Table of Contents
Abstract
Police or the function of Police in society has existed in societies in one form or another since ancient times. Throughout most of that time and up until the present Police have been mainly protectors and keepers of the peace who occasionally had some law enforcement responsibilities as well. Modern 21st Century Police now seem to Enforce Laws, Investigate Crimes and help prosecute criminals at the expense of protecting the public. What has caused this change and how can the problem be fixed.
Introduction
Policing has undergone many changes from the period in the end of the 19th Century through the modern 21st Century. Many of the forms of policing that existed before the 19th Century were more of the same ideas that had existed since ancient times, We can start with the word Policing. Todays “Police” weather Municipal Police, State Police, County Sheriff’s and Constables or even Federal Agents are often just referred to as Law Enforcement. Referring to them has Law Enforcement has become so common they themselves may refer to each other as LEOS or Law Enforcement Officers. This may not seem to be that big of a change, but it signifies a dramatic shift in their duties and responsibilities from the 19th Century until today. In the following pages I would like to first explain how the mission of Police has changed from then until now and then how and why those changes came about. Finally, I will discuss some modern innovations and how they have factored into the changing role of Police in American Society.
Origins Of Police
The word “Police” is a French translation of the Latin politia and the Greek politeia that in English means Civil Administration. Politia the root of which is the Greek word polis the Ancient Greek word for city. In Ancient Greece Cities were kingdoms all to themselves known later as city states. Politia was the Greek word describing the city states civil administration and it referred to everyone involved in the government of the city state not just those who kept the peace and enforced the law. The actual Greek word for the Ancient Greek version of Police was astynomia a compound word that translates to city law. Some of the earliest versions of Police were seen in the Greek City State of Athens.
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Greek Magistrates employed a group of 300 Scythian slaves known as “rod bearers”. They were used to keep order at public meetings and manage crowds as well as apprehending criminals and guarding them. They did not however investigate crimes. This was something only done by actual citizens of The City State. Later in the 5th Century a more formal police organization was established for Athens composed of citizens with job duties more similar to todays police. The city state of Sparta also had a form of police. They had a group of elected judges known as the Ephors who were elected every year and were in charge of maintaining the peace within the city state and also served as magistrates whom even Sparta’s two kings had to answer to. Sparta had two kings one was in charge of military affairs and the other civil affairs The 300 Spartans of Spartan Royal Guard were much like the later Roman Pretorian Guard they executed the Ephors and the Kings.
This is probably where the idea of separating civil authority from the military first originated. During The Roman Empire much later the Military also had no authority inside Rome and were forbidden to enter the city under Arms. During the rein of Augustus The Questors, Pretorian Guard, Praefectus Urbi and Vigilies were all established with different Police roles within Rome. The Questors were the lowest level of magistrate some handled the treasury and others investigated Murders. The Pretorian Guard protected The Emperor Himself and his residence as well as acted as his intelligence service.
The Praefectus Urbi were another level of magistrate that exercised Judicial authority over the citizens of the city not all that different from municipal judges and the Vigilis were the watch force that patrolled the city. The Vigiles were originally employed to protect the densely populated city from fire and then eventually they were given authority to keep the peace and apprehend criminals and those sought by the Magistrates later in the 1st Century also in Rome the Lictors were appointed to guard the magistrates along with apprehending prisoners, bringing and acting as their executioners. One concept that persisted from ancient Greece and Rome until today was the separation of Civil and Military authority.
A soldiers job was to defend his country by killing the enemy and preventing them from invading the country, killing its citizens or damaging its property. The job of civil authority was to keep the peace. This usually worked out well because in Ancient Greece and Rome as well as Europe from the Dark Ages until modern times The Military was often to busy either fighting wars or keeping enemies from the gates to be able to deal with such things as keeping the peace let alone enforcing laws. The idea of Police again emerged during the 12th and 13th centuries when Kings in both France and England began to take a greater interest in the Civil Administration and laws in their kingdoms.
In 1356 France created a mounted Police force called the Marechausee to protect its highways and that force would later evolve into the Gendarmerie Nationale, a Federal Police force that patrols Frances rural areas to this day. All of these organizations existed because rulers understood that peace and order had to be maintained and criminals had to be dealt with to maintain order in the kingdom. The subjects would remain content as long as they felt safe and felt a relative sense of freedom yet another reason using the military to enforce civil authority was frowned upon, Our Modern American Police system evolved from the English system. Alfred The Great who was An Anglo-Saxon King of Wessex in 871 and eventually would become King of all the Anglo Saxons. He spent most of his reign fighting Viking invasions. He decided that to defeat the Vikings he would need to maintain the kingdoms stability.
His soldiers needed to be able to seek out and fight the invaders and so again had no time to police the outlying towns and villages within Alfred’s kingdom the villages and towns also needed to be able to defend themselves and not the Vikings catch them by surprise. He established the Mutual Pledge system, a system where villagers grouped together for mutual protection and would be responsible for their own security. The Mutual Pledge system delegated security responsibilities at several different levels. A group of 10 families known as a tithing grouped together for mutual protection and took responsibility for one another’s actions.10 Tithings grouped together in a 100. The 100 was supervised and commanded by a Constable.
The Constables were the first actual Police Officer that England had. Groups of hundreds would reside within a particular designated geographical set of boundaries called Shires the Shire would be governed locally by a officer of the King Court known as a Shire-Reeve. Most of the more serious breeches of the law were handled by the Constables but the people were generally responsible for Policing themselves. The Mutual Pledge system made people responsible for calling for help known as the Hue and Cry when ever trouble occurred. Likewise, those who heard the Hue and Cry were obligated to come and help. The formal positions of Shire- Reeve and Constable would become and remain a part of English Law Enforcement to the present day.
