juno Rylee Stump-Schultz“For this, they carried guns, whips, and binding ropes.”
ALL THIS HAPPENED, MORE OR LESS is independent political and history journalism for anyone interested in information about how reality got here without sponsors.
»Consider buying me breakfast or coffee on Ko-Fi/PayPal, or leaving me a small tip on Venmo.
« Contact me at juno.rylee.schultz@gmail.com if you need someone with experience in mock reviews, copy editing/writing, PR work, etc »
Words, research, and edits: Juno Rylee Stump-Schultz (she/her)
Research and edits: Kylie Tuinier (she/her)
Edits: Bex Stump-Schultz (she/her) and Nathan Miller (he/him)
Law enforcement has essentially always existed in some form or another, but it was a series of calculations from those in power that led to the birth of our modern police.
In fact, according to Kristian Williams, from Our Enemies in Blue, “most of the institutions historically responsible for law enforcement would not be recognizable to us as police.”
The earliest police often only acted as “sentinels, responsible for summoning others to apprehend criminals, repel attacks, or put out fires.”
It took until the 19th century in order for America to have modern policing with the same functionality as the police we know today.
Selden Bacon, quoted in Our Enemies in Blue, defines modern policing with the following criteria:
- citywide jurisdiction,
- twenty-four-hour responsibility,
- a single organization responsible for the greater part of formal enforcement,
- paid personnel on a salary basis,
- a personnel occupied solely with police duties,
- general rather than specific functions.
In between the fall of Rome and the birth of modern states, policing became scattered and decentralized. During the 1200s in England there was a frankpledge system, in which families were organized into groups of ten, known as “tythings,” and then those tythings were grouped into ten, known as “hundreds.”
According to Kristian Williams, in Our Enemies in Blue: “the heads of these families pledged to one another to obey the law,” working together to uphold the laws of the land, “apprehending any of their own who violated” the law. Anyone who broke the law was held accountable by the heads of the families. Williams writes that “if they failed in these duties, they were fined by the sovereign.”
This made everyone responsible for ensuring everyone around them was following the law. It was a community-based effort.
As Bruce Smith explains:
“Our extremely modern concept of a specialized police force did not then exist. Neither was there any public means for repressing or preventing crime, as distinguished from its detection and the apprehension of offenders.
The members of each tything were simply bound to a mutual undertaking to apprehend, and present for trial, any of their number who might commit an offense.”
Communities were held to the law of the land, which was Norman law, imposed from the Norman conquerors, and so the law was tied to colonial rule, intended “as a means of maintaining colonial rule.”
Still, it was messy at times in its enforcement, “as it depended on a common acceptance of laws.”
It is for this reason that English sovereigns created the “shire reeve,” and it was the Sheriff’s job to “act in local affairs as a general representative of the crown.”
According to Our Enemies in Blue:
“The sheriff was responsible for enforcing the monarch’s will in military, fiscal, and judicial matters, and for maintaining the domestic peace. Sheriffs were appointed by and directly accountable to the sovereign.
They were responsible for organizing the tythings and the hundreds, inspecting their weapons, and, when necessary, calling together a group of men to serve as posse comitatus, pursuing and apprehending fugitives.”
The sheriffs were also paid a percentage of the taxes they extracted, which led to them abusing the law, making them unpopular amongst the people. This resulted in English sovereigns creating “new offices, including the coroner, the justice of the peace, and the constable.”
According to the 1285 Statute of Winchester, the constable functioned as the sheriff’s agent, with two constables assigned for every hundred of tythings, which placed additional oversight over the people.
Bruce Smith is quoted in Our Enemies in Blue, explaining the purposes of the constables:
“[The constable’s] early history is closely intertwined with military affairs and with martial law; for after the Conquest of Norman marshals, predecessors of the modern constable, held positions of great dignity and were drawn for the most part from the baronage.”
