![]() ![]() Blacks who broke laws or violated social norms often endured police brutality. But within two decades, Jim Crow laws aimed at subjugating African Americans and denying their civil rights were enacted across southern and some northern states, replacing the Black Codes.įor about 80 years, Jim Crow laws mandated separate public spaces for blacks and whites, such as schools, libraries, water fountains and restaurants – and enforcing them was part of the police’s job. The ratification of the 14th Amendment in 1868 quickly made the Black Codes illegal by giving formerly enslaved blacks equal protection of laws through the Constitution. They also restricted black voting rights, dictated how and where African Americans could travel and limited where they could live. But formerly enslaved people saw little relief from racist government policies as they promptly became subject to Black Codes.įor the next three years, these new laws specified how, when and where African Americans could work and how much they would be paid. Slave patrols formally dissolved after the Civil War ended. In my opinion, these factors – controlling disorder, lack of adequate police training, lack of nonwhite officers and slave patrol origins – are among the forerunners of modern-day police brutality against African Americans. Additionally, the few African Americans who joined police forces were often assigned to black neighborhoods and faced discrimination on the job. Police corruption and violence – particularly against vulnerable people – were commonplace during the early 1900s. Through the early 20th century, there were few standards for hiring or training officers. ![]() The first police forces were overwhelmingly white, male and more focused on responding to disorder than crime.Īs Eastern Kentucky University criminologist Gary Potter explains, officers were expected to control a “ dangerous underclass” that included African Americans, immigrants and the poor. The more commonly known precursors to modern law enforcement were centralized municipal police departments that began to form in the early 19th century, beginning in Boston and soon cropping up in New York City, Albany, Chicago, Philadelphia and elsewhere. Members of slave patrols could forcefully enter anyone’s home, regardless of their race or ethnicity, based on suspicions that they were sheltering people who had escaped bondage. president, every state that had not yet abolished slavery had them. Robinson has written, by the time John Adams became the second U.S. As University of Georgia social work professor Michael A. The first slave patrols arose in South Carolina in the early 1700s. ![]() They located and returned enslaved people who had escaped, crushed uprisings led by enslaved people and punished enslaved workers found or believed to have violated plantation rules. Policing in southern slave-holding states had roots in slave patrols, squadrons made up of white volunteers empowered to use vigilante tactics to enforce laws related to slavery. There are two historical narratives about the origins of American law enforcement. Through my research and from teaching a course on diversity in criminal justice, I have come to see how the roots of racism in American policing – first planted centuries ago – have not yet been fully purged. I’m a criminal justice researcher who often focuses on issues of race, class and crime. Those riots happened nearly three decades after the 1965 Watts riots, which began with Marquette Frye, an African American, being pulled over for suspected drunk driving and roughed up by the police for resisting arrest. The precedents include the Los Angeles riots that broke out after the 1992 acquittal of police officers for beating Rodney King. ![]()
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