The Statute Of Winchester in 1258 CE established all these As formal positions in England’s first Criminal Justice System. In addition to Constables and the Hue and Cry the statue established the Watch and Ward and require all males to both keep and bear weapons and serve as members of the Night Watch. The keeping of arms remained a part of English Common Law for centuries and is likely where the right to keep and bear arms comes from in our modern US Constitution. In the 17th Century as England’s population grew these this simple system was no longer enough to keep law and order.
Most of the keeping of the peace was still in the hands of the people and while the Watch and Ward did ok to protect people in Villages the Highways were dangerous and bandits known as Highwaymen often robbed and even killed people traveling on the roads. London was also growing to the point that it needed a formal professional police force. Londoners resisted the idea because although they recognized they had a crime problem They feared losing their freedom to such a force and because they preferred private enterprises such as the Thieve-Takers a form of early bounty hunter and of course their own Watch And Ward System. None the less between 1763 and 1820 London would create an ever growing ever more organized and professional police system until 1829 When Robert Peele Established the London Metropolitan Police, England’s first major large scale professional Police force.
In the Colonies around the same time the colonists at first had to simply rely on defending themselves when militia were not available but they eventually established a system very similar to England. A Sherriff was the Counties chief law enforcement official Sheriff evolved from the Shire-reeve. The Sheriff at this point did nothing but collect taxes and supervise elections and other legal processes. It was the Constables and Town Marshalls that kept the peace and they like England had a Night Watch. In the South they had The Slave Patrols there job was to protect the institution of slavery, to catch runaway slaves, discipline unruly slaves and protect the southern colonies and later states from slave revolts and uprisings. Southerners at the time viewed protecting the institution of slavery as imperative because their entire economy existed on slave labor.
Differences in Modern Police
The Major difference between these early Police system and the Criminal Justice System we now have today is that while some earlier versions of Police had additional duties like collecting taxes, guarding royalty or apprehending and punishing criminals they all had one major priority, Keeping the peace and maintaining public order. They did so directly by patrolling the streets and being part of the community. Most of them were indeed members of the community. In the previous paragraph it was emphasized that the people were largely responsible for policing and maintaining order as a community by themselves with a little help from officials like Constables and Sheriffs.
Even once major Metropolitan Police forces were established in England, France and the US for many years after the fact those Police Officers came from those communities and walked a beat every day and got to know the people and their struggles and problems. They viewed that beat and the safety of the people in it as their responsibility. With the enormous growth of the population, The ever expanding size of our major cities and Freeways and the volumes and volumes of laws now on the books Police directly keeping the peace, protecting property and lives as they once did. They Have Become Law Enforcement Officers. There primary duties are still to keep the peace by making arrests of those who disturb the peace commit felony crimes in their presence or view and to serve lawful process from the Judges but they are increasingly kept busy patrolling freeways and dealing with traffic and responding to calls and working crime scenes.
The days when a Police officer that you knew or any officer for that matter spends their day driving around the different neighborhoods preventing crime are over with and gone. This has lead to police officers that hold themselves as separate from the community they protect instead of just another citizen who happens to have the job of protecting the community. There is also much more emphasis placed on enforcing laws, arresting criminals and building a good prosecution than on preserving the peace or protecting people.
Reasons Why Police Changed
How did Police become just law enforcers instead of peacekeepers and protectors they once were? In 1899 at the end of the 19th Century Police began to use vehicles. In the larger cities once the patrol car became the primary means of patrol and officers were no longer walking a beat it began the process of disconnecting them from the community. As the freeways got bigger and bigger and more and more people were driving cars police had to spend an ever increasing amount of time keeping the freeways safe, investigating accidents, clearing accidents and keeping the roads and freeways unobstructed. In between those duties they would have to answer calls.
Police now having vehicles meant they could cover a much larger area than before. With hand held radios and later computers they could be notified immediately of incidents requiring their attention. All this meant they spent less and less time getting to know the people in their areas of responsibility as they once did. In modern American Policing Mayors, Police Chiefs and Commissioners as well as County Sheriffs are responsible for appropriately allocating resources to the areas they are needed most. They do this to a great degree based on Crime Statistics and Uniform Crime Reports and on occasion in response to a problem area they are made aware of after its become a problem. The problem with this is that the statistics don’t always give an accurate view of what’s going on in a given area. Statistics are only as good as the data that’s reported. In some community’s people refuse to talk to or call the police no matter what happens.
This might lead Police to believe nothing bad is happening in that neighborhood. There are small towns where police are still very connected to their communities and where officers spend their days and nights driving through neighborhoods and subdivisions and getting to know people. These towns may still have crime problems, but those problems are much easier to deal with because the officers are there on a day to day basis and can spot when something isn’t right before it happens. In a few big cities around the country neighborhoods and subdivisions are beginning tom hire private security patrols staffed by fairly well trained Security Officers.
This could very well be the future if the Police and Private guards could connect and be each others eyes and ears it could really do allot to reduce especially violent crime and save lives. Security Officers who are always near by and in the neighborhood can respond very quickly to any call for help and can protect people and their property. They can keep Police who have much more area to coverage apprised of what is happening in their perspective neighborhoods. They can be a modern version of that same Watch and Ward system while still allowing modern police to cover their ever-increasing responsibilities.
References
- Dempsey, J.S.(2019) An Introduction To Modern Policing: Cengage Learning
