The controversy over Atlanta’s Public Safety Training Center has resurrected a common claim made by critics of law enforcement, namely that American policing is a direct descendant of antebellum slave patrols. A recent article at CounterPunch magazine claims that American policing “began as ‘slave patrols’ to capture enslaved Black people escaping plantations.” Elsewhere, an open letter from alumni of Spelman College refers to police as an “institution born of slave patrols.”
This is echoed by a recent New York Times editorial asserting that “the origin of law enforcement in this country … is a history rooted in slave patrols and militias designed to protect white people’s lives and livelihoods from rebellion among enslaved Black people.” Even pro-law enforcement organizations such as the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund have bought into this claim.
However, it has no basis in actual history.
Police and Policing
To disentangle the history of American police, we must begin by distinguishing between police (noun) and policing (verb). The latter refers to any type of activity involving the enforcement of laws. Policing as an activity has roots that are as ancient as civilization itself. Early Babylonian, Chinese, Egyptian, Greek, and Roman societies all possessed entities that enforced their laws. In contrast, police departments refer to specific entities that engage in the activity of policing, an activity that was well-established long before modern police departments themselves were founded.
This point lets us easily dispense with the claim made by some that policing as an activity began with slave
