Inventing the Police
This post takes a “critical” criminological approach to the study of the evolution of modern police forces. Advocating for research-based problem-solving, the aim here is learn about how a data-informed approach, combined with critical interpretive methods, might shed light on the structures of policing and the role it plays historically in the construction of knowledge and power. For it is only by situating policing within this critical social context that we can begin to effectively understand the police.
We begin with some questions: Where does policing originate in the United States? How did policing come into being as the institution that we know today with the oft stated mission of “serve and protect?” How might police act on assumptions about people, particularly as this relates to the way criminals act? How might these assumptions and actions inform public understandings about crime and criminals? What are the actually police doing?
Slave Patrols and The Myth of Liberal Policing
What does modern policing have to do with slave patrols? What exactly is meant by the term “liberal policing?” These are some of the questions that scholar and criminologist, Alex Vitale, addresses in his 2017 book – The End of Policing, which takes a critical look at how modern policing in the United States has evolved over time.
The liberal state, as it were, is not about the classic political divide between democrats (liberals) and republicans (conservatives). What this term refers to is a general notion of statehood – an ideal invested in action – where the state/Justice Department invests in reforms like body cameras, community policing, officer diversity, and increased implicit bias and use of force training as a means to rescue policing and restore its legitimacy. Vitale cautions that while this notion may be superficially appealing, the U.S. falls short of such aspirational ideals in practice. To understand how this occurred, he says we need to take stock of our police history and reconcile where we came from before we move forward.
[Note: the term “liberal state” does not mean liberal in the same sense as it is used by many people to characterize one political party/governing ideology. The term as it used here broadly refers to the state as a form of governance organized to protect and promote the economic and social well-being of citizens, based upon the principles of equal opportunity, equitable distribution of wealth, and public responsibility for citizens unable to avail themselves of the minimal provisions for a good life.
Alternatively, “Liberalism” is a political and moral philosophy that espouses the values of liberty and equality. Professed “liberal” democracies espouse a wide array of views depending on their understanding of these principles, but they generally support civil rights, democratic ideals, secular government, gender and racial equality, freedom of speech, press, and religion. Liberalism became a distinct movement during the Age of the Enlightenment when it became popular with Western philosophers and economists. Refuting norms of power based on heredity, monarchy, and the divine right of kings, liberalism sought to replace them with traditional conservatism, representative democracy, and rule of law. French liberalism emphasized rejecting authoritarianism linked to nation-building].
Sociologist T.H. Marshall described the modern liberal welfare state as a distinctive combination of democracy, welfare provision, and capitalism.
A liberal state, furthermore, is one which gives priority to the cause of the individuals. In the classic ‘individual vs state’ opposition, the liberal state is supposed to favor the interest and cause of individuals. Put another way, a classic liberal state refers to limited government or limited state.
Early Policing
The London Model
Of course, one model for early police forces in the United States was the London Metropolitan Police of Sir Robert Peel. Peel’s police force focused on the protection of property and putting down strikes. Another far more sinister model is found in the Slave Patrols of the southern confederacy and the Texas Rangers. The impetus for both of these forces was to protect the property and financial interests of wealthy benefactors.
When we look at the influence of Peel, his efforts tend to be presented as a “noble endeavor.” Yet as Vitale points out, the core of his mission was not of crime-fighting; it was focused on managing disorder and protecting the propertied classes from the unwashed masses. Peel developed his ideas while managing the British colonial occupation of Ireland, where he struggled to foster new forms of social control that would allow for its continued political and economic domination in the face of growing uprisings (Vitale, 2017).
The London model was then imported to the U.S. beginning in Boston in 1838 and continuing through the northern cities over the next few decades. Massive immigration and rapid industrialization created an even more socially and politically chaotic environment than in the U.K.: New York was exploding with new immigrants who were being chewed up by a rapid and imiserating industrialization. Rioting was widespread during this period, occurring on a monthly basis for many years. After the 1828 Christmas riot, when 4,000 workers marched on the wealthy districts, newspapers began calling for a major expansion and professionalization of the night watch, which eventually led to the formation of the police (Vitale, 2017).
The Slave Model
Whereas in the industrial North police helped elites to keep control over their unruly, often immigrant, working-class populations, things evolved differently in the South. In the South, police were organized to help plantation owners break up efforts by slaves to organize. When they attempted to leave, even after being freed, they found ways to detain them for trivial offenses [in the case of the Texas Rangers, they were employed by wealthy settlers who were intent on stealing Mexican land].
The importance of this history to modern policing cannot be overstated. Why is it important? On the one hand, it helps to bring into awareness an important narrative that helps frame police violence against black people; a social fact that is particularly relevant to our contemporary moment. On the other hand, it can foster discussion and understanding, as it creates a point of entry into a conversation: What is happening in modern policing? What has changed over time? What has remained the same? How is the historical social context relevant to the situation we find ourselves in today?
Given all of this, we can draw from this history to observe similarities as well as contradictions. The violence as it was manifest in the form of slave patrols is not of the same order as the violence evident in contemporary police actions, who may be involved in BOTH protecting moneyed interests as well as working to reduce crime in black communities.
Police Brutality – Then vs. Now
In the old days, (early 20th century), police brutality was a concern for different reasons than it is today. At the turn of the century, most of the police force was made up of Irish Americans. That is to say, there was an important social class and ethnic identity component embedded in the criticism of the police. Metropolitan police reformers were chiefly concerned with addressing the problem of corruption in cities. Of foremost concern was how police tended to be deeply embedded in the machine politics of cities. This made them a prime target for reform.
Some might argue that very little has changed in this regard. Police corruption is still a factor; however, it presents itself in different ways now. Whereas in the late nineteenth century, it was about extracting extortion money from criminals. For instance, there were robust relationships between brothel madams and the police that created a community of interest between the two. Today, police corruption takes the form of either cooking the books on crime statistics or, as we saw in the case of the Illinois police officer very recently, embezzling department funds.
Why Does This History Matter Today?
Understanding the past role played by police can tell us a lot about the patterns of violence we see in our modern police forces. Instead of seeing police brutality and the targeting of black people as a newly evolved “anomaly” we can see it for what it is: an echo of past practice. It is important to recognize the historical resonances that are present here if we ever hope to change some of the current problems in contemporary policing, especially as this relates to police violence in communities of color.
Lets take Ferguson Missouri as an example. The main reason police had so much contact with black people in Ferguson was related to financial developments there – namely, a loss of revenue due to imposed budget cuts. Given the weak tax base (a reflection of low property values), the police there compensated by generating alternative revenue in the form of fines. That is to say, they seized upon a community of poor people and attempted to extract something from them that they didn’t have – money. Over time, the relationship with residents deteriorated to the point of boiling over into street violence.
While this is arguably somewhat different than in the late 19th. century, it shares some resonance, as law enforcement in Western areas of the U.S. often operated on a fee-based patronage system. Under this system of control, the U.S. government invested U.S. marshals with the power to extract fees from the population in the form of court fees. This gave rise to a system where the marshals would often arrest people for questionable offenses, as the goal was to generate revenue from court fees. That is similar to what happened in Ferguson (police, even though they are paid a salary, are still paid indirectly from fees and fines that are collected by the courts).
The lesson learned in the 19th. century that apparently still needs to be learned again is that when you provide incentives to police to fight crime for money, they will do what you ask them to do.
Police and Social Inequality
Consequently, even as the stated mission of the police has evolved to one that extols its ability to “Serve and Protect,” Vitale argues to contrary. He maintains that the police continue to operate, as evidenced by their actions and practice, that they remain consistent with their origins. According to Vitale:
The reality is that the police have always been at the root of a system for managing and producing inequality. This is accomplished by suppressing social movements and tightly managing the behaviors of poor and nonwhite people in ways that benefit those already in positions of economic and political power. Police have always functioned as a force for controlling those on the losing end of these economic and political arrangements, quelling social upheavals that could no longer be managed by existing private, communal, and informal processes. This can be seen in the earliest origins of policing, which were tied to three basic social arrangements of inequality in the 18thcentury: slavery, colonialism, and the control of an industrial working class.
In short, policing was built upon the bulwark of slavery (and the very backs of slaves) as it unfolded in the Confederacy of the United States. The role of the slave patrols was not to simply operate as “hired hands” of plantations; police became embedded within the profit motive and raison d’etre of the plantations. Put another way, police protected white economic and cultural power; they shored up profitability by ensuring that a racialized group of people – black people – would be perpetually hunted, socially disenfranchised, and kept as property, if not always for the plantation, but the state itself.
According to Vitale, “this created what Allan Silver called a “policed society,” in which state power was significantly expanded to face down the demands for justice from those subject to these systems of domination and exploitation. Or, as Kristian Williams points out, “the police represent the point of contact between the coercive apparatus of the state and the lives of its citizens.”
Serve and Protect Who?
