zlacker

>>danso+(OP)
I've lived here a long time and come to the realization through observation that the NYPD operates like a private security force for capital. Their primary concern is to defend private property, the people themselves come second. The "community outreach" they do is just enough to keep us from getting accusatory.

>>ixtli+2g
Historically, this is what police were in the Northeast US. (In the South, police trace their heritage to slave patrols. I'm sure they would argue that these patrols were also just defending property. Gross.)

Landowners and merchants hired private police to watch over their holdings. Over time, they convinced locals that it would be in the public good if the guards they hired were paid for by everyone.

In the 1850s, in Boston, they formalized this arrangement into the first police department in the country. (There's an interesting history here around the oppression and then incorporation of Boston's Irish population by the police force.)

Edit: Curious about the downvotes -- this is a review of US history.

>>Pfhrea+mA
It's become popular to regurgitate that bit about police and slave patrols but it has no real basis in reality. That isn't to say that there isn't some example of a slave patrol that was pressed into service as police, but Police are a concept that all of America inherited from the English roots of our governments.

>>corebi+OU
You are incorrect. Not all police departments started as slave patrols, in fact many of them did not. But to deny that it was a widespread event is counterfactual.

The first American police dept was founded in the 1850s, well after the split from England. The first police department in England was founded in the 1830s.

Prior to that, our communities either took collective action to regulate themselves and the 'spirit of the community', insisted on night watch duty as a rotating responsibility, paid a constable or sheriff (a word whose roots are 'shire reeve', meaning 'shire official'), or hired private guards to protect property.

In the 1850s, around the time of the first police departments in the US, the Fugitive Slave Act was enforced as law -- requiring officials to hunt and 'return' runaway slaves. This was adopted to a greater or lesser degree depending on the area, but it absolutely was a role of law enforcement across much of the US, and it's without a doubt a part of the roots of many police departments in the US.