Constables were the leaders of the king’s army and had authority over “military offenders, particularly when the army” was occupying foreign soil, extending “beyond the reach” of the typical laws of the land. Constables also were involved with handling “cases of treason and similar state crimes.”
This gave English kings the ability to go above the law without having to be physically present, giving us what we now call “martial law.”
A night watch was created for “towns of notable size” in “the middle of the thirteenth century,” with unpaid service being required “by every adult male.”
According to Kristian Williams, these men “would walk the streets from late evening until dawn, keeping an eye out for fire, crime, or other threats.
These men were equipped with only “a staff and lantern, sounding an alarm in the event of emergency.”
The night watchmen were commonly called “Charlies” because “they were created during the reign of Charles II.”
That being said, the men weren’t considered very effective, as they were “unarmed, untrained, under-supervised, often unwilling, and frequently drunk.” This led to robberies and disorder without the watch’s consistent enforcement, and so they weren’t a major source of power for the state. Still, according to Our Enemies in Blue, this system continued for 600 years.
In the eighteenth century, the London Watch went through “a long series of reforms,” with many “characteristics of modern police” being implemented in this period.
Historian Elaine Reynolds is quoted in Our Enemies in Blue, explaining that “the goal was a system of street policing that was honest, accountable, and impartial in its administration and operation.”
Kristian Williams writes that pay started being introduced to watchmen in 1735, with many other parishes implementing pay as well. This also led to an expansion of powers and duties for the watch, bringing it closer in line to modern policing.
According to Our Enemies in Blue, “during this same time, more men were hired, houses of operation were expanded, command hierarchies and plans of supervision were drafted, minimum qualification established, record-keeping introduced, and pensions offered.”
Reynolds explains:
“By 1775, Westminster and several neighboring parishes had a night watch system that was both professional and hierarchical in structure, charged with preventing crime and apprehending night walkers and vagabonds. While police authority did remain divided between several local bodies and officials, decentralization was not necessarily synonymous with defectiveness.
These parochial authorities put increasing numbers of constables, beadles [church officials], watchmen, and [militia] patrols on the street, paid and equipped them. They spent increased amounts of time disciplining them when they were delinquent and increasing amounts of money on wages.”
According to Kristian Williams, during the eighteenth century, the London Watch came very nearly to resemble the modern police department” that would later replace it.
This night watch was “supplemented by various private efforts, including a ‘river police,’ which was organized by local merchants until it was taken over by the government in 1800.
In the early 19th century, for the first few decades, London was “what one historian describes as a patchwork of public and private police forces” who had authority over “a wide array of institutions and officials, including “vestries, church wardens, boards of trustees, commissioners, parishes, magistrates, and courts-leet.”
This time period also brought about detectives, which were originally called “thieftakers.”
Thieftakers were primarily responsible for “retrieving stolen property and collecting rewards,” though they would often “act as a fence for the thieves,” and then split the reward money with said thieves.
One such example was Jonathan Wild, “England’s most prominent thieftaker,” who ran “an international operation” across two countries, “until his execution in 1725.”
Corrupt behavior of thieftakers brought Robert Peel, “the home secretary,” to suggest a new plan “for a citywide police force.”
This group of police were nicknamed ‘Bobbies,’ “after their creator,” but the people dubbed them ‘crushers.”
This group of city police were centralized and focused under common goals, possessing “most of the criteria defining modern policing.”
The way the Bobbies–or crushers–were operated took inspiration from Peel’s “experiences in Ireland, where he had introduced the Royal Irish Constabulary in 1818,” meaning that London’s citywide police “were informed by the experience of colonial rule.”
Peel had seen “the difficulties of military occupation” firsthand and “understood the need to establish some sort of legitimacy.”
And so in 1829 London Parliament, “citing a rise in crime (especially property crime),” signed off on Peel’s police plans, with a few changes.
According to Kristian Williams, “the most important of these compromises excluded the old City of London from the jurisdiction of the Metropolitan Police.”