The emphasis on the public safety mission of police, says Vitale, has partly been driven by the desire of more liberal politicians to legitimize the force in the eyes of the population. And, as Vitale points out, everyone wants to live in safe communities. But in the past few decades, as inequality has increased, police forces have both been expanded and given increasingly lethal weapons. Training, rather than emphasizing de-escalation techniques and respectful treatment of people, has been focused on promoting police safety through quick, violent reaction to perceived threats Vitale, 2017).
How Are Private Policing Agencies Bound Up in This History?
Long before there was a Federal Bureau of Investigation, there was the Pinkerton National Detective Agency. The agency was established in the United States by a Scotsman, Allan Pinkerton. Pinkerton was at one time the largest private law enforcement organization in the world. Historian Frank Morn writes: “By the mid-1850s a few businessmen saw the need for greater control over their employees; their solution was to sponsor a private detective system. In February 1855, Allan Pinkerton, after consulting with six Midwestern railroads, created such an agency in Chicago.”
Pinkerton’s agents performed a variety of services for the people who hired them; this included basic security guard work, strike-breaking, and private military contract work.
During the labor strikes of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, businessmen hired the Pinkerton Agency to infiltrate unions. They provided guards to help keep strikers and union organizers out of factories; in some cases, they were employed to intimidate workers. The Pinkertons were also employed as guards in coal, iron, and lumber disputes in states that included Illinois, Michigan, New York, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia.
As Vitale Points out, the early police forces were created specifically to suppress workers’ movements. Pennsylvania, as it turns out, was home to some of the most militant unionism, resulting in numerous strikes and violent confrontations in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Local police were sometimes sympathetic toward the workers who were often the bulk of local constituents, so mine and factory owners turned to the state to provide them with armed forces to control strikes and intimidate organizers.
The Coal and Iron Police committed numerous atrocities, including the Latimer Massacre of 1897, in which they killed 19 unarmed miners and wounded 32 others. The final straw was the Anthracite Coal Strike of 1902, in which miners and employers waged a pitched battle that lasted five months and created national coal shortages.
Pinkerton’s Landing Bridge, Homestead, Pa
The Battle of Homestead
One of the most famous and bloody strikes of the nineteenth century occurred in Homestead, Pennsylvania. In 1892, the wealthy industrialist Andrew Carnegie demanded production to be raised. This was a demand that the Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steel Workers union refused.
The striking workers took control of the mill and sealed it off, effectively denying the company its own mill. Carnegie’s plant manager Henry Clay Frick then hired a police force of Pinkerton Detectives to take back the mill using armed force if necessary. Industrialists like Frick employed Pinkertons to spy on their unions. The police acted as strikebreakers and were often implicated as agents provocateurs, fomenting violence as a way of justifying their continued paychecks.
Three hundred Pinkerton Detectives armed with rifles boarded barges and sailed up the river in the early hours of July 6, 1892. After arriving at the plant on the river barges, the Pinkerton agents squared off with thousands of striking workers in an all-day battle waged with guns, bricks, and even dynamite. But as it turned out, the strikers had discovered the plan and roused the town at 2:00 a.m. to defend the plant from the Pinkerton invasion. When the private police force made landfall they were meet with thousands of strikers and their families, who worked together to drive them off.
Before this, the State of Pennsylvania’s initial response to the uprising had been to authorize a privatized police – the Coal and Iron Police. Local employers had only to pay a commission fee of $1 dollar each to deputize anyone of their choosing to be an officer of the law working directly for the employer, under the supervision of the Pinkertons or other private security forces.
In the end, the vastly outnumbered Pinkertons surrendered. More than a dozen people were left dead ( 3 Pinkertons and 6 steelworkers) and others were wounded. On November 20, the strike officially ended and Carnegie achieved control over his labor force again.
The fallout from the melee crippled the steel union, but it also branded the Pinkertons as “hired thugs,” leading several states to pass laws banning the use of outside guards in labor disputes. In the aftermath, political leaders and employers decided that a new, more legitimate-seeming system of labor management was needed, to be paid for out of the public coffers. The result was the creation of the Pennsylvania State Police in 1905.
While Frick’s hardline stance ultimately led to the demise of the union the Pinkertons role in the conflict helped cement their reputation as the paramilitary wing of big business. Anarchists would later unsuccessfully attempted to assassinate Frick. The broken union in Homestead eventually joined the United Steel Workers, formed later in 1942. The Homestead Strike still stands out in history as an example of how difficult it remains for unions to contest the power of management and secure the interests of workers.
“Pinkerton’s Landing Bridge,” as it is now known, is the nickname given to the Pittsburgh & Lake Erie Railroad Bridge at Munhall. The bridge crosses the Monongahela River between Muhall, Pa and Rankin, Pa.
Other Pinkerton confrontations that are noteworthy include the Great Railroad Strike of 1877 and the Battle of Blair Mountain (West Virginia) in 1921.
Pinkertons Inspired the Term “Private Eye”
The Pinkerton agency first made its name in the late-1850s for hunting down outlaws and providing private security for railroads. As the company’s profile grew, its iconic logo—a large, unblinking eye accompanied by the slogan “We Never Sleep”—gave rise to the term “private eye” as a nickname for detectives.
Pinkertons Hired the Nation’s First Female Detective
In 1856, 23-year-old widow Kate Warne walked into Pinkerton’s Chicago office and requested a job as a detective. Allan Pinkerton was hesitant to hire a female investigator, but he gave in after Warne convinced him that she could “worm out secrets in many places to which it was impossible for male detectives to gain access.” True to her word, Warne proved to be an expert at working undercover, once busting a thief by cozying up to his wife and convincing her to reveal the location of the loot. During another case, she got a suspect to feed her crucial information by disguising herself as a fortune-teller. Pinkerton would later list Warne as one of the best investigators he ever hired. Following her death in 1868, he even had her buried in his family plot.
Molly Maguires
In the 1870s, Franklin B. Gowen, President of the Philadelphia Reading Railroad, hired the agency to “investigate” its labor unions in the company’s mines. When mine owners and managers docked pay and benefits, some Mollies, as they were known to locals, killed whoever stood in the Irish miner’s way of a better life. A Pinkerton agent, James McParland, using the alias “James McKenna”, infiltrated the Molly Maguires, a 19th-century secret-society of mainly Irish-American coal miners, which ultimately lead to the downfall of the labor organization.
Molly Maguires
Pinkertons May Have Foiled a Presidential Assassination Attempt
Shortly before Abraham Lincoln’s first inauguration in March 1861, Allan Pinkerton traveled to Baltimore on a mission for a railroad company. He was investigating rumors that Southern sympathizers might sabotage the rail lines to Washington, D.C., but while gathering undercover intelligence, he learned that a secret cabal also planned to assassinate Lincoln, who was at that time on a whistle-stop tour, as he switched trains in Baltimore on his way to the capital.
Pinkerton tracked down the president-elect and informed him of the alleged plot. With the help of Kate Warne and several other agents, he then arranged for Lincoln to secretly board an overnight train and pass through Baltimore several hours ahead of his published schedule. Pinkerton operatives also cut telegraph lines to ensure the conspirators couldn’t communicate with one another, and Warne had Lincoln pose as her invalid brother to cover up his identity. The president-elect arrived safely in Washington the next morning, but his decision to skirt through Baltimore saw him lampooned and labeled a coward in the press. Meanwhile, none of the would-be assassins was ever arrested, leading some historians to conclude that the threat may have been exaggerated or even invented by Pinkerton.
Pinkertons Spied for the Union Army During the Civil War
Allan Pinkerton was a staunch abolitionist and Union man, and during the Civil War, he organized a secret intelligence service for General George B. McClellan’s Army of the Potomac. Operating under the name E.J. Allen, Pinkerton set up spy rings behind enemy lines and infiltrated southern sympathizer groups in the North. He even had agents interview escaped slaves to glean information about the Confederacy.
Pinkertons Created One of the First Criminal Databases
One of the many ways the Pinkertons revolutionized law enforcement was with their so-called “Rogues’ Gallery,” a collection of mug shots and case histories that the agency used to research and keep track of wanted men. Along with noting suspects’ distinguishing marks and scars, agents also collected newspaper clippings and generated rap sheets detailing their previous arrests, known associates and areas of expertise. A more sophisticated criminal library wouldn’t be assembled until the early 20th century and the birth of the FBI.
Pinkerton Detectives guarding the coffin of actress Marilyn Monroe, 1962
Modern Era
Due to its history of conflicts with labor unions, the name Pinkerton continues to evoke negative associations. Pinkertons evolved over the course of time and diversified from labor spying following revelations publicized by the La Follette Committee hearings in 1937. The firm’s criminal detection work likewise suffered from the police modernization movement. Calls for increased police professionalization saw the rise of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the bolstering of detective services offered by local police forces. All of these developments caused the Pinkertons influence to diminish over time.
