The First Police Departments

The duties of the first police officers in those early years were very similar to what the watchmen were doing. But after the Civil War, city police departments began to establish a unique identity as they began to wear uniforms, carry nightsticks, and arm themselves with firearms. However, it can be said that police work was primitive in the early years. Early police officers, in the nineteenth century, performed many duties they do not have today, including cleaning streets, inspecting boilers, caring for the poor and homeless, operating emergency ambulances, and performing other social services (Dempsey and Forst, 2010). Following the English tradition, police officers in the north were not issued firearms, although this changed by the 1860s.

Another form of early policing was established in what were becoming the key slave states of the south. These states were Virginia, North Carolina, and South Carolina. And the form of policing evolving in these states was the slave patrols (Oliver and Hilgenberg, 2006). Although the slave patrols actually began in the seventeenth century, they were organized to prevent slaves from escaping from their owners. As time went on, the slave patrols would develop into more formal, government-sanctioned entities as they were legislated into existence (Oliver and Hilgenberg, 2006). For example, the code of 1705 in Virginia allowed the patrols to check blacks who were not on plantation property to ensure they had appropriate documentation and were not escaped slaves.

The slave patrols were often made up of hired hands from plantations, and frequently they treated blacks with suspicion and hostility. Sometimes, blacks were mistreated, tortured, or even murdered (Oliver and Hilgenberg, 2006).