The militarization of law enforcement and its consequences have been a disaster for the human race.
replies(7):
This is not accurate.
The timeframe is not wrong; it is true that the concept of the modern police, at least in the US, was largely based on the Peelian model created in London in the 1820s. But saying it evolved from "warehouse guards and slave patrols" is ahistorical. Most modern police forces modeled after London's Metropolitan Police replaced night watch systems that have been around for literally all of recorded history.
I'm not saying the night watches didn't evolve into police departments, I'm saying the night watches were co-opted prior to them becoming uniformed departments.
And slave patrols led directly into being police departments in some parts of the US. I do not claim that's in the history of all depts, but across the south there are many cases of patrols becoming formalized into police departments.
The big guns are hidden from sight anyway, and only brought out when need be. We don’t need any Oct 7th type attacks happening on home soil.
USA has 1-2 mass shootings everyday on average. This is far worse than a singular big attack. And how long would the reaction of police to any big attack even take? Is it actually realistic that they will have a useful impact with big guns?
>> This is not accurate.
> I do not claim that's in the history of all depts, but across the south there are many cases of patrols becoming formalized into police departments.
What percentage of current police departments were conversions from slave patrols? What is the source of this data?
Not at all, Spain for example had local "brotherhoods" who were meant to protect the local communities against bandits and other unwanted people, and this was back in the 12th century. I'm sure other countries could have been even earlier with their early versions of a police force. "Santa Hermandad" is a term you can look up to find some history about it.
Probably a conclusion people come to when they compare US police looking more like the US military every day, while their local police doesn't go in that direction at all. At least that's true for me as a person living in Spain but sometimes seeing the really crazy equipment US police seems to have.
2+ victims is a mass shooting per the FBI definition so while what you say is technically true it's also a particularly evil way to mislead the reader as the typical mass shooting of the FBI definition consists of 2-4 people shot over the course of an otherwise normal crime wheres the colloquial definition of "mass shooting" is more along the lines of a crazy suicidal person killing as many others as they can.
Well homegrown attacks happen DAILY. "Averaging almost 50,000 deaths from firearms annually". But no, once they're not on the news like the Oct 7th attacks where, it's fine I guess.
https://www.statista.com/topics/10904/gun-violence-in-the-un...
Look, if you're not even willing to understand the argument, your refutation of it is toothless at best, worthless at worst.
Not to mention, your own claim is vague and without evidence. In point of fact, there's plenty of evidence to the counter. There are ample studies to choose from, but from just this year: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/hamilton/police-budget-crime-...
Are we still spouting this nonsense? They do come from the mid 1800s. Modeled after the London Metro Police, where there were so many slaves to catch. American cities soon imitated, based on how many slaves were recovered.
> What is the source of this data?
https://duckduckgo.com/?hps=1&q=police+departments+were+conv...
It also seems like in 2015 there was limits added that made it so "the military was restricted from transferring some weapons, such as grenade launchers, weaponized vehicles, and bayonets to police". Why was that restriction needed if the police isn't becoming more and more like the military?
As for your link: the claim made by the “study” is false since it is ignoring virtually every obvious confounding factor to claim that the number of police officers doesn’t affect crime rates. Per capita police count is a measure of how effectively a city can respond to crime. If they can’t respond that means there aren’t consequences. When there aren’t consequences you end up with the disaster of public safety you see in west coast cities like SF, Portland, and Seattle.
> I'd love to see some statistics about how much worse it is now that we have professional police,
How fortunate that they're willing to collect statistics on their own performance for you.
Really? Do you realize that the amount of civil asset forfeiture has exceeded burglaries? The militarization of police is absolutely a huge problem. As is mass-incarceration for non-violent crimes, over-criminalization, no-knock raids, etc. They just raided a dudes house for a squirrel.
And no, I don't advocate for the idiocy in CA where they legalized violent crime as a petty response to having their budgets threatened.
All of the above is true. In the US, slavery enforcement evolved into police forces and police forces were modeled after UK police.
Many police forces, many origin stores.
https://www.nas.org/academic-questions/36/3/did-american-pol...
Do you mean for the US, rather than the human race? Some of us live in countries where the only weapons most cops carry are truncheons and tasers.
For the slave patrol point, I would appreciate a single example of this phenomenon. Is it the claim that there exists at least one professional police force that was created to replace a "slave patrol", which previously performed some subset of the civil duties of police officers? I have not been able to find an example; can you point me to one?
https://www.statista.com/statistics/249803/number-of-homicid...
Despite that the teenager will likely be going to jail, the most damning indictment is of the police forces that were repeatedly co-opted by the teenager. It should really take something much more clever to trigger this kind of systemic response repeatedly.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/investigations/2020/06/1...