In 1999, the company was bought by Securitas AB, a Swedish security company. This was followed by the acquisition of a longtime Pinkerton rival, the William J. Burns Detective Agency, to create an additional division, Securitas Security Services USA. The company thus continues to live on as a private security firm and guard service, however, it operates under the shortened name “Pinkerton.”
So What Do We Do Now? How Do We Fix the Police?
Vitale argues we need to rethink the role of policing and to reduce the ways in which police are used in our society. Does that mean we should eliminate police forces altogether? Probably not. History doesn’t have to be the template from which we base our present operations. We can and must find a way to chart a path so that we can realize a more progressive form of policing that serves our modern society; one that is not based on reinforcing and exacerbating existing social inequalities.
As Vitale argues, we need people who are trained to deal with our most vulnerable and difficult populations; people who understand their point of view and who take seriously their role to help them, not just arrest, restrain and control them.
Beyond that, we need to deal with the manifest social problems that derive from maintaining a society in which large parts of the population are considered surplus or undeserving.
Sources
“The Myth of Liberal Policing,” by Alex Vitale, 2017.
The End of Policing, by Alex Vitale, 2017.
“10 Things You May Not Know About the Pinkertons,” by Evan Andrews, 2015
Consequently, while the stated mission of the police might have changed to “Serve and Protect,” Vitale argues that they continue to operate, as demonstrated by police practice, in ways that are consistent with their origins. Vitale argues:
The reality is that the police have always been at the root of a system for managing and producing inequality. This is accomplished by suppressing social movements and tightly managing the behaviors of poor and nonwhite people in ways that benefit those already in positions of economic and political power. Police have always functioned as a force for controlling those on the losing end of these economic and political arrangements, quelling social upheavals that could no longer be managed by existing private, communal, and informal processes.
This can be seen in the earliest origins of policing, which were tied to three basic social arrangements of inequality in the 18thcentury: slavery, colonialism, and the control of an industrial working class.
In other words, policing was built upon the bulwark of slavery (and the backs of slaves) as this unfolded in the old Confederacy of the United States. The role of the slave patrols was not to simply operate as “hired hands” of plantations; they were embedded deep into the profit motive and raison d’etre of the plantations. Put another way, they protected white economic and cultural power; they shored up profitability by ensuring that a racialized group of black people would be perpetually hunted, socially disenfranchised, and kept as property, if not for the plantation, but rather for the state.
According to Vitale, “this created what Allan Silver called a “policed society,” in which state power was significantly expanded to face down the demands for justice from those subject to these systems of domination and exploitation. As Kristian Williams points out, “the police represent the point of contact between the coercive apparatus of the state and the lives of its citizens.”
The emphasis on the public safety mission of police, says Vitale, has partly been driven by the desire of more liberal politicians to legitimize the force in the eyes of the population. And, as Vitale points out, everyone wants to live in safe communities. But in the past few decades, as inequality has increased, police forces have both been expanded and given increasingly lethal weapons. Training, rather than emphasizing de-escalation techniques and respectful treatment of people, has been focused on promoting police safety through quick, violent reaction to perceived threats Vitale, 2017).
[Definition of “Liberal State”: Liberalism is a political and moral philosophy that espouses the values of liberty and equality. Liberal democracies espouse a wide array of views depending on their understanding of these principles, but they generally support civil rights, democratic ideals, secular government, gender and racial equality, freedom of speech, press, and religion. Liberalism became a distinct movement during the Age of the Enlightenment when it became popular with Western philosophers and economists. Refuting norms of power based on heredity, monarchy, and the divine right of kings, liberalism sought to replace them with traditional conservatism, representative democracy, and rule of law. French liberalism emphasized rejecting authoritarianism linked to nation-building].
How Are Private Policing Agencies Bound Up in This History?
Long before there was a Federal Bureau of Investigation, there was the Pinkerton National Detective Agency. The agency was established in the United States by a Scotsman, Allan Pinkerton. Pinkerton was at one time the largest private law enforcement organization in the world. Historian Frank Morn writes: “By the mid-1850s a few businessmen saw the need for greater control over their employees; their solution was to sponsor a private detective system. In February 1855, Allan Pinkerton, after consulting with six Midwestern railroads, created such an agency in Chicago.”
Pinkerton’s agents performed a variety of services for the people who hired them; this included basic security guard work, strike-breaking, and private military contract work.
During the labor strikes of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, businessmen hired the Pinkerton Agency to infiltrate unions. They provided guards to help keep strikers and union organizers out of factories; in some cases, they were employed to intimidate workers. The Pinkertons were also employed as guards in coal, iron, and lumber disputes in states that included Illinois, Michigan, New York, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia.
As Vitale Points out, the early police forces were created specifically to suppress workers’ movements. Pennsylvania, as it turns out, was home to some of the most militant unionism, resulting in numerous strikes and violent confrontations in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Local police were sometimes sympathetic toward the workers who were often the bulk of local constituents, so mine and factory owners turned to the state to provide them with armed forces to control strikes and intimidate organizers.
The Coal and Iron Police committed numerous atrocities, including the Latimer Massacre of 1897, in which they killed 19 unarmed miners and wounded 32 others. The final straw was the Anthracite Coal Strike of 1902, in which miners and employers waged a pitched battle that lasted five months and created national coal shortages.
Pinkerton’s Landing Bridge, Homestead, Pa
The Battle of Homestead
One of the most famous and bloody strikes of the nineteenth century occurred in Homestead, Pennsylvania. In 1892, the wealthy industrialist Andrew Carnegie demanded production to be raised. This was a demand that the Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steel Workers union refused.
The striking workers took control of the mill and sealed it off, effectively denying the company its own mill. Carnegie’s plant manager Henry Clay Frick then hired a police force of Pinkerton Detectives to take back the mill using armed force if necessary. Industrialists like Frick employed Pinkertons to spy on their unions. The police acted as strikebreakers and were often implicated as agents provocateurs, fomenting violence as a way of justifying their continued paychecks.
Three hundred Pinkerton Detectives armed with rifles boarded barges and sailed up the river in the early hours of July 6, 1892. After arriving at the plant on the river barges, the Pinkerton agents squared off with thousands of striking workers in an all-day battle waged with guns, bricks, and even dynamite. But as it turned out, the strikers had discovered the plan and roused the town at 2:00 a.m. to defend the plant from the Pinkerton invasion. When the private police force made landfall they were meet with thousands of strikers and their families, who worked together to drive them off.
Before this, the State of Pennsylvania’s initial response to the uprising had been to authorize a privatized police – the Coal and Iron Police. Local employers had only to pay a commission fee of $1 dollar each to deputize anyone of their choosing to be an officer of the law working directly for the employer, under the supervision of the Pinkertons or other private security forces.
In the end, the vastly outnumbered Pinkertons surrendered. More than a dozen people were left dead ( 3 Pinkertons and 6 steelworkers) and others were wounded. On November 20, the strike officially ended and Carnegie achieved control over his labor force again.
The fallout from the melee crippled the steel union, but it also branded the Pinkertons as “hired thugs,” leading several states to pass laws banning the use of outside guards in labor disputes. In the aftermath, political leaders and employers decided that a new, more legitimate-seeming system of labor management was needed, to be paid for out of the public coffers. The result was the creation of the Pennsylvania State Police in 1905.
While Frick’s hardline stance ultimately led to the demise of the union the Pinkertons role in the conflict helped cement their reputation as the paramilitary wing of big business. Anarchists would later unsuccessfully attempted to assassinate Frick. The broken union in Homestead eventually joined the United Steel Workers, formed later in 1942. The Homestead Strike still stands out in history as an example of how difficult it remains for unions to contest the power of management and secure the interests of workers.
“Pinkerton’s Landing Bridge,” as it is now known, is the nickname given to the Pittsburgh & Lake Erie Railroad Bridge at Munhall. The bridge crosses the Monongahela River between Muhall, Pa and Rankin, Pa.
Other Pinkerton confrontations that are noteworthy include the Great Railroad Strike of 1877 and the Battle of Blair Mountain (West Virginia) in 1921.
Pinkertons Inspired the Term “Private Eye”
The Pinkerton agency first made its name in the late-1850s for hunting down outlaws and providing private security for railroads. As the company’s profile grew, its iconic logo—a large, unblinking eye accompanied by the slogan “We Never Sleep”—gave rise to the term “private eye” as a nickname for detectives.
Pinkertons Hired the Nation’s First Female Detective
In 1856, 23-year-old widow Kate Warne walked into Pinkerton’s Chicago office and requested a job as a detective. Allan Pinkerton was hesitant to hire a female investigator, but he gave in after Warne convinced him that she could “worm out secrets in many places to which it was impossible for male detectives to gain access.” True to her word, Warne proved to be an expert at working undercover, once busting a thief by cozying up to his wife and convincing her to reveal the location of the loot. During another case, she got a suspect to feed her crucial information by disguising herself as a fortune-teller. Pinkerton would later list Warne as one of the best investigators he ever hired. Following her death in 1868, he even had her buried in his family plot.
