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

MACHINE POLITICS, STAT E POWER, AND MONOPOLIES OF VIOLENCEIn general terms, we can discern a common principle underlying the creationof local political machines and that of national states: "A tendency to monopolizethe means of violence makes a government's claim to provide protection, ineither the comforting or ominous sense of the word, more credible and moredifficult to resist" 12 Tilly further identifies four activities characteristic of states:(1) making war (defeating external rivals) ;(2) making states (destroying internal rivals) ;(3) protection (defending clients from their enemies) ; and,(4) extraction (acquiring the resources to do the other three) . '1Cities have not, since the colonial period, usually been forced to contend with externalrivals, and thus have not been concerned with making war. But the otherthree activities find clear analogies in the activities of city governments, especiallyduring the machine period. And at both the national and the Illunicipallevels "all [these activities] depend on the state's tendency to monopolize theconcentrated means of coercion."';'Philadelphia's history illustrates some more specific parallels. In the firsthalf of the nineteenth century, urban growth had spread beyond the city'sjurisdiction, practically uniting it with nearby townships over which it hadno authority. The urban area was divided between several municipalities,and these were divided geographically into neighborhoods, politically intowards, and socially along religious and ethnic lines-with a strong correlationbetween these sets of divisions. It was nearly impossible to keep order.Catholics and Protestants fought in the streets, White mobs attacked Blackpeople and abolitionist speal\.ers, and the city government could do practicallynothing, even within thc limited arta \Jf ib duLllUliLy.;: Tn e localized, wardbasedsystem of city politics inhibited the government's ability to enforce itswill within the neighborhoods. Yet, in the course of a few years, Philadelphiawas transformed from a fragmented megalopolis with only a nominal centralauthority to a modern city with a unified city government, a citywide politicalmachine, and a police system to enforce the will of each.Much of the disorder in nineteenth-century Philadelphia was perpetrated,oddly, by the city's volunteer fire departments. Neighborhood-based fire companiesadopted the ethnic and religious identities of their members, and oftensaw themselves as the champions of their neighborhood's traditional cultureand honor. Firefighting became a source of neighborhood pride, and offeredan opportunity to settle scores against rival groups. Demographic shifts andoverlapping jurisdictions led to frequent turf wars; firemen would often fightone another while a blaze continued unabated. When opportunities for battledid not present themselves, they were sometimes created: fire companieswould set fires in other precincts and then ambush their rivals.56These brawls became neighborhood affairs, involving large sections ofthe community. Many of the fire companies affiliated with youth gangs, somewith names like "Killers," "Rats," and "Bouncers.",7 As the police at the timewere also organized into separate ward organizations, they were ill-suited for60