The old city of London would operate its own police force, which, in 1839, would be “reorganized on the Metropolitan model.”
The night watch and the river police “were preserved,” as they were considered to be “more effective than the new Metropolitians.”
That being said, Kristian Williams says that even though “they lacked citywide jurisdiction and sole policing authority, the London Metropolitan Police are generally credited as the first modern police department.”
Williams writes that there are some historians that trace the creation of America’s police to London’s police, but that “policing in the United States” would be built differently, with policing being “motivated by different concerns and producing unique institutional arrangements.”
The British system of policing, with sheriffs, constables, and watches would carry over to America, but “with some important differences.”
Sheriffs were chosen by governors, and in charge of “apprehending suspects, guarding prisoners, executing civil processes, overseeing elections, collecting taxes, and performing various fiscal functions.”
Williams writes how corruption in these tasks was ripe with corruption, “with sheriffs accepting bribes from suspects and prisoners, neglecting their civil duties, tampering with elections, and embezzling public funds.”
The constable was responsible for bringing citizens to town meetings, handling election preparations, issuing warrants, organizing juries, bringing fugitives to designated jurisdictions, as well as “overseeing the night watch.”
According to Kristian Williams, the constables were also “expected to enforce all laws and maintain the Crown’s peace,” however they “tended to concentrate on the better-paying tasks.”
These were elected positions in the 17th and 18th centuries, though “they were not popular jobs” with many “[refusing] to serve when elected.”
According to Williams, “neither of these offices was designed for what we now consider police, and neither fully adapted itself to that function.”
The American Colonial government would instead have the purposes and functions of police informed by fears surrounding “the behavior of slaves,” along with concerns related to the delivery of commerce and people gambling.
Though many people didn’t respect the authority of the police, which caused the police to rely on “the family and church to use their influence to bring about compliance.”
A system of fines was also created for criminals, and a system of rewards “for informers.” Towns would soon fold constables and sheriffs into a system of marshals.
People were “expected to participate in law enforcement through the night watch” as well, though people with money and means were allowed to “pay for a substitute to replace them.”
Sometimes the watch was “composed entirely of civilians forced to take their regular turn as watchmen.”
Just like in England, the watch was tasked with keeping an eye out for fires, disorder, and raising the alarm if and when crime was discovered. This also included “detaining suspicious persons, and sometimes suppressing riots and lighting street lamps.”
The Boston Watch would take on much of how the London Watch was designed. This included “all men over eighteen years old [being] required to serve in person or provide a substitute.”
The state government required all watchmen to “see that all disturbances and disorders in the night watch shall be prevented and suppressed.”
Anyone who seemed suspicious to the night watch was to be interrogated, about their business and where they were going.
From Our Enemies in Blue:
“[The Night Watch] were further instructed to “walk in rounds in and about the streets, wharves, lanes, and principal inhabited parts, within each town, to prevent any danger by fire, and to see that good order is kept, taking particular observation and inspection of all houses and families of evil fame.”
In 1698, the night watch in New York City would follow suit with the Boston Watch, embodying the same duties, with some extra tasks, including walking around with a ringing Bell while on patrol. Night watch members were allowed to “take the most prudent way they can” to secure anyone “disturbing the peace or lurking about.”
The colonial watch was held accountable by “either a town council or state legislature,” with “limited authority to use force.”
Members of the night watch rarely received training or equipment for their job.
Authority and upholding the law were shared between the night watch, constables, sheriffs, and inspectors.
According to Kristian Williams, “[the watch’s] personnel rotated with deliberate frequency,” and some areas were only monitored during certain periods of the year. Williams says that the watch only patrolled at night, “except in times of emergency.”
Members were also not usually compensated, with the watch just being an assigned and required duty, separating it still from modern policing.
Kristian Williams says that “the standard story in the history of policing” traces its roots “as a direct adaptation of the night watch, following the English pattern,” but that narrative “leaves out significant stages in the development of American policing.”
