II, even Black veterans returning home met with segregation and violence.

Jim Crow in the North

The North was not immune to Jim Crow-like laws. Some states required Black people to own property before they could vote, schools and neighborhoods were segregated, and businesses displayed "Whites Only" signs.

In Ohio, segregationist Allen Granbery Thurman ran for governor in 1867 promising to bar Black citizens from voting. After he narrowly lost that political race, Thurman was appointed to the U.S. Senate, where he fought to dissolve Reconstruction-era reforms benefiting African Americans.

After World War II, suburban developments in the North and South were created with legal covenants that did not allow Black families, and Black people often found it difficult or impossible to obtain mortgages for homes in certain "red-lined" neighborhoods.

When Did Jim Crow Laws End?

The post-World War II era saw an increase in civil rights activities in the African American community, with a focus on ensuring that Black citizens were able to vote. This ushered in the civil rights movement, resulting in the removal of Jim Crow laws.

In 1948 President Harry Truman ordered integration in the military, and in 1954, the Supreme Court ruled in Brown v. Board of Education that educational segregation was unconstitutional, bringing to an end the era of "separate-but-equal" education.

In 1964, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act, which legally ended the segregation that had been institutionalized by Jim Crow laws.

And in 1965, the Voting Rights Act halted efforts to keep minorities from voting. The Fair Housing Act of 1968, which ended discrimination in renting and selling homes, followed.

Jim Crow laws were technically off the books, though that has not always guaranteed full integration or adherence to anti-racism laws throughout the United States. Several recent pieces of legislation-such as House Bill 1020 in Mississippi, which aimed to disenfranchise the majority-Black capital city of Jackson by creating a new judicial district overseen by white leaders-are often compared to Jim Crow laws.

Sources

The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow. Richard Wormser.
Segregated America. Smithsonian Institute.
Jim Crow Laws. National Park Service.
"Exploiting Black Labor After the Abolition of Slavery." The Conversation.
"Hundreds of black Americans were killed during 'Red Summer.' A century later, still ignored." Associated Press/USA Today.
"Here's What's Become Of A Historic All-Black Town In The Mississippi Delta." NPR.

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Jim Crow Laws: Definition, Facts & Timeline | HISTORY

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Jim Crow laws were state and local statutes that legalized racial segregation. Enacted after the Civil War, the laws denied equal opportunity to Black citizens.

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The first police brutality commission in the United States happens in 1894 in New York City. It's the first major investigation of police violence.

They issue 300 subpoenas, call in 600 witnesses, produce 10,000 pages of testimony. The findings conclude that officers are beating up people in the same way that they're dispensing corporal punishment in the South.  There is unmistakable evidence of systemic corruption and violence in the police system.

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Credit... The New York Times Archives

See the article in its original context from
January 15, 1895, Page 1 Buy Reprints

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ALBANY, N.Y., Jan. 14. -- The Lexow committee has finished its report, and it will be finally considered at a meeting of the committee to be held to-morrow. It will be submitted to the Senate either Thursday or Friday. View Full Article in Timesmachine "

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THE LEXOW REPORT READY; IT RECOMMENDS A BI-PARTISAN POLICE COMMISSION. Further Investigation into New-York City Departments Is Also Favored, if City Authorities Desire. (Published 1895)

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See the article in its original context from January 15, 1895, Page 1 Buy Reprints TimesMachine is an exclusive benefit for home delivery and digital subscribers. Full text is unavailable for this digitized archive article. Subscribers may view the full text of this article in its original form through TimesMachine.

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Tens of thousands of southern blacks migrate North and West to escape Jim Crow and seek peace and prosperity.

"Police officers receive African American migrants in the same way that their white neighbors and community peers did, which is with contempt and hostility." -Throughline

African Americans have little police protection as violence and discrimination run rampant in the North.

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Racial tensions between blacks and whites in the North boil over and lead to race riots in cities like East St. Louis, Philadelphia, and the largest one in Chicago.