Molly Maguires
In the 1870s, Franklin B. Gowen, President of the Philadelphia Reading Railroad, hired the agency to “investigate” its labor unions in the company’s mines. When mine owners and managers docked pay and benefits, some Mollies, as they were known to locals, killed whoever stood in the Irish miner’s way of a better life. A Pinkerton agent, James McParland, using the alias “James McKenna”, infiltrated the Molly Maguires, a 19th-century secret-society of mainly Irish-American coal miners, which ultimately lead to the downfall of the labor organization.
Molly Maguires
Pinkertons May Have Foiled a Presidential Assassination Attempt
Shortly before Abraham Lincoln’s first inauguration in March 1861, Allan Pinkerton traveled to Baltimore on a mission for a railroad company. He was investigating rumors that Southern sympathizers might sabotage the rail lines to Washington, D.C., but while gathering undercover intelligence, he learned that a secret cabal also planned to assassinate Lincoln, who was at that time on a whistle-stop tour, as he switched trains in Baltimore on his way to the capital.
Pinkerton tracked down the president-elect and informed him of the alleged plot. With the help of Kate Warne and several other agents, he then arranged for Lincoln to secretly board an overnight train and pass through Baltimore several hours ahead of his published schedule. Pinkerton operatives also cut telegraph lines to ensure the conspirators couldn’t communicate with one another, and Warne had Lincoln pose as her invalid brother to cover up his identity. The president-elect arrived safely in Washington the next morning, but his decision to skirt through Baltimore saw him lampooned and labeled a coward in the press. Meanwhile, none of the would-be assassins was ever arrested, leading some historians to conclude that the threat may have been exaggerated or even invented by Pinkerton.
Pinkertons Spied for the Union Army During the Civil War
Allan Pinkerton was a staunch abolitionist and Union man, and during the Civil War, he organized a secret intelligence service for General George B. McClellan’s Army of the Potomac. Operating under the name E.J. Allen, Pinkerton set up spy rings behind enemy lines and infiltrated southern sympathizer groups in the North. He even had agents interview escaped slaves to glean information about the Confederacy.
Pinkertons Created One of the First Criminal Databases
One of the many ways the Pinkertons revolutionized law enforcement was with their so-called “Rogues’ Gallery,” a collection of mug shots and case histories that the agency used to research and keep track of wanted men. Along with noting suspects’ distinguishing marks and scars, agents also collected newspaper clippings and generated rap sheets detailing their previous arrests, known associates and areas of expertise. A more sophisticated criminal library wouldn’t be assembled until the early 20th century and the birth of the FBI.
Pinkerton Detectives guarding the coffin of actress Marilyn Monroe, 1962
Modern Era
Due to its history of conflicts with labor unions, the name Pinkerton continues to evoke negative associations. Pinkertons evolved over the course of time and diversified from labor spying following revelations publicized by the La Follette Committee hearings in 1937. The firm’s criminal detection work likewise suffered from the police modernization movement. Calls for increased police professionalization saw the rise of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the bolstering of detective services offered by local police forces. All of these developments caused the Pinkertons influence to diminish over time.
In 1999, the company was bought by Securitas AB, a Swedish security company. This was followed by the acquisition of a longtime Pinkerton rival, the William J. Burns Detective Agency, to create an additional division, Securitas Security Services USA. The company thus continues to live on as a private security firm and guard service, however, it operates under the shortened name “Pinkerton.”
So What Do We Do Now? How Do We Fix the Police?
Vitale argues we need to rethink the role of policing and to reduce the ways in which police are used in our society. Does that mean we should eliminate police forces altogether? Probably not. History doesn’t have to be the template from which we base our present operations. We can and must find a way to chart a path so that we can realize a more progressive form of policing that serves our modern society; one that is not based on reinforcing and exacerbating existing social inequalities.
As Vitale argues, we need people who are trained to deal with our most vulnerable and difficult populations; people who understand their point of view and who take seriously their role to help them, not just arrest, restrain and control them.
Beyond that, we need to deal with the manifest social problems that derive from maintaining a society in which large parts of the population are considered surplus or undeserving.
Sources
“The Myth of Liberal Policing,” by Alex Vitale, 2017.
The End of Policing, by Alex Vitale, 2017.
“10 Things You May Not Know About the Pinkertons,” by Evan Andrews, 2015
Consequently, while the stated mission of the police might have changed to “Serve and Protect,” Vitale argues that they continue to operate, as demonstrated by police practice, in ways that are consistent with their origins. Vitale argues:
The reality is that the police have always been at the root of a system for managing and producing inequality. This is accomplished by suppressing social movements and tightly managing the behaviors of poor and nonwhite people in ways that benefit those already in positions of economic and political power. Police have always functioned as a force for controlling those on the losing end of these economic and political arrangements, quelling social upheavals that could no longer be managed by existing private, communal, and informal processes.
This can be seen in the earliest origins of policing, which were tied to three basic social arrangements of inequality in the 18thcentury: slavery, colonialism, and the control of an industrial working class.
In other words, policing was built upon the bulwark of slavery (and the backs of slaves) as this unfolded in the old Confederacy of the United States. The role of the slave patrols was not to simply operate as “hired hands” of plantations; they were embedded deep into the profit motive and raison d’etre of the plantations. Put another way, they protected white economic and cultural power; they shored up profitability by ensuring that a racialized group of black people would be perpetually hunted, socially disenfranchised, and kept as property, if not for the plantation, but rather for the state.
According to Vitale, “this created what Allan Silver called a “policed society,” in which state power was significantly expanded to face down the demands for justice from those subject to these systems of domination and exploitation. As Kristian Williams points out, “the police represent the point of contact between the coercive apparatus of the state and the lives of its citizens.”
The emphasis on the public safety mission of police, says Vitale, has partly been driven by the desire of more liberal politicians to legitimize the force in the eyes of the population. And, as Vitale points out, everyone wants to live in safe communities. But in the past few decades, as inequality has increased, police forces have both been expanded and given increasingly lethal weapons. Training, rather than emphasizing de-escalation techniques and respectful treatment of people, has been focused on promoting police safety through quick, violent reaction to perceived threats Vitale, 2017).
[Definition of “Liberal State”: Liberalism is a political and moral philosophy that espouses the values of liberty and equality. Liberal democracies espouse a wide array of views depending on their understanding of these principles, but they generally support civil rights, democratic ideals, secular government, gender and racial equality, freedom of speech, press, and religion. Liberalism became a distinct movement during the Age of the Enlightenment when it became popular with Western philosophers and economists. Refuting norms of power based on heredity, monarchy, and the divine right of kings, liberalism sought to replace them with traditional conservatism, representative democracy, and rule of law. French liberalism emphasized rejecting authoritarianism linked to nation-building].
How Are Private Policing Agencies Bound Up in This History?
Long before there was a Federal Bureau of Investigation, there was the Pinkerton National Detective Agency. The agency was established in the United States by a Scotsman, Allan Pinkerton. Pinkerton was at one time the largest private law enforcement organization in the world. Historian Frank Morn writes: “By the mid-1850s a few businessmen saw the need for greater control over their employees; their solution was to sponsor a private detective system. In February 1855, Allan Pinkerton, after consulting with six Midwestern railroads, created such an agency in Chicago.”
Pinkerton’s agents performed a variety of services for the people who hired them; this included basic security guard work, strike-breaking, and private military contract work.
During the labor strikes of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, businessmen hired the Pinkerton Agency to infiltrate unions. They provided guards to help keep strikers and union organizers out of factories; in some cases, they were employed to intimidate workers. The Pinkertons were also employed as guards in coal, iron, and lumber disputes in states that included Illinois, Michigan, New York, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia.
As Vitale Points out, the early police forces were created specifically to suppress workers’ movements. Pennsylvania, as it turns out, was home to some of the most militant unionism, resulting in numerous strikes and violent confrontations in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Local police were sometimes sympathetic toward the workers who were often the bulk of local constituents, so mine and factory owners turned to the state to provide them with armed forces to control strikes and intimidate organizers.
The Coal and Iron Police committed numerous atrocities, including the Latimer Massacre of 1897, in which they killed 19 unarmed miners and wounded 32 others. The final straw was the Anthracite Coal Strike of 1902, in which miners and employers waged a pitched battle that lasted five months and created national coal shortages.
Pinkerton’s Landing Bridge, Homestead, Pa
The Battle of Homestead
One of the most famous and bloody strikes of the nineteenth century occurred in Homestead, Pennsylvania. In 1892, the wealthy industrialist Andrew Carnegie demanded production to be raised. This was a demand that the Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steel Workers union refused.
The striking workers took control of the mill and sealed it off, effectively denying the company its own mill. Carnegie’s plant manager Henry Clay Frick then hired a police force of Pinkerton Detectives to take back the mill using armed force if necessary. Industrialists like Frick employed Pinkertons to spy on their unions. The police acted as strikebreakers and were often implicated as agents provocateurs, fomenting violence as a way of justifying their continued paychecks.
