The Violent History of Law Enforcement

Written by Becca Williams, SBT Copywriter 

(Cover art is from this article)

One very important aspect of freedom is the ability to live our lives free from violence. Violence takes numerous forms for so many of us – interpersonal violence, institutionalized violence, community violence, historical violence.  Law enforcement’s main job is to protect and serve, and yet they are often at the core of much of the violence experienced. 

Throughout my time working with survivors of gender-based violence, I often had to work with members of law enforcement as survivors decided if they wanted to engage in reporting, restraining orders, custody, etc.  These processes are arduous and take a huge emotional toll, but for a long time while I was doing this work I often felt as though certain individuals within this system were doing the best they could:  asking trauma-informed questions, and occasionally treating survivors with respect and transparency.  It took me a while to see the various ways in which survivors are systemically let down, regardless of the approaches of a few individual agents.  It took me an even longer time to realize that the flaws of this system are so fatal and embedded in our society and culture that they can’t be reversed by policies that superficially address them, or processes that seek to penalize those individual agents who don’t do their job. 

This is something that has been known and experienced by communities of color for a long time.  When the 2020 social uprisings began, many white folx learned a lot about how others are treated by law enforcement and were exposed to ideas around abolition and defunding law enforcement units. As we’ve talked about before, this is the luxury of disconnect that only Whiteness can afford, and I think its removal from our collective spotlight indicates the lack of patience a lot of us have when it comes to long-lasting change that moves beyond simple policy fixes.

(A 2020 street painting in Washington, DC.)

I have long wanted to write a blog about the origins of law enforcement.  Back in 2020, we heard a lot about how law enforcement has roots in “slave patrols”, and the work that has or hasn’t been done to address that.  A lot of the articles I read for this blog were written in the summer of 2020, which again reflects how and when issues are highlighted, and for whom.  I had a few questions coming into this research, mostly around how those law enforcement units that emerged as a response to enslavement affected the overall institution of modern policing.  I wondered how we came to rely on law enforcement for nearly everything from roadside car maintenance to serious criminal offenses.  Once I even called 911 to report a burst water pipe that was flooding the road. I also wondered how we came around to the ideas of treating racialized police aggression by providing implicit bias training or more measures aimed at finding the “bad apples.”

I quickly realized that the way in which I was framing these questions made for insufficient answers.  Policing is a systemic issue, as described in the New Yorker, “a culmination of a thousand other failures – failures of education, social services, public health, gun regulation, criminal justice, and economic development.”   If this is true, then implicit bias training doesn’t do much to help.  If there’s something I’ve learned in life, it’s that most phenomena can point to some type of systems failure.  I have also learned that systems are made up of individual people, and there are many who benefit from policing sustaining in its current format.

I believe that policing (which I know is not a monolith) has dehumanization at its roots.  So did enslavement.  I also know, through the time I’ve built relationships with law enforcement officers and seen the system work in full force, that so much of what is taught and learned throughout one’s tenure as an officer of the law surrounds the idea that the world is full of chaos and their job is to maintain order. The us versus them mentality is strong, and that’s a difficult thing to wade through when encountering someone who may be going through something pretty terrible, or when encountering someone who is typically viewed as a threat.  While I do think implicit bias has a lot to do with modern day policing, it certainly isn’t enough to address that part alone.  And it’s difficult to call racism “implicit bias,” particularly when communities have experienced different iterations of pre-13^th Amendment policing. 

One particularly interesting piece that I picked up was from a few sources who talked about community relations, specifically that it would make a significant difference if community relations between law enforcement and the most impacted communities were improved.  Whose responsibility is it to build these relationships, and how much thoughtful and intentional action is taken to understand why the relationship was fractured to begin with?  I think underneath all that, though, is the relative absurdity around the expectation that communities who have been harmed by policing – communities who have lost loved ones to police murders, whose members have experienced torture, over-policing, unjust prosecution and imprisonment, wrongful conviction – also be responsible for “building community relationships” with the exact entity who has caused all the harm.  That requires a huge amount of time, trust, and accountability, all concepts that current day policing doesn’t inherently support. It also requires an in-depth understanding of the pain and lack of trust that has been reinforced over time from the first days of enslavement. 

There appear to be two different stories of how modern policing came to be.  These stories do not seem to be mutually exclusive, however some folx have gone to great lengths to separate the “Northern” roots of policing from the “Southern” roots of policing, indicating the police units that started in the North did not have racism or the need to exert control over Black communities at their core.  I don’t know about that.  Our country was founded on racism, and it’s hard for me to imagine any sort of institution being borne out of the absence of it.  Even so, police units haven't emerged from active anti-racism, and claiming the absence of racism is by all intents and purposes, still a form of racism. 