For 13 days Chicago was in a state of turmoil. By the time the riot ended, 23 blacks and 15 whites were dead, 537 injured, and 1,000 black families were left homeless. The Chicago riot was part of a national racial frenzy of clashes, massacres, and lynchings throughout the North and the South.  Despite fighting on both sides of the color line, police arrest mostly black residents and do little to protect black property or lives.

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Black scholars and researchers study and document injustices committed by the police.

W.E.B. Du Bois, writing for the NAACP magazine, compiled a police blotter which systematically details all the examples of police brutality directed against African Americans everywhere in the country.

The National Urban League, the other civil rights organization of the period, look closely at policing around the country and overwhelmingly determine that police officers are doing essentially stop-and-frisk policing in the 1920's. They're arresting people for charges that are not actually crimes such as "suspicious character."

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The U.S. passes the 18th amendment to the Constitution, prohibiting the sale and consumption of alcohol.

The police force becomes fully professionalized with cars and new equipment, but corruption and organized crime increase dramatically.

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Attorney general, George Wickersham, puts together the first national commission to look at every aspect of the criminal justice system. It's a massive study and they recommend a number of things to take on is this problem of police violence and police torture.

The report states a decrease in police brutality when it came to African Americans. The black community saw this and bitterly complained about the omission of the violence directed towards their own community. There were over 500 documented cases of police brutality left out of the report.

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“Too often the policeman's club is the only instrument of the law with which the Negro comes into contact,” wrote Howard University criminologist Kelly Miller in a 1935 op-ed.

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July and August of 1967 became known as the “long, hot summer” as dozens of mostly Black communities erupted in what some called riots and others called rebellions.

According to journalists Jess Engebretson and Matthew Green, “Nearly every instance of unrest was ignited by the same kind of spark:  an individual local incident involving an unarmed Black man (or men) beaten or killed by White police officers for a seemingly minor infraction.”

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"Separate and Unequal": The Last Surviving Member of the 1968 Kerner Commission on Race Riots

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Police science begins to draw on crime statistics and sociological research about the innate or cultural tendencies of black people to criminality. This begins a process where police professionalization and academic research legitimize racist notions of black people as a race of criminals.

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On a national basis, President Hoover appointed the Wickersham Commission in 1929 to examine what was perceived as a rising crime rate and police ineffectiveness in dealing with crime. It is no accident that in looking at those issues, the Wickersham Commission also became the first official governmental body to investigate organized crime.

Commissions, while shedding light on the extent of corruption and serving to inform the public have little lasting impact on police practices. As external organizations they report, recommend and dissolve. The police department continues on as a bureaucratic entity resistant to both outside influence and reform.

Other attempts to reform policing have come from within the ranks of the departments themselves. Reform police commissioners and chiefs, often appointed in the wake of one or another scandals, made efforts to change the nature of the police bureaucracy itself. Among the reforms instituted within police organizations were the establishment of selection standards, training for new recruits, placing police under civil service, and awarding promotion as a result of testing procedures. The hope of these reforms was to lessen the hold of politicians, and particularly ward leaders on police officers. If the recruitment, selection and promotions processes were housed within the department and governed by objective criteria, the hope was that officers would no longer owe their jobs and their ranks to political operatives.

Similarly, reform-minded police executives began to try to restructure the department itself, making it more bureaucratic, with an internal clear chain-of-command. Once again, the hope was to structurally isolate police officers from politicians. In this vein, many police departments added a middle-level of management to their organizational charts; changed the geographic lines of police precincts so they would no longer be contiguous with political wards; and created special squads to perform specific duties within the departments. One of the ironies of this reform effort was that the creation of centralized special squads such as traffic, criminal investigation, vice and narcotics, over time had the effect of reducing organized crime's corruption costs. Rather than spreading through an entire department, narcotics and prostitution operators could now corrupt a smaller, more discreet unit and still maintain a high level of immunity from police interference with their illegal businesses.