> The claim that modern police originated from slave patrols is a dangerous slur designed to delegitimize policing ... Bad policing must be criticized, but we should not do so by resorting to historically flimsy myths, especially myths that unfairly tarnish the reputations of those in law enforcement and cast aspersions on their motives.
https://www.brookings.edu/articles/how-9-11-helped-to-milita...
https://apbweb.com/2023/10/the-use-of-military-assets-by-u-s...
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jun/05/why-are-some-u...
The driving force behind it is this LESO; established to facilitate the "1033 Program", which transfers excess weapons, equipment, and vehicles from the United States Armed Forces to civilian law enforcement agencies.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_Enforcement_Support_Office
From 1997 until 2014, $5.1 billion in military hardware was transferred from the DoD to local American law enforcement agencies. 1/3rd of the equipment was brand-new.
One of their predecessor organisations was the Bow Street Runners which was set up by magistrates with the aim of providing a less corrupt system than that of "thief takers" and a more professional one than parish constables.
Obama went so far as to say the following when trying to reign in the 1033 program in 2015
"We've seen how militarized gear can sometimes give people a feeling like it's an occupying force as opposed to a force that's part of the community that's protecting them and serving them ... So we're going to prohibit equipment made for the battlefield that is not appropriate for local police departments."
Claiming that police are being militarized is a very broad statement. Depending on your perspective it can be positive or negative.
You could argue that consistency and having a common operating model with accountability is a good thing. Unfortunately many would argue the adopted model is very flawed and that the level accountability is tied to public outrage or scrutiny.
I think everyone would agree that adequate training is essential but we would disagree on what type of training is appropriate. Some argue that sensitivity and deescalation training are where the focus should be, while others are arguing for the warrior training.
The true conservative would say that we can't do it right so we shouldn't attempt because doing it badly will be more harmful than not having done it at all.
There are some pretty big differences between the UK policing model and the one used in the US.
The UK model was set up against the backdrop of the Napoleonic Wars (the French police's role included monitoring dissent, suppressing political opposition [1] and even censoring books) and the Peterloo Massacre [2] (where cavalry were set on a peaceful protest campaigning for more than 2% of people to be allowed to vote)
The Peelian model [3] is one of 'policing by consent' where the police focus their efforts on the sorts of crimes the average citizen wants solved - rather than on suppressing political dissent, or censoring books, or launching cavalry charges against protests. Peel's police aren't a military force, which is why very few of them have guns.
If the American police are based on Peelian principles, then an awful lot of the principles have gotten lost in translation.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Fouch%C3%A9#In_Napoleon... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peterloo_Massacre [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peelian_principles#The_nine_pr...
During my childhood, it was common for police to defer to husbands regarding domestic abuse. And kids all over knew to not go to the police - for any kind of abuse from authority figures.
Potter, Gary "The History of Policing in the United States"[1] references Platt, Tony, "Crime and Punishment in the United States: Immediate and Long-Term Reforms from a Marxist Perspective, Crime and Social Justice 18"
1. https://www.academia.edu/30504361/The_History_of_Policing_in...
The truth of the matter is this: if you refuse to believe that modern policing evolved directly from slave patrols, it means you are a racist and you voted for Trump. This is undeniable, and by denying it you prove it true. Nuanced and sophisticated descriptions of how historical circumstances came to be are repressive and the enemy of social justice. Thomas Jefferson ate babies and George Washington stomped on little latinx children.
I’m not sure what it means for US police to have “evolved out of” slave patrols in places that never had slaves, like New York City (northern states didn’t want to enforce the Fugitive Slave Act), or even in places like Hawaii that were founded well after slavery was abolished.
Why would that require that a "captain" has several subordinates ranked "Lieutenant" and "Sergeant"? Why do the highest ranked police have caps with brocade, and gold braid on their shoulders? Is that part of the consistency? Why does the NYPD have dress uniforms? Why do they give military style funerals for those who die, or x-gun salutes? We're often told they're out there fighting "wars", though everyone is always vague about who the other side is.
I'm not making the claim that they've been militarized recently. It seems to have been the case no matter how far you go back.
> I think everyone would agree that adequate training is essential but we would disagree on what type of training is appropriate.
I don't think this is a training problem. When they shoot some grandma or shake down travelers for the cash in their wallets, I don't think this could ever be corrected no matter how much or what sort of training they are required to undergo. This is some baseline ethics problem, that could only be corrected with initial selection, and then only if the selection process itself were relatively uncorrupted (and it's not).
Your comment doesn't just suggest you are mistaken about this or that, but that you aren't in a frame of mind where you could recognize or appreciate that there is a problem.