American policing would instead be more informed by the goals of cities in the South.
According to Dennis Rousey, quoted in Our Enemies in Blue, “the first major reform of the traditional [policing] system did not occur in any of the big northwestern cities in the mid-1800s, but [instead] in the cities of the Deep South.”
In the 1780s, the city of Charleston created “a paramilitary municipal police force” which was designed “to control the city’s large population of slaves,” which would be the model followed by other large cities in the south, including New Orleans, Savannah, and Mobile.
The police in the south “were distinct from both the militia and the watch.”
Kristian Williams says “they were armed, uniformed, salaried, [and] patrolled at night.”
Another difference was that “a reserve force” was maintained “for daytime emergencies.”
Williams says the police of the south was similar to modern policing, and even earlier than London’s 1829 Metropolitan Police.
Since the economy of the south was built on slavery, policing was designed to protect the states of the south from a slave rebellion. According to Williams, “regardless of their own economic class or ethnic background, white people were haunted by the prospect of a slave revolt.”
This led to the South “[developing] distinctive policing practices,” which brought about the creation of “slave patrols.” These groups were also called “searchers, by the authorities who appointed them.” They were often called “paddyrollers” by the civilian population.
Michael Hindus, quoted in Our Enemies in Blue, states that tradition, social/economic development, and slavery are why police “developed along different lines” than in the North.
From Our Enemies in Blue: “Faced with the difficulties of keeping a major portion of the population enslaved to a small elite, Southern society borrowed from the practices of the Caribbean, especially Barbados.
There, slave owners used professional slave catchers and militias to capture runaways, while overseers were responsible for maintaining order on the plantations.”
The Slave Codes were created to supplement perceived weaknesses of the policing system, which “shifted the responsibilities of enforcement from the overseers to the entire population.”
By the 1680s, the militia began putting together patrols designed “to catch runaways, prevent slave gatherings, search slave quarters, keep order at markets, funerals, and festivals, and generally intimidate the Black population.”
Sally Hadden wrote about the realities of this situation in Slave Patrols:
“The final move in policing Barbadian slaves in the seventeenth century came with the importation of two thousand professional English soldiers, who were installed on plantations as intimidating ‘militia tenants.’ Arriving between 1696 and 1702, they did not perform manual labor but instead functioned exclusively as slave control forces. Their presence served the White colonist’s purposes well: throughout the eighteenth century only one slave rebellion attempt was reported in Barbados.”
At the same time this was happening, South Carolina “passed laws restricting the slaves’ ability to travel and trade,” which led to the formation of the Charleston Town Watch.
Starting in 1671, the Charlestown Town Watch was constructed with “a rotation of six citizens” who were tasked with dealing with “fires, Indian attacks, [and] slave gatherings.”
A militia system was also created in South Carolina during this time, “with every white man between sixteen and sixty years old required to serve.
A few years later in 1686, “South Carolina passed a law enabling any White person to apprehend and punish runaway slaves.”
In 1690, the Act for the Better Ordering of Slaves “required all persons under penalty of forty shillings to arrest and chastise any slave out of his home plantation without a proper pass.” Anyone who turned in runaway slaves was given a reward, often in the form of money or tobacco.
By the early 1700’s, there was anxiety over “a Spanish invasion,” and so, “combined with the ever present threat of a slave revolt,” South Carolina created “its official slave patrols.”
A militia was formed to “guard against outside attack,” and patrols were set up “to protect against insurrection.”
Patrollers moved throughout plantations and captured slaves who were meeting without “a permit or ticket from their masters.”
Linen, horses, and other items were often stolen by patrollers, with them “alleging them to be stolen,” and the law “permitted [them] to keep for their own whatever they took.”
According to Our Enemies in Blue, “Southern ideology encouraged a reliance on informal systems rooted in racism,” so the development of policing went in a different direction than the rest of the country.
