Kristian Williams - Our Enemies in Blue - Police and Power in America

In fact, the first major reform of the traditional system did not occur inany of the big northwestern cities in the mid-1800s but in the cities of theDeep South in a much earlier period. As early as the 1780s Charlestonintroduced a paramilitary municipal police force primarily to control thecity's large population of slaves. In later years, Savannah, New Orleans,and Mobile did the same.66These police forces, which I will refer to as City Guards, were distinct fromboth the militia and the watch. They were armed, uniformed, and salaried;they patrolled at night but kept a reserve force for daytime emergencies. Inmost respects, they resembled modern American police departments to thesame degree as did the London Metropolitan Police of 1829.Of course, these City Guards did not arise out of nothing. To understandtheir origin, we should consider the peculiar institutions of Southernsociety, its social and economic systems and the police measures that aroseto preserve them.SLAV E PATROLSRelying on a slave economy, the American South faced unique problems of socialcontrol, especially in areas where White people were in the minority. Regardlessof their own economic class or ethnic background, White people were hauntedby the prospect of a slave revolt They became utterly obsessed with controllingthe lives of Black people, free and slave, and developed a deep and terrible fearof any unsupervised activity in which Black people might engageY As a result,the South developed distinctive policing practices. Called "slave patrols," "alarmmen," or "searchers," by the authorities who appointed them, they were knownas "paddyrollers," "padaroles," "padaroes," and "patterolers" by the populationsthey policed.68Michael Hindus cites three related reasons why the criminal justicesystem in the South developed along different lines than it did in the North:1) tradition, 2) social and economic development, and 3) slavery.69 Of thesethree, slavery exerted the most powerful influence. It held a central placein Southern society, in the social and political as well as the economic lifeof the region. For many Southerners, a future without slavery was literallyinconceivable.7° Thus the whole of Southern society was, at times, directedto the defense of the "peculiar institution." Where the demands of slaveryconflicted with the region's traditions and social development-and to alesser extent when it interfered with economic development-the maintenanceof the slave system was nearly always preferred.71Faced with the difficulties of keeping a major portion of the population enslavedto a small elite, Southern society borrowed from the practices ofthe Caribbean,especially Barbados. There, slave owners used professional slave catchers andmilitias to capture runaways, while overseers were responsible for maintainingorder on the plantations. The weaknesses of this system led to thecreation of slave codes, laws directed specifically to the governing of slaves.Beginning in 1661, the slave code shifted the responsibilities of enforcementfrom the overseers to the entire White population. Shortly thereafter, in the1680s, the militia began making regular patrols to catch runaways, prevent36