Note: Digital Read

URL: http://www.mediafire.com/?opg167fachei183

Opening: 

“The police become necessary in human society only at that junction in human society where it is split between those who have and those who ain’t got.” -Chairman Omali Yeshitela

Why were the modern police created?

Is is generally assumed, among people who think about it at all, that the police were created to deal with rising levels of crime caused by urbanization and increasing numbers of immigrants. John Schneider describes the typical accounts:

The First studies were legal and administrative in their focus, confined mostly to narrative descriptions of the step-by-step demise of the old constabulary and the stead, but often controversial evolution of the professionals. Scholars seemed preoccupied with the politics of the politics of police reforms. IT causes, on the other hand, were considered only in cursory fashion, more often assumed than proved. Cities, it would seem, moved inevitably toward modern policing as a consequence of soaring levels of crime and disorder in an era of phenomenal grown and profound social change. [1]

I will refer to this as the “crime-and-disorder” theory.

Despite its initial plausibility, the idea that the police were invented in response to an epidemic of crime is, to be blunt, exactly wrong. Furthermore, it is not much of an explanation. It assumes that “when crime reaches a certain level, the ‘natural’ social response is to create a uniformed police force. This, of coarse, is not an explanation but an assertion of natural law for there is little evidence.”