As H.M. Henry described it [as quoted from Our Enemies in Blue], “the plantation was a sort of governmental unit as to the police control of the slave, and to its head, the slaveowner, was given in large measure the sovereign management of its affairs under certain restrictions.”
As Kristian Williams explains, “the arrangement was, in the fullest, traditional sense of the word, patriarchal; not only slaves, but also White women and children were subject to the personal authority of male heads of households.”
By 1819, the South Carolina legislature “made all ‘free white males’ aged eighteen to forty-five liable for patrol duty, without compensation.” This was partially inspired from two slave revolts taking place.
According to Kristian Williams, South Carolina’s policing and patrols are “the oldest, most elaborate, and best documented, [but that] other colonies followed suit.”
Georgia assigned slave patrols to apprehend “disorderly white people, especially vagrants.”
Tennessee forced “slaveowners to provide patrols on the plantations themselves, in addition to those that rode between plantations.”
Kentucky, “after a series of revolts,” “established round-the-click patrols.”
Mississippi originally had patrols that were federal troops, but “these were gradually replaced by the militia, and then [with] groups appointed by county boards.
Virginia originally “relied on indentured European servants than on African slaves until 1660.
By 1669, the colonial legislature “began offering a reward (paid in tobacco) to anyone who returned a runaway.” In 1727 responsibilities originally assigned to sheriffs were “transferred to the militia, creating the colony’s first slave patrol.”
Patrols were first done on an as-needed basis, “but after a failed rebellion in 1730, it began regular patrols two or three times each week.”
By 1754, the county courts started compensating patrollers “and requiring reports from their captains.” This system remained “essentially the same until the Civil War.”
North Carolina’s systems of policing, patrolling, and control followed the same path, “driven by the same concerns.”
Slaves, debtors, and Native Americans were all required to carry passes for traveling starting in 1669. Patrols were set up in 1753, with “searchers” being “responsible for searching the slaves’ homes, but couldn’t stop them between plantations.”
This was done because lawmakers were more concerned with revolts than runaways.
North Carolina set up paid patrols in 1779, “with expanded powers for searching the homes of White people and stopping slaves whenever they were off the plantation.”
By 1802, these patrols were placed under the authority of the county court, instead of the militia. Regardless of specifics, many of these patrols across different colonies acted with the same goals.
Robert Wintersmith, quoted in Our Enemies in Blue, paints a picture of what it looked like during this time of policing:
“Throughout all of the Southern states during the antebellum period, roving armed police patrols scoured the countryside day and night, intimidating, terrorizing, and brutalizing slaves into submission and meekness.”
Searchers traveled together “in beat companies, on horseback, and usually at night.”
Searchers were equipped with “guns, whips, and binding ropes,” stopping any Black person traveling between plantations.
Anytime the searchers encountered a Black person, they would “demand his pass [and] beat him if he was without one, [before returning] him to the plantation, or hold him in the jail.”
One patroller, quoted in Our Enemies in Blue, stated that his patrol “was instructed to apprehend every negro whom [they] found from his home.” If there was resistance or an attempt to escape, they would “fire on him immediately, unless [they] could be stopped by other means.”
Searchers were not supposed to target slaves carrying a pass, “but they would often harass Black people whom they felt to be traveling too far or too often.”
Patrollers “were also ordered to search the negro cabins, & take every thing we found in them, which bore a hostile spect, such as powder, shot, etc.”
Patrols were also expected to “break up any unsupervised gathering of slaves, especially meetings of religious groups [with] Baptist and Methodist services [being] specifically targeted.”
One former slave, Ida Henry, recalled an assault against her mother:
“De patrollers wouldn’t allow de slaves to hold night services, and one night dey caught me mother out praying. Dey stripped her naked and tied her hands together and wid a rope tied to handcuffs and threw one end of de rope over a limb and tied de other end to de pummel of a saddle on a horse. As me mother weighed ’bout 200, dey pulled her up so dat her toes could barely touch de ground and whipped her.”