Three hundred Pinkerton Detectives armed with rifles boarded barges and sailed up the river in the early hours of July 6, 1892. After arriving at the plant on the river barges, the Pinkerton agents squared off with thousands of striking workers in an all-day battle waged with guns, bricks, and even dynamite. But as it turned out, the strikers had discovered the plan and roused the town at 2:00 a.m. to defend the plant from the Pinkerton invasion. When the private police force made landfall they were meet with thousands of strikers and their families, who worked together to drive them off.
Before this, the State of Pennsylvania’s initial response to the uprising had been to authorize a privatized police – the Coal and Iron Police. Local employers had only to pay a commission fee of $1 dollar each to deputize anyone of their choosing to be an officer of the law working directly for the employer, under the supervision of the Pinkertons or other private security forces.
In the end, the vastly outnumbered Pinkertons surrendered. More than a dozen people were left dead ( 3 Pinkertons and 6 steelworkers) and others were wounded. On November 20, the strike officially ended and Carnegie achieved control over his labor force again.
The fallout from the melee crippled the steel union, but it also branded the Pinkertons as “hired thugs,” leading several states to pass laws banning the use of outside guards in labor disputes. In the aftermath, political leaders and employers decided that a new, more legitimate-seeming system of labor management was needed, to be paid for out of the public coffers. The result was the creation of the Pennsylvania State Police in 1905.
While Frick’s hardline stance ultimately led to the demise of the union the Pinkertons role in the conflict helped cement their reputation as the paramilitary wing of big business. Anarchists would later unsuccessfully attempted to assassinate Frick. The broken union in Homestead eventually joined the United Steel Workers, formed later in 1942. The Homestead Strike still stands out in history as an example of how difficult it remains for unions to contest the power of management and secure the interests of workers.
“Pinkerton’s Landing Bridge,” as it is now known, is the nickname given to the Pittsburgh & Lake Erie Railroad Bridge at Munhall. The bridge crosses the Monongahela River between Muhall, Pa and Rankin, Pa.
Other Pinkerton confrontations that are noteworthy include the Great Railroad Strike of 1877 and the Battle of Blair Mountain (West Virginia) in 1921.
Pinkertons Inspired the Term “Private Eye”
The Pinkerton agency first made its name in the late-1850s for hunting down outlaws and providing private security for railroads. As the company’s profile grew, its iconic logo—a large, unblinking eye accompanied by the slogan “We Never Sleep”—gave rise to the term “private eye” as a nickname for detectives.
Pinkertons Hired the Nation’s First Female Detective
In 1856, 23-year-old widow Kate Warne walked into Pinkerton’s Chicago office and requested a job as a detective. Allan Pinkerton was hesitant to hire a female investigator, but he gave in after Warne convinced him that she could “worm out secrets in many places to which it was impossible for male detectives to gain access.” True to her word, Warne proved to be an expert at working undercover, once busting a thief by cozying up to his wife and convincing her to reveal the location of the loot. During another case, she got a suspect to feed her crucial information by disguising herself as a fortune-teller. Pinkerton would later list Warne as one of the best investigators he ever hired. Following her death in 1868, he even had her buried in his family plot.
Molly Maguires
In the 1870s, Franklin B. Gowen, President of the Philadelphia Reading Railroad, hired the agency to “investigate” its labor unions in the company’s mines. When mine owners and managers docked pay and benefits, some Mollies, as they were known to locals, killed whoever stood in the Irish miner’s way of a better life. A Pinkerton agent, James McParland, using the alias “James McKenna”, infiltrated the Molly Maguires, a 19th-century secret-society of mainly Irish-American coal miners, which ultimately lead to the downfall of the labor organization.
Molly Maguires
Pinkertons May Have Foiled a Presidential Assassination Attempt
Shortly before Abraham Lincoln’s first inauguration in March 1861, Allan Pinkerton traveled to Baltimore on a mission for a railroad company. He was investigating rumors that Southern sympathizers might sabotage the rail lines to Washington, D.C., but while gathering undercover intelligence, he learned that a secret cabal also planned to assassinate Lincoln, who was at that time on a whistle-stop tour, as he switched trains in Baltimore on his way to the capital.
Pinkerton tracked down the president-elect and informed him of the alleged plot. With the help of Kate Warne and several other agents, he then arranged for Lincoln to secretly board an overnight train and pass through Baltimore several hours ahead of his published schedule. Pinkerton operatives also cut telegraph lines to ensure the conspirators couldn’t communicate with one another, and Warne had Lincoln pose as her invalid brother to cover up his identity. The president-elect arrived safely in Washington the next morning, but his decision to skirt through Baltimore saw him lampooned and labeled a coward in the press. Meanwhile, none of the would-be assassins was ever arrested, leading some historians to conclude that the threat may have been exaggerated or even invented by Pinkerton.
Pinkertons Spied for the Union Army During the Civil War
Allan Pinkerton was a staunch abolitionist and Union man, and during the Civil War, he organized a secret intelligence service for General George B. McClellan’s Army of the Potomac. Operating under the name E.J. Allen, Pinkerton set up spy rings behind enemy lines and infiltrated southern sympathizer groups in the North. He even had agents interview escaped slaves to glean information about the Confederacy.
Pinkertons Created One of the First Criminal Databases
One of the many ways the Pinkertons revolutionized law enforcement was with their so-called “Rogues’ Gallery,” a collection of mug shots and case histories that the agency used to research and keep track of wanted men. Along with noting suspects’ distinguishing marks and scars, agents also collected newspaper clippings and generated rap sheets detailing their previous arrests, known associates and areas of expertise. A more sophisticated criminal library wouldn’t be assembled until the early 20th century and the birth of the FBI.
Pinkerton Detectives guarding the coffin of actress Marilyn Monroe, 1962
Modern Era
Due to its history of conflicts with labor unions, the name Pinkerton continues to evoke negative associations. Pinkertons evolved over the course of time and diversified from labor spying following revelations publicized by the La Follette Committee hearings in 1937. The firm’s criminal detection work likewise suffered from the police modernization movement. Calls for increased police professionalization saw the rise of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the bolstering of detective services offered by local police forces. All of these developments caused the Pinkertons influence to diminish over time.
In 1999, the company was bought by Securitas AB, a Swedish security company. This was followed by the acquisition of a longtime Pinkerton rival, the William J. Burns Detective Agency, to create an additional division, Securitas Security Services USA. The company thus continues to live on as a private security firm and guard service, however, it operates under the shortened name “Pinkerton.”
So What Do We Do Now? How Do We Fix the Police?
Vitale argues we need to rethink the role of policing and to reduce the ways in which police are used in our society. Does that mean we should eliminate police forces altogether? Probably not. History doesn’t have to be the template from which we base our present operations. We can and must find a way to chart a path so that we can realize a more progressive form of policing that serves our modern society; one that is not based on reinforcing and exacerbating existing social inequalities.
As Vitale argues, we need people who are trained to deal with our most vulnerable and difficult populations; people who understand their point of view and who take seriously their role to help them, not just arrest, restrain and control them.
Beyond that, we need to deal with the manifest social problems that derive from maintaining a society in which large parts of the population are considered surplus or undeserving.
Sources
“The Myth of Liberal Policing,” by Alex Vitale, 2017.
The End of Policing, by Alex Vitale, 2017.
“10 Things You May Not Know About the Pinkertons,” by Evan Andrews, 2015
Alex Vitale’s The End of Policing explains how the current role and function of U.S. policing inextricably link to its historical origins. The structures of early American police forces were informed by slave patrols and industrial control, each set up to maintain the current social and economic hierarchies. According to him, reforms such as body cameras and diversity training, so often presented as a solution, can’t really change what’s going on because they are superficial fixes.
For example, in Ferguson, police treated a poverty ridden community as an ATM to generate revenue. Historically, those actions represented how law enforcement had been used as a means of controlling Black people and other classes of outcasts. It is not that the violence against Black communities is new; but instead, it is a function of these more ancient patterns continuing consistently. Without question, deep fixes start with understanding these problems. We need a transformed approach which will affect the culture of policing and make it serve all communities with fairness and equity.
The duties of the police is to serve and protect its community, but the origin of it was to protect mainly white men. The “slave patrol” was only for the interest of the “wealthy benefactors”. Policing wasn’t for protecting all but instead for the propertied classes. In the article, it says how the system was all for managing and producing inequality and even with their slogan being changed to “serve and protect” later on, there is not much to see of it.
The origins of Policing in the US traces back to North America, specifically the Carolinas with the slave patrol that would capture runaways and enforce rules. The history of policing is really sad to think about especially if you consider all of violence that was endured in the past. I wouldn’t consider that to be policing but instead of people who will only help if it works in their favor. The way the policing worked in the past is sort of similar to how it is in today’s society where only a certain group will get help and it may depend on race and gender.
