Police History Flashcards

Early Policing

Organized police departments were rare in early civilizations. Examples of early forms of policing include:

  • Sixth century BCE: Unpaid magistrates (judges) appointed by citizens in Athens.
  • Fifth century BCE: Rome created the first specialized investigative unit called questors, or “trackers of murder.”
  • First century BCE: Rome formed the Praetorian Guard and established the Vigiles (fire department & night watch force).
  • First century CE: Rome appointed lictors (Roman official) as bodyguards for the magistrates.
  • Twelfth and thirteenth centuries: European kings began to take responsibility for administering the law.
  • Eighteenth century: Paris and Munich had armed, professional police credited with maintaining safety and order.

English Policing: Our Heritage

Early History

Key components of early English policing involved:

  • Alfred the Great and the Statute of Winchester (ninth century)
    • Mutual pledge: A system of community self-responsibility.
    • Constable: An early police officer.
    • Shire-reeve: An early form of sheriff.
    • Hue and cry: A call for assistance in catching offenders.
    • Watch and ward: A system of nighttime patrols.

Watch System

  • Volunteers patrolled communities to keep the peace.
  • Watchmen duties included:
    • Patrolling streets from dusk till dawn to ensure people were indoors and quiet, and no strangers roamed.
    • Performing duties such as lighting street lamps, clearing garbage, and putting out fires.
    • Enforcing the criminal law.

Seventeenth-Century Policing: Thief-Takers

  • This period saw the beginnings of a fragmented criminal justice system.
  • Key figures:
    • Magistrates: Civil officers who administer the law.
    • Beadles: Dealt with petty offenders.
    • Thief-takers: Private citizens with no official status, similar to bounty hunters, who often had dangerous lifestyles and sometimes created more crime.

Henry Fielding and the Bow Street Runners

  • Fielding founded the first modern police force.
    • 1748: Fielding was appointed magistrate in Westminster.
    • He initiated the first official crime reports and an investigative unit called the Bow Street Runners.
    • 1804: A horse patrol was established in London.

Peel’s Police: The Metropolitan Police for London

  • 1828: Sir Robert Peel drafted the Metropolitan Police Act.
  • Peel is known as the Father of Modern Day Policing.
    • Peel’s Nine Principles:
      • Focused on the preventive role of the police and positive relationships between the police and the community.
    • The private law enforcement systems were abolished.
    • Beat system: dividing officers across a jurisdiction.
    • Small, permanent posts.

American Policing: The Colonial Experience

The North: The Watch

  • Colonists constantly faced risks.
  • Seventeenth century: Northern colonies replicated the English model.
    • The county sheriff was the most important law enforcement official but typically remained in their office rather than patrolling.
    • In cities, the town marshal was the chief law enforcement official.
    • 1631: Boston created the first colonial night watch.

The South: Slave Patrols and Codes

  • People often took matters into their own hands.
  • Slave patrols:
    • Served as a formal system of social control.
    • Were prominent in many early colonies.
    • Represented the first accepted practice of patrol function and concept.
  • Slave codes:
    • Denied slaves any rights.
    • 1857: The Dred Scott decision (Dred Scott v. Sandford) ruled that enslaved persons were not citizens and could not expect protection from the government or courts. The ruling was 7-2.

American Policing: Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries

The Urban Experience

  • Early police departments:
    • 1838: Boston Police Department was created, working daytime only.
    • 1851: The night watch was incorporated into the Boston Police Department.
    • 1853: The office of police chief was created in Boston.
    • 1854: Police stations were constructed in Boston.
    • 1844: The New York state legislature authorized communities to organize police forces and provided funds for 24-hour police protection.
  • Politics in American policing:
    • Nineteenth-century American policing was dominated by local politicians and was notorious for brutality, corruption, and ineptness.
    • 1857: A full-scale police war occurred.
  • Early police officer’s job:
    • Included cleaning streets, inspecting boilers, caring for the poor and homeless, operating emergency ambulances, and providing other social services.

The Southern Experience

  • 1837: Charleston’s slave patrol had 100 members.
  • 1852: Atlanta police force organized, made up of the poor, elderly, and dishonest.
  • Patrols remained militia-like.
  • Black officers were reluctantly hired but could only police Black people.