> The true conservative would say that we can't do it right so we shouldn't attempt because
What if the task were something absolutely morally abhorrent? What if the task was to efficiently and artfully carve the hearts out of newborn babies and toddlers, and to terrorize the parents with the mutilated remains of their children? But you've been doing this task for so long, that you and everyone else just assumes that it's something that needs to be done. You're sitting around arguing "ok, maybe we need to do only have as many satanic baby sacrifices, and I won't listen to the people who say we need to have more not less". And there's another guy sitting next to you saying "I don't know why we need the terror... we could kill just as many babies without being cruel, they could get anesthesia, and we could do grief counseling for the mom and dad".
And you endlessly yammer about this stuff, for decades, never noticing that you're all lunatics. The concept that this just shouldn't be done at all, in any manner, it's something you can't possibly hear. Even those who can understand this like to whine that they're powerless to stop it, that they don't have the tools to put a stop to it, etc. The truth is we all have the power to stop, none of you want to.
The separation of empathy from an 18 year old online kid from his peers is the true tragedy here.
Isn't this just guilt by association? Whether police are bad or not should be judged on its merits, not what its history is. The Autobahn and VW was built by Nazi Germany, but it'd be absurd to bring that factoid up when discussing road transport or the German car industry.
Should progressive academics declare all CATO papers invalid because they are ideologically misaligned with the institute?
As a side note, when trying to research this you'll see weird double speak fact checks like below:
> Fact Check: 11-year-old arrested on suspicion of violent disorder after riots, not ‘mean tweets’
> Sending grossly offensive, obscene, indecent, or menacing messages on public electronic communication networks is a criminal offence in Britain under Section 127 of the Communications Act 2003
> Misleading. An 11-year-old was arrested on suspicion of violent disorder, not for social media posts, during a swathe of arrests by British police targeting those involved in rioting.
But then the authors don't write what 'violent disorder' is.
Then they try to further confuse the matter by talking about a completely unrealted 11 year old boy that was arrested for suspicion of arson
> The spokesperson said the 11-year-old, one of five juveniles arrested on suspicion of violent disorder by the force on Aug. 28 in relation to the riots, was later bailed.
> Cleveland Police arrested another 11-year-old on suspicion of arson after a police vehicle was set alight in Hartlepool on July 31, according to the spokesperson and an Aug. 1 statement, opens new tab . The child was also released on bail, the spokesperson said.
And this isn't some weird online political rag, it's Reuters. It's all very strange.
https://www.reuters.com/fact-check/11-year-old-arrested-susp...
https://livinglifefearless.co/2020/features/queensryches-emp...
Private citizens can actually buy mine resistant vehicles. We can even buy main battle tanks - though the turret needs to be disabled without a Destructive Device permit.
With a Destructive Device permit, you can also buy a grenade launcher.
We don't sell predator drones to local police departments. Police use the same commercial drones any other private citizen can buy - though cities often restrict whether non-police can fly them.
I am pretty happy with the police hardly ever killing anyone, and that almost always someone who is a real danger to others. I am happy fewer people being killed by police so far this decade (and that includes road accidents involving police!), than have been killed by police in the US so far this month.
While it is true that slave patrols were a form of American law enforcement that existed alongside other forms of law enforcement, the claim that American policing “traces back” to, “started out” as, or “evolved directly from,” slave patrols, or that slave patrols “morphed directly into” policing, is false. This widespread pernicious myth falsely asserts a causal relationship between slave patrols and policing and intimates that modern policing carries on a legacy of gross injustice. There is no evidence for either postulate.
https://www.nas.org/academic-questions/36/3/did-american-pol...
"Violent Disorder" is a specific offence listed in the Public Order Act.
> Then they try to further confuse the matter by talking about a completely unrealted 11 year old boy that was arrested for suspicion of arson
The way it reads doesn't seem like it's "completely unrelated" at all.
Potter: The genesis of the modern police organization in the South is the “Slave Patrol” (Platt 1982).
Potter: Platt, Tony, “Crime and Punishment in the United States: Immediate and Long-Term Reforms from a Marxist Perspective, Crime and Social Justice 18 (1982).
"CRIME AND PUNISHMENT IN THE UNITED STATES: IMMEDIATE AND LONG-TERM REFORMS FROM A MARXIST PERSPECTIVE"
Tony Platt
Crime and Social Justice, No. 18, REMAKING JUSTICE (Winter 1982), pp. 38-45 (8 pages)
> The Industrial Revolution and its consequences have been a disaster for the human race.
https://ia600300.us.archive.org/30/items/the-ted-k-archive-t...
So the article should explain it.
> The way it reads doesn't seem like it's "completely unrelated" at all.
How is this related apart from the person sharing the same age and the town being the same? One is suspected of arson and the other of Violent Disorder? Does this add value to the fact check?
https://www.policemag.com/weapons/article/15348048/how-the-n...
Of course, there must have been many other causes. It wasn’t the first time in US history that police were outgunned.
