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

ity by policemen, dismissing thirteen of the accused from the force andpenalizing nine others with fines or loss of rank. IWJOf course it is still worth noting that, of the 672 cases adjudicated by theBoard of Police during this same period, the majority of them-59.2 percent-dealtwith the dereliction of duty. Abuses of authority came at a distantsecond, comprising 17.4 percent of the cases.I 'J!)Ironically, both sorts of complaints may have resulted from the samefeatures of the job. Lack of discipline was certainly a factor of each. But thecomplaints may also reflect public disagreement about what it was thepolice were supposed to be doing. Respectable middle-class Protestants andtemperance crusaders were eager to have the police enforce laws regulatinggambling, prostitution, drinking, and other vice and public order offenses.The lower-class and immigrant communities, who often enjoyed these activities,were apt to feel that the police were intruding where they weren'twanted or needed. The poor complained that they were treated unfairly orwith unnecessary force; the respectable classes felt that the police weren'tdoing their jobs so long as such vice persisted. This dispute directly reflectsthe struggle for control over the municipal government, and in a differentsense, the debate about the nature of democracy-neither of which wasresolved in the nineteenth century.New Orleans, in a sense, made the transition from Southern plantationpolitics to Northern machine politics, with the police occupying a centralrole in the process. Indeed, this transition was in many respects aided bythe simultaneous shift from a distinctly Southern model of policing (basedon the slave patrol) to a Northern style (resembling the watch) .The most distinctive features of early southern police forces were uniforms,formidable weapons. and walles (rathpr th;m fpp,< ()r compulsoryunpaid service); around-the-clock patrolling and unification of day andnight forces came later. In the 1840s and 1850s northern cities adoptedthe twenty-four-hour patrol, organizational unity, and wages for patrolmen;uniforms and fire-arms follOWed later (often northern policemenarmed themselves with guns without official authorization or evenagainst the law) . New Orleans participated in both types of reform,adopting the southern model in the period 1805-1836 and shifting to thenorthern model in the years 1836-1854. 1 9 1This shift was significant, but not absolute; as a result, New Orleans foreshadowedmany of the qualities of the modern police-qualities that finallycrystallized in New York in 1848.NEW YORK: " ALMOST EVERY CONCEIVABLE CRIME "In New York, as in New Orleans, the moVe toward modern policing wasclosely tied to the reconstitution of city government. In 1830 the state legislaturedivided the city's common council into a board of aldermen and aboard of assistant aldermen, each elected annually by ward. Distinct executivedepartments were formed, and the mayor was assigned the responsibilityto see that the laws were enforced. A year later, the council gave him50