The Frontier Experience

  • Sheriffs and town marshals:
    • Posse comitatus (power of the county).
  • Federal marshals:
    • 1789: The Federal Judiciary Act was established.
    • 1861: Congress passed a law empowering the president to call upon the militia or regular army to enforce the law when ordinary means were insufficient.
  • The military:
    • 1878: Posse Comitatus Act was established.
  • State police agencies:
    • 1835: Texas Rangers were founded (first U.S. state police agency in 1845).
  • Private police:
    • 1850: The Pinkerton Agency was established.

American Policing: Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries

Policing from 1900 to 1960

  • Professionalism:
    • 1893: The International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP).
  • Technology:
    • 1913: The police motorcycle was introduced.
    • 1920s: The patrol car was introduced.
    • 1930s: One-way radio was introduced.
    • 1940s: Two-way radio was introduced.
  • 1919: The Boston Police Strike occurred.
  • National Prohibition:
    • 1919: Volstead Act (Eighteenth Amendment) was established.
  • The Wickersham Commission:
    • 1929: The commission was created.
    • 1931: A report was issued.
    • 1933: National Prohibition was repealed.
  • August Vollmer:
    • Instituted many practices that started to professionalize policing in the United States.
  • O. W. Wilson:
    • Pioneered the use of advanced training for police officers.
  • Raymond Blaine Fosdick and Bruce Smith:
    • Were early pioneers in the movement toward police professionalism, despite not being police officers.
  • John Edgar Hoover:
    • Transformed the FBI from an inefficient organization into the world’s primary law enforcement agency.
  • Kefauver Committee:
    • 1950: The U.S. Senate’s Crime Committee revealed many law enforcement officers nationwide were on the syndicate’s payroll.

Policing in the 1960s and 1970s

  • Supreme Court decisions:
    • 1914: The Supreme Court ruled that evidence seized by the police in violation of the Constitution could not be used against a defendant in federal court.
    • 1961: Mapp v. Ohio applied the exclusionary rule to all states.
    • 1964: Escobedo vs. Illinois defined the constitutional right to counsel at police interrogations.
    • 1966: Miranda v. Arizona required police to notify a person in custody and who is going to be interrogated of their constitutional rights.
  • The Civil Rights Movement:
    • 1954: Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka ended legal segregation.
  • Police response to civil disobedience.
  • Anti-Vietnam War demonstrations.
  • Campus disorders.
  • Urban riots.
  • Creation of national commissions:
    • 1967: President’s Commission on Law Enforcement and Administration of Justice.
    • 1968: National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders (Kerner Commission).
  • Corruption and the Knapp Commission:
    • 1970: The Knapp Commission resulted from allegations of corruption within the NYPD and led to sweeping changes in the organization, philosophy, operations, and procedures.
  • Police Research and the LEAA:
    • 1965: The Office of Law Enforcement Assistance was created within the U.S. Department of Justice with seven specific goals:
      • Prevent crime.
      • Adopt new ways of dealing with offenders.
      • Eliminate injustice and unfairness.
      • Upgrade personnel.
      • Conduct research to find new and effective ways to control crime.
      • Appropriate the necessary funds to accomplish the goals.
      • Involve all elements of society in planning and executing changes in the criminal justice system.
  • Development of the ideology of a diverse department.

Policing in the 1980s and 1990s

  • Computer revolution in policing.
  • Drastic reduction in violent crime.
  • Community policing and problem-solving policing.
  • CompStat.
  • Rodney King incident.
  • Jury nullification.
  • Riots resulting from racial and civil unrest.

Policing in the 2000s

  • Police corruption issues resurfaced.
  • Notable crime reductions occurred.
  • 9/11 and its aftermath:
    • Many large police departments started specialized anti-terrorism units and trained members in disaster control and anti-terrorism duties.
    • The federal government created the Department of Homeland Security, and Congress passed the USA Patriot Act.
  • Hurricane Katrina.
  • War on police.

Black Lives Matter

  • 2012: The organization was founded by Patrisse Cullors, Opal Tometi, and Alicia Garza.
    • The organization aims to end perceived police brutality of Black suspects and speaks out against the disproportionate imprisonment of Black inmates.
  • 2014: The Black Lives Matter organization held its first national protest.
    • After the protest in Ferguson, 24 states passed at least 40 new measures that address issues like the use of body cameras, racial bias training, independent investigations when police use force, and new limits on the flow of surplus military equipment to local law enforcement agencies.

2020 and Beyond

  • Movements to defund and restructure the police.
  • Social justice.
  • Equity.
  • The deaths of George Floyd and Tyree Nichols have rightly put a focus on policing and special police units that will change the way policing is conducted in the future.