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

To this great end every effort of the Police is to be directed. The securityof person and property, the preservation of the public tranquiIIity, and allthe other objects of a Police Establishment, will thus be better effected thanby the detection and punishment of the offender, after he has succeeded incommitting the crime.\{,Nevertheless, the Metropolitans remained unsure of how to prevent crime.In the decades that followed, they essentially replicated the patrols of thewatch, with even less success. \7In the U.S. "the term 'preventive police' was used frequently and loosely.Preventive seemed to mean that by their presence the police would inhibitthe commission of crime and that they would deal with potentially seriouscrimes before they reached the crisis stage."'" This crude notion of preventiondeveloped into a more serious and ambitious program as time passed,and came to inform the expansion of police powers. In Boston, for example,in 1850 the police were authorized to order any group of three or morepeople to "move on" or suffer arrest. jOf course, most of what the police did was still responsive, and most actualcrime-fighting still took place after the crimes had been committed. But thepreventive ideal was clearly gaining an articulation, and slowly techniqueswere developed to bring the practice closer to the principle. The preventiveideal both prompted the expansion of police power and helped shape thespecialized focus on crime.It is worth noting the tension between these two trends: if police powersexpand over too large a range of duties, policing loses its character.The police come to resemble generalized inspectors, and enforcement ofthe criminal law becomes a secondary matter. But, if enforcement is overlyspecialized, the police are in effect replaced by a series of guards, trafficwardens, thieftakers, bounty hunters, and whaluul.Constables, sheriffs, and marshals, as servants of the court or sovereign,were assigned general responsibilities. The slave patrols developedfrom the other end of the spectrum, beginning with a few select duties andaccumulating responsibilities and power over time. This second path wasthe more straightforward route toward modernization because, rather thanserving primarily as officers to the crown or the court, the slave patrolsexisted solely as a means of preserving the status quo through the enforcementof the slave codes. As soon as they separated from the militia, theybecame law enforcement bodies, and new duties were added accordingly.The tension between specialization and generalization did not vanish withthe creation of the modern police. The police retained many duties that werequite remote from their alleged purpose of preventing crime and enforcingthe criminal law. Robert Fogelson explains:In the absence of other specialized public bureaucracies, the authoritiesfound the temptation almost irresistible to transform the police departmentsinto catchall health, welfare, and law enforcement agencies. Hencethe police cleaned streets and inspected boilers in New York, distributedsupplies to the poor in Baltimore, accommodated the homeless in Phila-64