Moses Grandy, a former slave, is quoted in Our Enemies in Blue, explaining “how the law did little restrain the patrollers”:
“If a negro has given offense to the patrol, even by so innocent a matter as dressing tidily to go to a place of worship, he will be seized by one of them, and another will tear up his pass; while one is flogging him, the others will look another way; so when he or his master makes complaint of his having been beaten without cause, and he points out the person who did it, the others will swear they saw no one beat him.”
Patrollers would also often kidnap free Black people to sell them as slaves. Black people were also “frequently threatened with mutilation, sometimes with a basis in law.”
From 1712 to 1740, South Carolina’s laws “required escalating tortures for captured runaways, from slitting the nose to severing one foot.”
Slaveowners would sometimes complain about the treatment of their slaves at the hands of searchers, “but courts were generally reluctant to award damages or discipline the patrollers, for fear of undermining the patrol system.”
Slaves were often spared from being murdered because then “the government would have to compensate the owner.”
Kristian Williams breaks down the progression of policing, patrolling, and control, through its stages, in Our Enemies in Blue:
“To summarize, the state control of slave behavior advanced through three stages. First, legislation was passed restricting the activities of slaves. Second, this legislation was supplemented with requirements that every White man enforce its demands. Third, over time this system of enforcement gradually came to be regulated, either by the militia or by the courts.”
In the end though, each colony attempted private enforcement, “[with] rewards and penalties,” before “appointing particular individuals to take on the duty.”
Before long, each system of patrolling and policing took on the form of slave patrols.
Slave patrols and systems of control would develop differently up North and in cities, largely due to differing population density, though “slave control was no less a priority for White urbanites than for their country kin.”
According to Kristian Williams, “In many respects, the cities followed the lead of the plantations.”
According to Hadden, quoted in Our Enemies in Blue, policing and patrolling in the North and cities “went by a variety of names, including town guard, city patrol, or night police, although their duties were the same: to prevent slave gatherings and cut down on urban crime.”
In the beginning, enforcement of the law in cities and the North “would be entrusted to private individuals and the existing watch,” but many cities would go on to receive funds from legislature “to form a permanent patrol, with the same group on duty each night.”
City patrols thus came from the slave patrols of the south, instead of the watch system.
In 1783, Charleston would create a City Guard, with “uniforms, carried muskets, and swords, and [maintaining] a substantial mounted division. Another key change was that the City Guard would travel and patrol as a group, instead of individually as the watch had done.
Louis Tasistro, who traveled through Charleston in the 1840s, is quoted in Our Enemies in Blue, describing the appearance of the patrol: “the city suddenly assumes the appearance of a great military garrison, and all the principal streets become forthwith alive with patrolling parties of twenties and thirties, headed by fife and drum, conveying the idea of a general siege.”
Through the beginning of the nineteenth century, Savannah, Mobile, and Richmond would implement “similar urban patrols.”
The Savannah guard were equipped with muskets and matching uniforms, later patrolling on horses with pistols. Richmond formed its public guard in 1800, “after the discovery of a planned rebellion,” with the purpose of “[protecting] public buildings from insurrections, [and to punish] any slaves it found out after curfew.”
Still, cities were more densely populated, and travel was different, and so it was more difficult for the same strictness of the plantation model to be applied in the North.
Companies seeking “cheap sources of labor” would “hire out” slaves in cities, with “slaves [paying] the master a stipulated fee,” then allowing them to “take other jobs at wages.”
This required more flexible regulations on travel in cities.
By 1804, Charleston would establish “a nightly curfew for the Black population–free and slave alike.” A few years later, a nine PM curfew was established. Anyone Black not carrying a free pass from employers were beaten by patrols.
Charleston created “a system of badges for slaves being hired out,” allowing the state to regulate it while collecting “a share of the master’s fee,” which were actually the slave’s wages.
According to Kristian Williams, “Charleston began to prefigure the segregated South of the twentieth century.”