But if you believe that only the US has this problem, I am sad to inform you that Taylor Swift and Hollywood Movies are not the only American cultural exports eagerly consumed around the world.
Do you really think that dressing in military special ops tactical clothing, with advanced and powerful weaponry, balaclavas, helmets and responding to a call in a armoured vehicle doesn't create any weird expectations on the mind of police officer of how they should behave in a call?
You pulling an argumentative sleight of hand here conflating your run of the mill gun violence with terrorist attacks or mass shootings isn't cool.
It doesn't matter how the police is equipped, they can't stop a guy from walking up to his neighbor and shooting him in the face unless they're already there pointing guns at him. Although, maybe some sort of remote mind control chip is the answer there?
Also, I'm certain every shooting ends up on local news.
The history of the United States is well documented - it was only for a brief period during reconstruction that policing was deracialized in the American South, and even saw a number of formerly-enslaved lawmen. There were numerous violent revolts against this, and in support of white supremacy in places like Oklahoma, Louisiana[1], Mississippi and elsewhere where egalitarian leaders were ran out of town, and the law enforcement (along other administrative leadership) was reconfigured against the then "new", post-civil-war ways.
Do you see any functional differences between slave patrols (membership free from white land owners or their nominees) and the group that overthrew and reconstituted reconstruction-era law enforcement (mobs drew from white landowners, or their hired grunts).
If evidence for your claim was as plentiful as you claim, you would just add another link. You didn’t.
They still exist for that purpose in the US.
They do not exist to protect people. They are a tool of the state and capital.
The years post slavery still were used to enforce Jim Crow laws, segregation, and violence against minorities. They still used dogs to attack peaceful protestors. SWAT teams are a continuation of an ethos of being warriors, willing to do violence at the behest of the government and capital at the expense of the people.
The antecedent organizations to the modern Charleston police department, notably the Town Watch and the City Guard, were both dissolved in the aftermath of the civil war, while civil order was kept by federal forces until the end of reconstruction.
But regardless of whether we can chase down a chain of organizations that meets the colloquial meaning of "evolved", it does not appear that either the City Guard nor the Town Watch were principally slave patrols, although they did enforce the slavery regime as part of their policing functions.
An organization that participates in the suppression of slaves as part of its function is not a "slave patrol". If the statement "[modern police forces] evolved out of warehouse guards and slave patrols" is to be parsed as "modern police forces evolved out of earlier organizations that sometimes protected private property or enforced slavery laws" then I grant the accusation, but it is rather hollow and meaningless at that point.
Assuming you are not making the entirely reductionist argument that requires every law be tied back to capital (in other words, murder is illegal because it brings down property values or something) this is an extremely narrow view of the purpose of police. This everything-is-capital framing doesn’t explain consumer protections or environmental laws or labor laws.
The purpose of police is to enforce the laws. Many of those laws have been significantly and disproportionately controlled by corporate and monied interests but again there are too many clear counterexamples to conclude as you did.
I gave examples of 3 southern states (and a link to one, detailing how the law enforcement was devolved to antebellum mores in Louisiana)
What makes you think they aren't? All news media is inherently biased if they want or not. Not to mention "fact checker" are a prime candidate for corruption.
I'd challenge that view by claiming that if the threat is of someone holding their family hostage threatening to kill them (just a guess at what these "swatters" might say to the dispatcher to get cops to actually kick in some doors, I don't know what their state-of-the-art accusation is), then sending one cop car, poorly equipped, sounds a bit silly for multiple reasons.
> Mass shootings like Columbine happen every day in America.
The guy you’re replying to (and I as well) are saying that this is an intentionally misleading statement. Three people being wounded but not killed in a shootout they started is still considered on the same level as dozens of innocent children being hurt and killed. IMO that’s straight up misinformation. It’s designed to illicit the strongest emotional reaction possible, while being not even technically wrong.
America has lots of problems, and guns are definitely one of them. Everyone agrees with this, we just disagree on how to fix it. Twisting words and lying is never helpful.
It sucks this person was so angry and unfeeling to the world at a young age.
https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=sangnoir
Again, if evidence was as plentiful as you claim, a person would add a link instead of typing about examples and links elsewhere.
Popping in here to say that it's funny how you said this then go on about baby sacrifice.
Post-Belesiles [0], I would want to see a body of relatively objective records that can be independently verified in the form of adversarial cooperation. Say some significant number of individuals of slave oriented occupations moving into net new police-specific occupations.
Your use of the word “sheriff” is significant here because sheriff and constable are occupation terms that predate the Atlantic slave trade. These were civil enforcers for what represented law and justice in the English system. They still exist today in name and function. Moving from slave patrol to sheriff doesn’t necessarily support the thesis since sheriff and constable are not net new police forces.
0. https://quod.lib.umich.edu/p/plag/5240451.0001.016/--why-foo...