By the 1950s, police professionalism was being widely touted as better way to improve police effectiveness and reform policing as an institution. O.W. Wilson set the standard for the professionalism movement when he published his book Police Administration, which quickly became a blueprint for professionalizing policing. Wilson argued for greater centralization of the police function, with an emphasis on military-style organization and discipline. Central themes for police administration were to become crime control and efficiency in achieving crime control. Closer supervision of police officers was recommended; foot patrols were replaced by motorized patrols, precinct houses were consolidated and more central police facilities constructed; and command functions were centralized in a headquarters staff (Uchida 1993).

Police professionalism, however, did not turn out to be the panacea Wilson had envisaged. Professionalism antagonized tensions between the police and the communities they served and created rancor and dissension within the departments themselves. The crime control tactics recommended by the professionalism movement, such as aggressive stop and frisk procedures, created widespread community resentment, particularly among young, minority males who were most frequently targeted. Police professionalism and the military model of policing became synonymous with police repression. Furthermore, as Walker points out "a half century of professionalization had created police departments that were vast bureaucracies, inward looking, isolated from the public, and defensive in the face of any criticism" (Walker 1996). In addition professionalization had done nothing to rectify racist and sexist hiring practices that had been in effect since police departments had been created in the 1830s.

Within police departments professionalization meant an emphasis on bureaucratic efficiency. Police administrators centralized authority, tightened the chain-of-command, tried to run their departments through the application of arcane, contradictory and often inapplicable rules. A highly authoritarian police bureaucracy not only isolated itself from the public, but from the very police officers whose conduct it was trying to control. By the mid-1960s police officers had responded with an aggressive and widespread police unionization campaign. Aided by court rulings more favorable to the organizing of public employees; fueled by resentment of the authoritarian organization of departments; and united in a common resistance to increasing charges of police brutality, corruption and other forms of misconduct, nearly every large-city police department had been unionized by the early 1970s. Police officers struck in New York City in 1971; in Baltimore in 1974 and in San Francisco in 1975. "Job actions" such as "blue flue" and work slowdowns (i.e. not writing tickets, making few arrests) were common in other cities.

Initially, the response to this union activity was to reduce centralization in the police bureaucracy and to include officers in discussions of rules, procedures and departmental practices. What had been the exclusive fiefdom of the police executive was now subject to negotiation with a union. But reduced municipal tax bases, caused primarily by the exodus of white, affluent executives and professionals to the suburbs in the 1970s; a prolonged economic recession in the 1970s and early 1980s; and fiscal mismanagement in many cities, led to layoffs of police and other municipal workers, and rollbacks in benefits. In fact, unions became an attractive scapegoat for municipal problems. Politicians, administrators and the media all blamed demands by public workers for the financial straits in which the cities had been floundering. Despite the fact that the fiscal crisis had been caused by much larger social and economic trends, blaming police and other workers allowed police administrators and politicians to once again reorganize the police. This reorganization has been dubbed the "Taylorization of the police" by historian Sydney Harring (1981).

Under the "Taylorization" reforms, police departments reduced the size of their forces; went from two-person to one-person patrol cars; and increased the division of labor within police departments. Police work was broken down into ever more specific, highly specialized tasks; patrol became more reactive; technology was used to restore the control of police administrators (i.e., 911 emergency lines; computerization); and some traditional police tasks were turned over to civilian employees. All of this served to further isolate the police from the citizenry; to further reduce the effectiveness of police practices; and to continually justify ever more "Taylorization" as a response to increasing inefficiency.

Concurrent with reform efforts aimed at professionalization, was an increased reliance on technology and scientific aspects of police investigation. The idea of police as scientific crime fighters had originated with August Vollmer as early as 1916, with the introduction of the crime laboratory. By 1921 Vollmer was advocating the widespread use of lie detectors and the establishment of a database for collecting national crime data (Crank and Langworthy 1992). Over the years science became synonymous with professionalism for many police executives. The use of fingerprints, serology, toxicology chemistry and scientific means for collecting evidence were emphasized as part of a professional police force. In terms of technological advancements, new ways of maintaining police record systems and enhancing police communications, such as the police radio, became priorities. The emphasis was on efficiency and crime-fighting, with the social work aspects of policing deemphasized and discouraged. The hope was also that the professional, scientific crime-fighters would be less susceptible to corruption. It is therefore a further irony of policing that in Philadelphia new communications technologies were put to use in establishing what is arguably the first "call girl" system in the United States, calling out for prostitutes using police communications systems.