(Depiction of a riot in Boston, 1837 in which firemen attached Irish folx during a funeral procession.)

“Northern” policing began in the mid-1830s.  In 1834, part time constables and night watchmen were charged with New York’s security, although they were neither paid nor trained well and there was a fair amount of corruption.  In 1837, Boston formed one of the first municipal police departments, with full time staff that were publicly funded and supported. Police here, and in other major cities across the North primarily responded to riots that occurred as a result of the anger about increasing immigration, as well as riots outside of abolitionist rallies, Catholic churches, and convents.  Here, I see a society very definitely formed by race and racism, and a police response that is intricately tied to the civil rights discourse at the time. 

“Southern” policing, however, has a much earlier starting point.  The first death of a Black man at the hands of law enforcement took place in Virginia in 1619, the same year the first enslaved Africans were trafficked to the States.  More formalized patrols, essentially groups of white militia men that could hold any class rank, began in the Carolinas in the early 1700s.  The Charleston City Watch and Guard began in 1790 out of the fear that White enslavers had of enslaved folx revolting or fleeing. In this sense, policing was formed out of a response to enslavement, out of a fear that the Black community would continuously find ways to self-liberate, and out of a social, economic, and cultural need to maintain power and control over the Black community.  There’s no room for humanity in any of these foundational components. 

What were known as “slave patrols” apprehended enslaved folx who escaped, enforced extrajudicial regulations surrounding the punishment for enslaved folx who didn’t abide by the rules of the plantation, and terrorized the enslaved population so that they wouldn’t revolt. These local law enforcement groups (militia groups) were often complicit in lynchings, and county jails served to incarcerate Black folx “for safekeeping” while waiting for auctions to be finalized.  This article dives a bit deeper into the specific role that Southern law enforcement held prior to the Civil War, including depriving enslaved folx of food and breaking up families.  Be mindful that the article I just linked comes from the National Law Enforcement Officers Fund and Memorial.  The last line in the article reads, “Though law enforcement looks very different today, the profession developed from practices implemented in the colonies.”  I find it interesting that the author would take the time to make the distinction between law enforcement in the pre-Civil War South and current-day law enforcement without providing much to back it up.  While just one article, it does resonate with a lot of what I found – this need to place this terrible part of history in a container and shove it away. 

(Woodcut from the Anti-Slavery Almanac, 1839.)

After the Civil War, these patrols became actual municipal police departments with some former Confederate officers becoming local judges.  During Reconstruction, they were empowered to control formerly enslaved folx and uphold the Black codes that took shape after slavery legally ended.  I wrote a bit about Black codes in my last blog post.  These same groups then enforced Jim Crow laws, the local and state statutes upholding racial segregation.  By the 1960s, police units were responding to general social upheaval surrounding the rigid political and economic structures of the time.  It was around this time that policing became heavily militarized and people noticed the system’s major flaws: wrongful conviction, incarceration - the judicial process as a whole.  This topic could be its own blog, and I highly recommend watching the film 13^th if you haven’t already.  Netflix made the film public.

While this blog post focuses mostly on the historical origins of modern-day policing, it’s really important for me to make a few notes here about where we are now.  Law enforcement controls many aspects of our lives with surveillance happening in predominantly Black and brown communities.  It’s inherently oppressive to live in a society ruled by policing, and this is where the conversation on abolition comes in.  There is fertile ground for racial violence and terror to grow underneath this system of oppression.  Police are carrying out the functions of our broader government, a structure itself built through enslavement.  The Oath Keepers, a white supremacist organization and hate group, believes they are defending the Constitution by fighting tyranny.  They have provided vigilante volunteer armed security for far-right rallies, at polling places during the 2016 and 2020 elections, and served as Roger Stone’s personal security detail on January 6th, 2021.  The Oath Keepers direct their recruitment strategy toward military personnel and those working in law enforcement.

The discussion about the role that law enforcement should play in our communities is one fraught with different understandings of history, accountability, and trust.  I don’t know where we are headed as a society, but I do know that the path we are taking at Start By Talking, and the path you all are taking in reading this, seems to be headed toward one where we all experience dignity and safety and the right to a life free from all forms of violence.  If you’re still left thinking “that’s what the police are for”, then I recommend taking a deeper look into the abolition movement. We are capable of creating solutions outside of the police state that maintain agency and accountability and that can ultimately keep us on this path toward liberation.