By 1850, Charleston had “limited the right of Black to use public parks” and “Black people were banned from bars.”
At the same time, in South Carolina, many towns were requesting to “transfer control of the slave patrols from the county courts or state militia to the local government.”
By 1839, “the legislature granted all incorporated South Carolina towns the power to regulate patrol duty,” further centralizing the structure of policing, patrolling, and power.
There were many complaints from the public, with “the most common complaint [being] that the guards did not do their jobs.” Many guards were absent or simply patrolling poorly while drinking on the job.
Still, “the White citizens of the American South relied on them to alleviate their anxieties about slave rebellions,” which would adapt into a modern model as enforcement was centralized in cities under the power of the state.
Patrols were “originally bound up with the militia system,” with “a specialized capacity distinguishing them from the rest of the militia,” eventually shifting them under the authority of the city government.
Boston would implement similar laws, including curfews. In 1736, the Boston Watch was “specifically ordered to take up all Negro and Molatto [sic] servants [who were] unseasonably absent from their Masters [sic] families, without giving sufficient reasons therefore.”
The Slave Patrols operated separately and “were more specialized, focused almost exclusively on the Black population,” and so Slave Patrols and the City Police differed from the direction of Europe’s policing.
Hadden writes, as quoted in Our Enemies in Blue, about this development:
“The reliance upon race as a defining feature of this new colonial creation reveals the singular difference that set slave patrols apart from their European antecedents. Although slave patrols supervised the activities of free African Americans and suspicious whites who associated with slaves, the main focus of their attention fell upon slaves.
Bondsmen could easily be distinguished by their race and thus became easy and immediate targets of racial brutality. As a result, the new American innovation in law enforcement during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries was the creation of racially focused law enforcement groups in the American south.”
While the Slave Patrol “began as an offshoot of the militia, [it soon] came to resemble modern police,” according to Kristian Williams.
The watch and slave patrols–and thus, policing–continued to evolve in cities, as industrialization continued.
In 1671, South Carolina’s Grand Council put together a watch for Charles Town, “consisting of the regular constables and rotation of six citizens,” with responsibilities to “[guard] the city against fires, Indians, slave gatherings, and other signs of trouble,” with lawbreakers being detained until the following day.
The law established the watch “was renewed in 1698, with an addendum citing the increase in the Black population.”
By 1703, “as a wartime measure, the governor established a paid watch, and added special duties related to sailors and bars.” However, seventeen months later, “it was replaced with a volunteer patrol organized by the militia.”
According to Kristian Williams, “this organization was essentially the slave patrol.”
In 1721, expanded laws would merge this paid watch would combine into the militia, “giving patrollers authority over a large part of the working class besides the slaves.”
The new law “instructed patrollers to use their utmost endeavor to prevent all caballings amongst negroes, by dispersing them … and to search all negro houses for arms and other offensive weapons.
By 1734, this paid watch “was again removed from the militia, and was explicitly referred to as a slave police.”
By 1785, patrols were folded into the Charleston Guard and Watch and “responsible for arresting vagrants and other suspicious persons, preventing felonies and disturbances, and warning of fires.”
However there is an account from one guard who described their role as “keeping down the n*ggers.”
According to Kristian Williams, “the organization of the Charleston Guard and Watch represented a significant advance in the development of policing.”
The paid watch and slave patrol “contained a developed hierarchy and chain of command, consisting of a captain, a lieutenant, three corporals, fifty-eight privates, and a drummer.”
Everyone was given “a gun, bayonet, rattle (for use as a signal), and uniform coat.”
Some were assigned standing roles, while “the rest were divided into two patrols–one for St. Philip’s Parish, and the other for St. Michael’s.”
The captain created daily reports for review and everyone was paid by the state.
According to Kristian Williams, “the guard was the principal law enforcement agency in Charleston, [and] enjoyed a jurisdiction covering the entire city (and some of the surrounding countryside), [serving] a specialized police function, [with] a preventive orientation.”