More from this series:

Dr. Gary Potter is a professor of online and on-campus courses for the EKU School of Justice Studies. His current research areas include transnational organized crime, human trafficking and the sex industry, and drug trafficking by teenagers in rural Kentucky.

Sources

Crank, John and Robert Langworthy, "An Institutional Perspective of Policing," The Journal of Criminal Law & Criminology, 83, no.2 (1992).

Harring, Sidney, "The Taylorization of Police Work: Policing in the 1980s," The Insurgent Sociologist 10, no. 4, (1981).

Uchida, Craig, "The Development of American Police: An Historical Overview," In Critical Issues in Policing: Contemporary Readings, edited by Robert Dunham and Geoff Alpert, Prospect Heights, Illinois: Waveland Press, 1993.

Walker, Samuel, The Police in America: An Introduction, New York, New York: McGraw-Hill, 1996.

Published on July 23, 2013

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The History of Policing in the United States, Part 5

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On a national basis, President Hoover appointed the Wickersham Commission in 1929 to examine what was perceived as a rising crime rate and police ineffectiveness in dealing with crime. It is no accident that in looking at those issues, the Wickersham Commission also became the first official governmental body to investigate organized crime.

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The events hereafter are not included in the Throughline podcast. They have been added to provide contemporary events. Many more can be included, probably including events from your own hometown.

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On March 3rd, 1991, four LAPD officers were videotaped beating an unarmed African American motorist, Rodney King, after a high speed traffic stop. The 89-second video caught the police beating King with their batons and kicking him long after he was capable of resistance. The video, released to the press, caused outrage around the country and triggered a national debate on police brutality.

On April 29, 1992, the four officers were found not guilty on charges of assault with a deadly weapon and excessive use of force. The city of Los Angeles erupted into riots and violence over the next three days, as residents protested the lack of police accountability, looted businesses, and rioted.

Three days of disorder killed more than 60 people, injured almost 2,000, led to 7,000 arrests, and caused nearly $1 billion in property damage, including the burning of more than 3,000 buildings.

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In August of 2014, police confronted an 18-year-old Black man, Michael Brown, for walking in the street with his friend.

The accounts of the White police officer, Darren Wilson, and Brown’s friend, Dorian Johnson, differ about what happened next, but at some point, both Johnson and Brown tried to run away, and Wilson shot his gun. Wilson shot Michael Brown six times, and killed Brown. His body was left lying — and bleeding — in the street for more than four hours.
Over the next two weeks, protests and violent clashes erupted in the streets of Ferguson, leading to a national conversation about the relationship between law enforcement officers and African Americans, the militarization of police, and the use-of-force law in Missouri and nationwide.

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May 25th, 2020: After allegedly trying to use a counterfeit $20 bill in a corner market and being detained by police, George Floyd is killed when Officer Derek Chauvin kneels on his neck for 9 minutes and 29 seconds.

The world reacts in horror from the video footage. One year later in a court of law, Derek Chauvin is found guilty for three counts of murder.

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What now? Add links to your hometown news below. See examples from my city of Portland. 

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What now? Add links to your hometown news below. See examples from my city of Portland. 

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Police shootings database 2015-2021, Washington Post

Police reform, defunding, and abolition, explained, Vox.com, 6/16/20

Five Reforms Every Police Department Should Make, Institute for Policy Studies, 6/3/16

Portland Police Bureau: Flier on "Where We Stand"

Oregon lawmakers OK police accountability measures, but face calls for bigger change, OPB, 4/27/21