for those in authority. But when misconduct reaches such a level as to prove embarrassing, or so as to provoke unrest, the authorities may have to tighten the reins—for a while. Token prosecutions, minimal reforms, and other half-measures may give the appearance of change, and may even serve as some check against the worst abuses of authority, but they carefully fail to affect the underlying causes of brutality. It would be wrong to conclude that the police never change. But it is important to notice the limits of these changes, to understand the influences that direct them, and to recognize the interests that they serve.
Police brutality is pervasive, systemic, and inherent to the institution. It is also anything but new.
2: The Origins of American Policing
In February 1826, Aziel Conklin, the captain of the watch in New York’s third district, was suspended—but later reinstated—after a conviction for assault and battery.1 This incident was not especially unusual at the time. Even now, it would only stand out because cops are so rarely convicted, regardless of the evidence against them. Yet if the licensed use of violence is not new, the system employing it today looks very different than that of the 1820s. And if the abuse of authority is itself a constant feature of government, the nature of that authority has undergone substantial changes.
Characteristics of Modern Police
Policing itself is not a distinctly modern activity.2 It has existed in some form, under numerous political systems, in disparate locations, for centuries. Yet most of the institutions historically responsible for law enforcement would not be recognizable to us as police. Colonial America, for example, had nothing like our modern police departments. David Bayley writes:
The earliest specialized police were watchmen.… However, although their function was certainly specialized, it is not always clear that it was policing. Very often they acted only as sentinels, responsible for summoning others to apprehend criminals, repel attack, or put out fires.3
It was not until the middle of the nineteenth century that most American cities had police organizations with roughly the same form and function as our contemporary departments.
Though historians generally agree it was in the mid-1800s that police forces throughout the United States converged into a single type, it has been surprisingly difficult to enumerate the major features of a modern police operation. Bayley defines the modern police in terms of their public auspices, specialized function, and professionalism,4 though he does also mention their non-military character5 and their authority to use force.6 Richard Lundman offers four criteria: full-time service, continuity in office, continuity in procedure, and control by a central governmental authority.7 Selden Bacon, meanwhile, suggests six characteristics:
(1) citywide jurisdiction,
(2) twenty-four-hour responsibility,
(3) a single organization responsible for the greater part of formal enforcement,
(4) paid personnel on a salary basis,
(5) a personnel occupied solely with police duties,
(6) general rather than specific functions.8
Raymond Fosdick argues that the defining mark of modern police departments is their organization under a single commander.9 And Eric Monkkonen takes as his sole criterion the presence of uniforms.10
Three of these criteria are easily done away with. The use of uniforms is neither a necessary nor a unique feature of modern policing. Some police officers, especially detectives, do not wear uniforms, and are no less modern for that fact. Furthermore, even within the history of law enforcement, uniforms predate the modern institution. The London Watch, for example, was uniformed in 1791.11 Likewise, though most police agencies are headed by a single police chief, that is not always the case, and has not always been the case, even in departments that are distinctly modern. Police boards of various kinds have moved in and out of fashion throughout the modern period, especially at the cusp of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
The civilian character of the police is more problematic, and, precisely because it is problematic I will put it aside as a suggested criterion. The relationship between policing and the military has always been complex and controversial, and if current trends are any indication, it will remain so for some time. Given the ambiguous and shifting character of the police, it seems unwise to generalize about its essentially civilian (or military) nature, and I do not wish to define away the problem at the expense of a more nuanced analysis.12
Those characteristics remaining may be divided into two groups. The first are the defining characteristics of police:
(1) the authority to use force,
(2) a public character and accountability (at least in principle) to some central governmental authority, and
(3) general law enforcement duties (as opposed to limited, specified duties such as parking enforcement or animal control).
These traits, I think, are essential to any organization that claims to be engaged in policing. The second set comprises those criteria distinguishing modern policing from earlier forms. These include:
(1) the investment of responsibility for law enforcement in a single organization,
(2) citywide jurisdiction and centralization,
(3) an intended continuity in office and procedure,13
(4) a specialized policing function (meaning that the organization is only or mainly responsible for policing, not for keeping the streets clean, putting out fires, etc.),
(5) twenty-four-hour service, and
(6) personnel paid on a salary basis rather than by fee.
There is one final characteristic that deserves consideration. The development of policing has been guided in large part by an emerging orientation toward preventive rather than responsive activity. Though this idea was firmly established by the time modern departments took the stage, it was not until quite some time later that specific techniques of prevention entered into use, and the degree to which the police do, or can, or should, act to prevent crime remains even now a matter of intense debate.
Rather than use these factors to draw a sharp line demarcating the clearly identifiable modern police (a line most police departments will have crossed and re-crossed), I propose we use these criteria to place various organizations on a continuum as being more or less modern depending on the degree to which they display these characteristics.14 (I have listed the traits here in order of what I take to be their relative significance.) This approach may seem a bit impressionistic, but I think the picture it offers is helpful in understanding the evolution of police systems. For the most part, the creators of the new police did not see themselves as marching inexorably toward an ideal of modern policing. Instead, they adapted preexisting institutions to the demands of new circumstances, evolving their systems slowly through a process of invention and imitation, improvisation and experimentation, promise and compromise, trial and error. The rate of progress was unsteady, its path wavering, its advances frequently reversed, and its direction determined by a variety of factors including political pressure, scandals, wars, riots, economics, immigration, budget constraints, the law, and sometimes crime.
There is a further advantage to this approach: it acknowledges the fact of continuing development and leaves open the possibility of further modernization. Hence, rather than