The police assume people based on their race, gender, skin color etc rather than for their actions. The police are often really quick to judge and assume. Especially with bias and inequality, police will compare you to a criminal just by judging your race. I feel like even with all the talk about the police, it is still not discussed enough about how early policing is still related to policing in this day and society. Early policing had no purpose of serving and protecting as they say now and even with reform, I do not expect to see much of a change in policing. If it hasn’t changed from early on, why would it all of a sudden change now.?
How the public may interpret this is by thinking all crimes and criminals are the same and you can be considered a criminal based on your skin color. The police are not actually serving nor protecting the community as a whole but instead protecting their reputation and only people who can help benefit them. They used slave patrol as a way to protect themselves, the wealthy, and discriminate without repercussions and its not as different in this day and age.
While reading this article about early policing. one thing that caught my eye what stood out to me was how the Texas Rangers used to capture African Americans to protect the wealthy. This article says a lot about police corruption from back until now. If slaves tried to escape or do anything other than work on the plantations, the police would step in to stop them. Even if a slave were freed, the police would still find a reason to go after them and arrest them. This explains a lot about learning about how the police treated black people with violence back in the day and can help us understand what happening nowadays. Police corruption was a problem then, and it’s clear that it’s still an issue today. When looking at the past, see that the system was to build and protect the wealthy and keep slaves from escaping or organizing. Honestly, that doesn’t really seem like true policing ” serve and protect” It seems like the police are only trying to protect one group and ignoring the others because of their skin color. My question is why do issues from back then continue today with policing? Many of the problems with policing today have been there since the beginning. We need to make a change.
The context given on the history of the Pinkerton agents was crucial for my understanding of why some modern police units struggle with unequal treatment and not having an implicit bias. History has shown that ever since even before policing units were created, groups that are given the power to enforce laws and protect the peace tend to more often than not abuse that power and use it to protect their own self interests or the self interest of their employer. As the case of the texas rangers were, rangers would be paid by wealthy settlers to harass, detain, and ticket Mexican settlers in hopes they would move away from the unequal treatment and sell the land to the wealthy settlers. Even though it may not be as obvious or horrible in treatment as it was a hundred years ago, many of the same types of actions occur today. Police today are supposed to be held to the highest standard but this tends to be the opposite of the public’s interpretation of the police as it has become a stereotype for these officers that range from all parts of the country to have a racial implicit bias towards certain groups, due to a large number of them actually having these beliefs. Looking for a solution to this issue is no easy task as there is no way to determine how someone will treat another person or a group of individuals of another ethnicity until the officer is put into that situation and forced to show how much discretion they want to use.
This article on the history of policing is very interesting for me. Going into this, I was unaware of how police started in the United States. The main point that stuck out to me was that the police started out as slave patrols. This article really shows that the police’s main focus back then was to keep the people of color in their eyes at all times. Wealthy people often had these patrols to protect what was their’s from the poor and/or people of color. Slave patrols were against people of color. In today’s day and age, people still see the same trends going on as there was back then. Many people of color are often still getting treated poor today by police. No matter if it’s harassment or brutality, this can compare to what has happened in the past.
I found it striking that the origins of policing in the U.S. were not primarily about ensuring safety but about managing and perpetuating inequality, especially targeting the poor and people of color to protect the interests of the wealthy and powerful. Historically, policing was closely tied to practices like slavery and colonialism, and it’s clear that despite various reforms over the years, issues of corruption and racism still persist. The fact that early police were mainly focused on suppressing enslaved people and controlling working-class communities reflects a troubling continuity with the present, where policing often still benefits the wealthy and disproportionately impacts marginalized communities.
The comparison between past and present policing practices reveals that while petty crimes were often overlooked in the past, today’s focus on minor offenses and quotas can exacerbate inequalities, particularly for low-income and minority groups. The lack of effective training during the pandemic highlights ongoing challenges in policing. The history of entities like the Pinkertons, operating with minimal oversight, also underscores how recent and persistent these issues are. Understanding this historical context is crucial for anyone involved in the justice system, as it sheds light on ongoing patterns of violence and inequity. In my opinion that’s the main reason why people until this day can’t understand or respect the police due to the history repeating itself.
I think it is important to understand the history of policing and how in translates to policing in America today. In early policing in London, which was later passed down to Boston Massachusetts, A man by the name Sir Robert Peel mission was questionable. His mission was not particularly to fight crime, but to manage disorder and protect the higher class from slaves and criminals. Although policing has changed in many ways since this style was adopted, we as a country still face similar issues. Corruption is still a big factor that can be somewhat blamed on earlier policing in London. Police Brutality in the earlier days is still a common issue today. In the earlier days, The police force was made up of Irish-Americans, which affected social class and ethnic identity. We can still see this as a huge issue in policing when it comes to racism and bias. Some of the patterns of violence by police on people of color, can be traced all the way back to when policing began.
If I were not a criminal justice major than I would think that American police were originally created to serve and protect the people of the country. But I could not be more wrong their original purpose was to be slave patrols, and they would capture and return run away slaves to their owners. Robert peel and his police force (London metropolitan police of Sir Robert peel) focused on the protection of property and putting down strikes. But in both American and London the police always protected the wealthy. After reading about police in this article I finally understand that the reasons why the police were created was never to protect and serve. They were created to help the people of higher status, and you can see that it is still like that today. In today’s world the better the neighborhood and the wealthier you are the more likely you are going to get police aid if you are in danger. Overall, the history of the police in America is not good at all and even today we still have issues with police, and it does not look like it will be changing for the better anytime soon.
I think policing in America has always been racist because it stemmed from slave patrols and honestly has never been different since. Not many people even know of the origin of policing which I think is insane because it is very interesting and should be taught in schools everywhere. They say they are here to serve and protect us but every other day an innocent black person is being harassed, profiled, or even murdered in the media which makes it hard to see them in a good light when they are always being caught doing bad things.
As someone not from Pittsburgh or Pennsylvania, it’s interesting to learn about the Pinkertons since I had never heard of them before. Their history and legacy are really fascinating. It’s surprising how they went from private detectives to being known for their involvement in strike-breaking and labor disputes. The Pinkertons played a big role in the labor struggles of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, which is likely why their name still carries negative associations, especially related to workers’ rights and unions. Learning how they evolved from being the largest private law enforcement agency to being absorbed into Securitas shows how much private security firms have changed over time. The idea of private companies being hired to break strikes feels so different from today’s public police forces, but the Pinkerton story is still relevant to modern conversations about labor rights, policing, and private security. It’s also surprising to see how involved they were in U.S. history beyond labor issues–like protecting President Lincoln and spying for the Union during the Civil War. Their history shows how closely connected policing, security, and political power have been, with private security firms still playing a role today, even in different contexts
The history of the police is not only interesting but also very important to know to understand how policing is the same and different now. Policing started in the south to break up slaves from organizing as well as the London model which both in essence was made to protect the wealthy, such as property and their money and businesses. Knowing this start to policing helps to understand and acknowledge the mindset of the police and why it seems to be shaped in the way of targeting one group of people instead of another. If the police are built up on negligence, then major reforms are needed. Even with reforms that happened it is still important to understand this model of policing is basically saying the rich white men commit no crimes and these are the ones who need to be protected. One big thing today is how police are seen patrolling and out more in more poverty areas as well as seen more in those communities in minorities. This is one big flaw with the police and makes it seem as instead of protecting communities, they are looking to create problems and targets. This is why we still need to take a look at policing and remove the function in which policing was designed and we now need to fix racism inside the justice system we still have. My question is why are officers the only public service worker without training?
When I think of police officers, I always think that they are in our backyards to protect us from other people who would try to do us harm. However, after reading this article, I can officially say that police officers were never meant to do so. Policing went all the way back to the London Metropolitan police and they had no intention of protecting the common citizens like you and I. They instead protected the interests of the wealthy people in the country so that they could earn a bigger buck. This mentality sounds a lot like modern day policing as police officers will take certain calls just to get extra money in their pockets by going on overtime. They aren’t doing it to make our society a better place to live in. There were also more evil cops back in the day called the Texas Rangers. I always thought that the Texas Rangers were just a fun name for the baseball team, but I never thought that it was an actual group. The Rangers were a model of slave patrols. This made me think that some reasons that the cops of today are racist towards other groups of people is because the early police were supposed to keep a close eye on the African Americans that worked on the plantations. One final group that was mentioned in this article was the Pinkertons. I always thought that the main reason for their existence was to control possible gangs/outlaws, but they also were used to spy and stop strikes within unions as well. Pinkertons looked out for the bigger, wealthier men rather than the smaller, working class that probably needed more protection. Despite our modern interpretation of what police officers are meant to do in our society, just know that their history goes back many years and most likely not for the reasons you would expect.
