Police Essay ⋆ Essays on Controversial Topics ⋆ EssayEmpire

Police forces are agencies empowered by some level of government—local, county, state, or federal—to maintain social order through legal means, coercion, or use of force. Police serve as the enforcement arm of the criminal justice system, which consists of police, the judiciary, and corrections.

Unlike many other countries, the United States has decentralized police forces. With localism distinguishing U.S. police forces since their conception, municipal government and police chiefs have been fundamental to shaping police activities, resulting in police forces in different places that are often quite different from each other. This legacy of decentralized police organization and lack of coordination among district, county, and state police and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Secret Service was cited as problematic in The 9/11 Commission Report and led to the development of the Department of Homeland Security to coordinate with local police departments, although it still has an undefined jurisdiction over local police.

Although many textbooks still describe the first U.S. police forces as emerging in the mid-1800s in northeastern cities, many contemporary scholars of police studies cite police forces’ initial emergence in southern cities near the turn of the 19th century. These forces, which often patrolled on horseback and in some cities lived in dorms, were paid, civilian, patrolling entities created to help contain the urban slave population. Their duties included checking slaves for passes allowing them to be out on the street, searching for runaway slaves, and monitoring the free African American population and keeping them from gathering or interacting with slaves. However, because these forces had jurisdiction to arrest any city resident and did so, and interacted with the courts, they are by definition police forces and thus push back the origin date of police forces in the United States to the first years of the 19th century and geographically to southern cities rather than northeastern ones.

Boston and New York developed police forces in 1838 and 1844, respectively, and did so under pressure from local populations for more social order in a time of civil unrest. By the end of the 19th century, nearly all metropolitan areas had police forces, and starting in 1905 in Pennsylvania (which organized its state police in response to the unrest around the Great Anthracite Strike), state police forces began serving rural areas. By the start of World War II, all states had statewide police forces.

The discontinuity of the inception of police forces speaks to the most prevailing characteristics of policing in the United States, namely, its history of local autonomy and organization, which has only recently begun to change. By the mid- to late 19th century, urban police forces were deeply tied to local political parties and machines. In many larger cities, such as San Francisco, New York, and New Orleans, police were so intimately connected to local political parties that if their party lost its majority in the city council, the police department would be purged and new officers brought in who were loyal to the prevailing party. Therefore, employment in the police was contingent on political connections, and there was rarely any kind of formal training or serious application process. Combine this with the facts that no preprinted secret ballot yet existed and that police officers marshaled elections, and one can see the origins of the prevailing violence found on Election Day in many large cities.

Among the many calls for reform during the Progressive Era (1890s-1920s) were demands for the separation of local police forces from political machines. Progressives called for police officers to be put through a system of application and training and to receive pay increases and promotion through a merit-based system of exams. Perhaps foremost among the champions for this professionalization was August Vollmer (1876-1955), Berkeley’s first police chief, who persuaded the University of California at Berkeley to establish the first criminal justice program, in which he subsequently taught. Known as “the father of modern law enforcement,” he was the first to create both bicycle and motorized patrols, to establish a police academy, and to require that officers earn college degrees; he also hired the first women police officers and was noted for his support of African American officers. After the Progressive Era, urban police forces, while still sometimes awash with corruption and brutality, no longer had the same level of connection to local politics. This value of “professionalism” in policing remains one of the central tenets of policing today and characterizes police reforms throughout the 20th century.

The riots that plagued U.S. cities in the mid-20th century—almost all sparked by instances of police brutality—were a serious challenge to the legitimacy of local police forces. As a result of this unrest, the President’s Commission on Law Enforcement and Administration of Justice suggested in their 1967 report the development of “team policing.” This concept, which became “community policing” in the 1980s and 1990s, called for greater coordination between police and community and for civilian oversight into police actions, particularly in investigating instances of police brutality. This emphasis on police intimacy with local communities and civilian participation remains popular today. However, the dictates of zero-tolerance policing that emerged in the 1990s (in which police forces are “arrest driven,” concentrate on a deep knowledge of local crime hotspots, and arrest people for minor crimes in the hopes of preventing more serious ones) can strain police-community relations and sometimes be at odds with community policing.

Indeed, tensions and violence between local police forces and the communities they police have long characterized U.S. policing. Police corruption, brutality, and racial profiling have been among the more prevailing complaints about police comportment. Often citizen outrage has sparked substantive police reform. Various commissions were set up throughout the 20th century to study police problems and suggest changes. Furthermore, federal lawsuits became a major purveyor of police reforms, with changes in police organization or training as part of the lawsuit settlement.

In the aftermath of September 11, 2001, the federal government developed the Department of Homeland Security. Designed as an overarching entity overseeing all manner of threat to the United States, be it natural disaster or attack, this department has profound implications for local police forces. This influence is twofold. First, the Department of Homeland Security gives grants to local police departments and state governments to fund emergency preparedness equipment and personnel. Second, it provides training to local police forces against terrorist attacks. However, the dictates of the Department of Homeland Security in connection with both provisions are controversial. First, those concerned with civil liberties worry that the call for police officers to be intelligence gatherers rather than “responders” to crime or disorder has the potential to substantially change the nature of policing by asking police to spy on citizens. Second, the federally organized Department of Homeland Security calls to question the value of local citizen participation in policing or even the ability to express concern with police actions when jurisdiction is federal. For the most part, however, the structure and sanctioned actions of the Department of Homeland Security are still evolving and the long-term changes to be brought about by the new agency remain uncertain at this time.

Bibliography:

McArdle, Andrea. 2006. “Policing after September 11: Federal Local Collaboration and the Implications for Police-Community Relations.” Pp. 177-202 in Uniform Behavior: Police Localism and National Politics, edited by S. K. McGoldrick and A. McArdle. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Miller, Wilbur R. 1999. Cops and Bobbies: Police Authority in New York and London 1830-1870. Columbus, OH: Ohio State University Press.
Rousey, Dennis C. 1996. Policing the Southern City: New Orleans 1805-1889. Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press.
Vollmer, August. 1971. The Police and Modern Society. Montclair, NJ: Patterson & Smith.

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