Williams writes that, outside of twenty-four-hour service, this essentially “established the Charleston Guard and Watch as the first modern police department, arriving 30 years earlier than the London Metropolitan Police.
In 1804 New Orleans, things took a similar route for policing.
When it was under French control, New Orleans was under a “Code Noir,” which originated from Louis XIV, and copied for New Orleans.
When New Orleans came under American colonial control, “the Americans re-enacted [Code Noir] as the Black Code,” continuing the goal of suppressing the rights and freedoms of Black people.
New Orleans attempted to control the Black population as it began to equal the white population. According to Kristian Williams, “two separate night patrols were in effect.”
One was “a militia guard” to defend the borders from outsider attackers, and the other was a watch, called the “seranos.”
The main job of seranos was “lighting street lamps” but soon after, in 1804, a specific patrol was created “to enforce the Black Codes.” However this unit would be replaced after a few months, with the Gendarmerie.
According to Kristian Williams, “the Gendarmerie functioned more as a slave patrol than anything else.”
This objective was made clear from a law that was established, quoted below from Our Enemies in Blue:
“They will make rounds in suspected places where slaves can congregate, particularly on Sundays. They will break up these assemblies, foresee and prevent uproars and gambling, and declare confiscated all moneys found for their own profit … The officers accompanied by all or part of their troop, and equipped with orders from the mayor, shall search negro huts on plantations, but only after looking for and then notifying the overseer or owner of their actions, as well as inviting them to be present at the search. And all fire-arms, lances, swords, etc. that shall be found in the said cabins will be confiscated and deposited in the City arsenal.”
The Gendarmerie were also responsible for arresting slaves who were traveling without a free pass.
Some of the men were given horses, others traveled on food; and they all wore matching blue uniforms, patrolling in groups each night.
In 1806, the city of New Orleans would disband the Gendarmerie, “citing the cost of horses and poor quality of the men.” Later that year, the city council would put together a city guard, “modeled after and performing the same functions as the Gendarmerie.”
This group would exist and operate until 1836. This was largely in part from the group being “accused of barbarism and despotism” from the Louisiana Advertiser, where the newspaper “urged the city council to disperse with the sword and pistol, the musket and bayonet … [and to] adopt or create a system more congenial … and more in accordance with the spirit of the age.”
In 1836, the New Orleans city council would replace the previous model of policing with “a system of twenty-four-hour patrolling along distinct beats.”
According to Kristian Williams, “this revision brought New Orleans into line with the watch system as it existed in northern cities, [representing] a substantial break from the Charleston model.”
That being said, this new city police and patrol would still carry many of the previous traits of enforcement, with round-the-clock, twenty-four-hour patrols being implemented as well.
That same year, the New Orleans city government would approve “a central authority, authorized to use force,” with general law enforcement duties also being implemented.
This new patrol and policing group from the city “would be the main agency of law enforcement,” and, “as its inheritance from the slave patrol,” would be used to target groups that were considered subversive by the city.
This group wouldn’t officially happen. Instead, while the city was changing policing and patrolling services, the Louisiana state legislature would organize New Orleans “along the borders of its ethnic neighborhoods, creating three distinct municipalities” which interrupted police reforms from being implemented.
This city plan “maintained a common mayor and Grand Council, but divided the administration services–including the police.” It would remain this way until 1852.
According to Kristian Williams, “each department adopted a new, non-military approach, and retained some features of the old City Guard–namely, its public character, its authority to use force, its general law-enforcement duties, twenty-four-hour patrols, the goal of organizational continuity, its specialized police function, and its preventive orientation.”
That being said, none of these three departments were the primary police “because none had citywide jurisdiction,” instead being limited to their assigned part of the city.
According to Kristian Williams, the “fragmentation of the city government and re-structuring of the police laid the groundwork for the development of neighborhood-based and ethnocentric political machines, with the police taking a central role.”