When I think of police officers, I always think that they are in our backyards to protect us from other people who would try to do us harm. However, after reading this article, I can officially say that police officers were never meant to do so. Policing went all the way back to the London Metropolitan police and they had no intention of protecting the common citizens like you and I. They instead protected the interests of the wealthy people in the country so that they could earn a bigger buck. This mentality sounds a lot like modern day policing as police officers will take certain calls just to get extra money in their pockets by going on overtime. They aren’t doing it to make our society a better place to live in. There were also more evil cops back in the day called the Texas Rangers. I always thought that the Texas Rangers were just a fun name for the baseball team, but I never thought that it was an actual group. The Rangers were a model of slave patrols. This made me think that some reasons that the cops of today are racist towards other groups of people is because the early police were supposed to keep a close eye on the African Americans that worked on the plantations. One final group that was mentioned in this article was the Pinkertons. I always thought that the main reason for their existence was to control possible gangs/outlaws, but they also were used to spy and stop strikes within unions as well. They would have rather protected the big men of the country instead of looking out for the decent union workers that are just trying to provide for their families. Despite our modern interpretation of what police officers are meant to do in our society, just know that their history goes back many years and most likely not for the reasons you would expect.
Part of this article brought light onto the Runaway Slave Patrol. In the North the police would help keep control over the working class population, who were immigrants more often than not. In the South, the police helped plantation owners keep slaves from organizing, and found ways to detain them when they tried to leave. When comparing the North and South slave patrols together, the same could be said for the police we have now, in the sense that they are so different yet so alike. Take for example, the police in Pennsylvania compared to the police in New York. Both have the same title, and are supposed to protect, but the way that they go about their business is very different. The police in New York stop and frisk, almost all minorities, at any given point throughout the day because they can. The police in Pennsylvania do not stop and frisk the way that the police in New York do. Something else that caught my eye while reading this article is how police brutality and corruption were problems that were noticed in the early 20th century, yet not much has been done to change the brutality or corruption. I understand that there are sometimes not enough resources to do what needs to be done in order to get rid of dirty cops, but those are the people that are supposed to protect. How is anyone supposed to feel safe when the issue is brought to light but they feel as if no one truly cares for their well-being? A good bit of problems like that step from a dirty chief, and they think they are untouchable because it would take a lot to take them down, and they are so high up and no one would ever really want to because not only would that be a lot of resources, but that position would then also need filled. However, it is better to get the dirty chief out of position, because more likely than not, the other dirty cops will follow because they have no one to protect them.
The history of policing was very eye opening to me. The thing that really caught my eye was the Texas Rangers and how they would catch African Americans to protect the wealthy. I think this explains policing today and with how brutality is mostly toward African American people, the system was literally rooted that way. Honestly by now you would think policing ways would have changed or gotten better, but unfortunately we aren’t there yet which is the sad truth. Policing originated with African American people so it is not a surprise it is still a problem today, i mean the origination of it was to catch slaves and bring them back. I don’t personally think this problem will ever be resolved, policing is something that was based around brutality on African American people and obviously today we are still seeing this problem. Policing is obviously not based around African American people like it once was and is obviously a little better then back then, but it is still a problem some people hate to face and realize. I think the real question is can we ever fully fix a system that was based around brutality on African American people?
Policing as we know it originated in England as she mentions.
North and South took different routes to policing because they had different socioeconomic cultures. One was free labor. The other slave labor.
The credibility of government relies upon it’s ability to monopolize force and to control/prevent the population from engaging in uncontrolled antisocial behavior and violence.
This lays at the core of “civilization”. All governments have it. Left, right, religious, secular…whoever is in power needs to be able to ensure that society is stable so policy can be enacted and executed. It therefore needs a force that acts as an guarantee or to put it more bluntly, an enforcer.
This implied violence aspect of government has been around for thousands and thousands of years.
A government that cannot monopolize force and cannot maintain a stable society will inevitably collapse. Excesses occur in all societies because humans are innately corrupt and prone to the violence.
The real question is why are people ignoring the enormously mountain of evidence that points to us being in a violence quandary. Violence of the State vs that of the People.
The history of policing was a very interesting topic to look into. With that being said the criminal justice system is hard to shine light upon. Looking back into the past and seeing that the system was created to protect the wealthy. But not only protect the wealthy but keep slaves from running or coming together etc. I wouldn’t call that policing by any means it just sounds like a group of people protecting a certain group and deciding not to help other just because of their skin color. In which we still see forms of today in our society. Which also brings up a great point about how we leaves things like this out of our schools history books. Which is absurd after reading this and defiantly think that it shouldn’t be forgotten and should actually be brought up and talked about. As for reforming the police I don’t think it is possible to fully do anytime soon from what I see and read. But I do think we can take little steps in doing so but it will take time proper training and most of all the right people that want to make a change. With that being said we can only hope for a change in our criminal justice system!
While going through and analyzing this article you see that policing in the United states was rooted and begun with problems. In the beginning of policing these officers were trained and made to protect those who had money and power and those were mainly all white men. Now while officers in the south were mainly focused on the slaves not being able to escape or be free and not let them organize a way out. Throughout the years there was ways and things put in place to help fix or reform the justice system but they never fully worked, there was always a problem with officers and racism. The difference in crimes or being cited for a crime from today’s world to back in the day is drastically different. In the past, lots of crimes would just be let go and now people are being written up for petty crimes. But from now to then, how much training and learning have these officers went through and what are the differences. Someone shared in class that going through the academy during COVID was way different and they did not learn that much and being put on the job was their first real life interaction with crime while being an officer. That should not have been how it worked out in my opinion, but what were they suppose to do during a pandemic? I don’t think the justice system will ever fully change but I think there are ways and things to implement that can help change it little by little.
– Starting off looking at the beginning of policing, it looks as if the London police force and “slave patrols” were made to protect not crime fighting, but more wealthy rich white men. And their job was to protect the property and financial assets of those rich wealthy white men. The first time a real policing issue came about in the U.S. was 1828. This was after the U.S became more diverse and there were a lot more immigrants in the country. Therefore, there was a lot more chaos and the police were required for things like riots that would happen monthly. My question when I read this is, why is it that when the country started becoming more diverse there was more of a need for policing? That leads me into the next thing involved with policing up until today, racism. Ever since the slave patrols in Texas, there has always been a hatred and poorly treating black people since policing was a thing. You would think that by now we would have grown out of that and moved on, but that is not close to the truth of policing whatsoever. Police brutality was even a thing since the beginning. As I read this entire article, it really opened my eyes to seeing that policing has a changed a lot, but also hasn’t if you know what I mean. A lot of the issues with policing today were issues from the very start. And sooner than later we need to change this.
While reading this post, I could not help but think how some people may argue that a large issue with the criminal justice system is the racism that is systemically rooted within it. The police were originally made to protect the wealthy, and at this point in time, white men were the face of wealth. They were also used in the South to help slave owners stop slaves from organization. When slaves found ways to be free or escape, the police found ways to detain them. Although there has been “reform” in the policing and criminal justice system in the past, I think that this systemic racism will never be successfully abolished if it is still traced back to what the police were originally created for. As stated in the reading, in the current day as well as over the years there have been many instances in the justice system involving police where it is an echo of the past. Police brutality has been at an all time high over these years; but is it just becoming a widespread issue once again or is the influence of social media and the media in general actually shedding light on what has been happening from the beginning? You simply cannot completely reform a system that was created with hatred and racism rooted within, and I think this is a big issue that people may not see a problem with. As the reading says, the police have always been at the root of a system that manages and produces inequality; and I think that may be a very big shock to people who are not educated on this. This reading really opened my eyes on how deeply rooted in racism the policing system is. If it was originally created to serve and protect the wealthy white man, how much reform can really be done to wipe out the years and years of deep rooted history of ensuring any African American would never be equal to a person with white skin?
As life progresses situations or things evolve. Policing in the other hand it hasn’t been such a successful cooperation in some time. Like most organizations you must start somewhere. Policing started with the main idea as to protect and shut down. They would protect properties and manage disorder. The problem of evolving is there is only to ways it ends up. Better then before or even worse. Today police officers tend to cite or even punish for petty crimes that wouldn’t have even gotten a grin back in the day. They use their badge to not demonstrate justice, but more like corruption. Back in 1828, the Christmas riot took place with over thousands of participants erupting the streets. After that several people demanded more watch a patrol for safety. This eventually forming the police. Police then began to demonstrate total control. Examples include the slave industries. Owners would use police to detain or capture freed slaves. They used their badges to violate rights that did not exist and still to this day it happens day in and day out. Comparing the police today to back in the day police, you can see the pattern. They thrived in the black communities. Spiking the arrest rates against the African American population as early as 1820’s till present day. Similarities thrive within each system of the police. Corruption stayed the same but has different priorities. Police back then mainly focused on corruption with money and laundering. Today corruption does exist, but its more focused on numbers and “quotas”. The past is the past. But it is for a reason. Witnessing police brutality today is just a shadow from the past. In order to change that, history needs to be learned and changed.
This article about early policing in the United States it stood out to me that the root of policing was never to keep everyone safe, it was for managing and producing inequality. One of the main reasons they began this was to suppress social movements and tightly manage the behaviors of the poor and nonwhite people to benefit people in power. In other words, they were tied to the most basic social arrangements like slavery, colonialism, and control of working class but this honestly did not surprise me by how our history has fallen recently and makes me realizes on how we need to rethink the role of policing and reduce the ways police are being put to use for in our society.
In my eyes I still believe policing is a little like this when it comes to police corruption, they focus more on the wealthy, put them first and leave most of the poor people to fend for themselves. Since it still in some ways still like the past, I believe it would be a good idea to have an understanding of the past role played by police, it can tell you a lot about the patterns of violence that is in today’s modern police, and this will help you if you plan on having a career in the justice system.
The formation of Police in the US, began when rioting became more widespread. Police were introduced into the slave model and became known to help plantation owners break up efforts from slaves escaping. It demonstrates how the US was structured to protect the wealthy while leaving the working class to fend for themselves. Even after slaves were set free, people continued to form excuses to imprison them. It was pure racism, I’m certain of it. It was always the rich white plantation owners vs the low class slaves. And our country still has racism problems today. After reading this article, I believe that the truth is that the police have been and still are the root of the issues. Police brutality and inequality came about during the invention of the policing era. The policing difficulties from back then continue to play a role today. But how do we fix it? For us to be able to change things and stop this corrupt cycle, I believe we need to hire younger generations. Younger people being welcomed into the system will give it fresh perspectives and make it less about control and restraint. Younger generations, in my opinion, are more considerate and welcoming of all people, regardless of the color of their skin. Being the officer that is prepared to comprehend and help anyone in need is what it takes to serve and protect those who require assistance. For a reason to assist and protect their people, they are held to a higher level. Since there isn’t much of that, police personally should put more effort to promote the use of their motto, “serve and protect.” All people should have the equal opportunity to have someone to serve and protect them, regardless of their race, gender, ethnicity, or even class. We should be moving forward with great change not circling back in time.
It is quite remarkable, yet unsurprising, to learn that the actions within contemporary policing are consistent with that of their predecessors. In retrospect, I wonder just how much the training and protocols of police have changed over time, as there seems to be a disregard for proper education. I am relieved to know that there is now an emphasis on trauma-informed and evidence-based practice within the field of research on policing, however, I worry about how long it will take to perfect this research to inform practice and policy. It doesn’t help that seemingly every week, another story arises surrounding police brutality and misconduct. Moreover, given that the subjugation of working/minority class people has transpired for more than a century, I sincerely question whether it is possible to make an everlasting impact within policing institutions. Nevertheless, I was quite surprised to learn that Pinkerton is still an operational company given its past. Furthermore, after viewing their website, they make no mention of their history with union-busting and strike-breaking, nor their involvement in the Battle of Homestead. For a company that swears to the value of integrity, it is rather disingenuous that they blatantly ignore this piece of U.S. history. On a separate note, as one from Texas, I am rather curious how the modus operandi for the Texas Rangers has changed through history as well. The organization naturally is not the same as it was prior; currently, it’s a branch of the state’s Department of Public Safety rather than its own standalone organization. Despite this, I can hypothesize that their actions remain relatively consistent with that of their past, to a degree, as well as that of other contemporary police agencies.
Texas Rangers have an “interesting” history to say the least. I have some light reading for you if you are interested.
I would definitely be interested in hearing more!
Ok, will bring my book to you next Tuesday.
Early policing in the United States was based off of different models. It started off as protect the wealthy instead of protect everyone. The so called police were just used to help control the slaves. If the slaves were trying to plan an escape or were doing something other than work on the plantations, the police would break it up and step in. Even if a slave was freed, the police would still go after them and detain them for a reason they would form. Educating ourselves about the violence the police had towards black people back then can relate to modern era. You can see how police corruption is still an ongoing thing like it was back then. Nowadays, corruption is based off of criminal statistics and distinct actions based on power/authority. At the early stages of policing, the idea of taking money from a poor, usually black, person was heavily in play. Our role for police today and as always is for them to “Serve and Protect.” The question that needs to be asked for some policemen, are they distinguishing the people they serve and protect? Inequality has always been a massive problem in the world and policing system. Inequality is not just speaking on treating people of color differently, but also people of distinct social classes. In my opinion, I do feel we can make a change to the policing system, but not for a longtime to come. We need the younger, more educated generations to step in and make a change and reform how the police are viewed. My question is, why would someone want to join a system that is so corrupt?
Learning about the historic purpose of policing is what strikes me the most about this article. Not only was I not aware of the information displayed but it took me by surprise how much the police are trying to hide from us nowadays. Ever since the Slave Patrols and the Texas Rangers had dominance over slaves, the main objectives of those who were sworn to “serve and protect” had a sole duty to ensure the downfall of African Americans. To make matters worse is that the idea ensures the power and success of White people for generations to come. It is as if they always seen us as animals rather than human beings just like them.
To think, this history isn’t taught in majority of schools in the same country that it happened. This information is shielded probably because they want us to “forget and forgive”, but something like this can be hard to take in especially when it was our ancestors whom underwent the harsh treatment. Plus when similar treatment, by again those whom job is to “serve and protect”, is occurring everyday we leave our homes. Rather than pushing this information to the dust, the police should use this to find ways to support people of color to ensure that we are all treated equally and rid corruption from their system.
It’s worrying to know that the police should represent protection for society. However, it represents protection only for certain people. Worst of all, it’s something that has been going on since the beginning. A group of people was created to protect wealthy people from what they called danger. They were given guns to keep people in order, not to protect them. If this were not true because there were patrols dedicated to catching slaves, their only job was to catch people fighting to regain their freedom. This is just one example of the corrupt past of the police. Which has made it a habit to serve the rich people before the rest of the people.
I don’t think it’s possible to reform the police, or at least not in the near future. Because in the first place it should be accepted that today you can still see racism and brutality in the police. Which hardly all people can accept, so change could not be pushed by society. And I doubt very much that a change will be born by the police’s own will because you can’t create a change where there is corruption.
The history of policing in the United States (US) is something that is so deep down rooted in oppression and hate that it truly is disgusting to see how it started of being an organization to protect the wealthy and their riches and slaves. As the policing model was seen as a “noble endeavor” it was really just another way to keep the rich rich and the poor and suffering in more suffering. Literally the oldest farm of policing the Texas Rangers was founded as a Slave Patrol Unit, who’s sole job was to bring back slaves who escaped to freedom. The only reason the “switched” occupations is do to the Confederacy losing the Civil War, and with all those racist not being able to hunt down innocent slaves they switched to policing the “people” but still catering to wealthy white people and keeping black people down and pressed. The ordination was founded in 1823 and never once shut down, the officers whose job which was rooted in hatred and oppression now couldn’t treat those innocent black civilians like a criminal without them “breaking” the law. It truly is sad to see how all in all the idea of someone protecting all the innocent the same is a great idea, but is so sad how good idea can be corrupted by greed and hate.
I think this article goes to show how the original forms of policing in the United States was to protect the wealthy and bring down the lower class, while also viewing many People of Color (POC) as an object and not viewing them as a human being. While the police are meant to keep “everyone” following the rules the officials of our government laid down. But still have kept their tradition of catering to the rich and pressing the poor and minorities in America, with also them breaking many of the laws they are sworn to protect and enforce. I think to bring true reform the government and police should acknowledge their very dark and corrupt foundation.
The history of policing was very interesting to me. I think it is so very important for people to know this kind of history. I feel like these days, a lot of people try to downplay racism and police brutality. White people try to act like it’s all in Black people’s minds and it’s not reality, but it is! For me, I’m not at all surprised that the earliest forms of police were created to protect the property and financial interests of the wealthy and the whites. Policing in the present day still benefits the rich and still reflects its slave patrol past. I completely agree with Alex Vitale when he said that we need to take stock of our police history and reconcile where we came from before we move forward.
The stories of the Pinkertons were very interesting as well. It’s shocking to me that people were just letting this agency do whatever they want with no kind of regulation or code of conduct. The Pinkertons seem like a big gang. The photo of them at Marilyn Monroe’s funeral was shocking because it seems like that was so recent. It really shows you that all of this stuff did not happen so long ago. All of this is a lot more current than people realize. Lastly, I think it’s great that you highlighted the fact that putting quotas on cops and giving them incentives to make arrests is the worst idea ever. History has shown that the need to generate revenue with fines and arrests is especially hard on minority and low-income communities.
Back then policing was completely different many people obeyed that law and now in today’s society it is not like that anymore. Policing should be reduced in a different way as the way they are with a victim. The force they use among arresting someone. There needs to be a new way or path to figure out how we can reduce so many things in policing.