[yareal]

Constables are not the same as "uniformed police forces". Constables and shire reeves (from which we derive the word sheriff) did predate uniformed police forces, but they generally operated on the "I'm the local law, and if necessary I can draw on local posses to enforce my law". A constable with the power to draw men into his service temporarily is not the same as "these hundred men are full time employed as police officers as their job".

The men hired by constables were typically not uniformed, full time workers, but temporary muscle.

The first, iirc, police force was in Glasgow in 1800 with London following in the 1820s.

[hollerith]

Also, IIRC, constables in England were not paid in money, they were paid in opportunities to dispense violence (which many men find rewarding for its own sake) without incurring legal liability and in opportunities to stick it to their enemies as long as the enemies were sufficiently low in rank.

"legal liability": if you beat someone up in Medieval Europe, the big danger is not the authorities' sentencing you to jail, it was getting sued by your victim.

England before 1780 or so was organized for the benefit of the artistocracy (barons and higher ranks). You can see just from the fact that constables were not paid a salary that they probably were a net harm (more of a menace than a help) to the common person, but they were a net benefit to the aristocracy because they generally kept commerce humming along at an faster rate than it would have without the constables and because any constable that messed with an aristocrat would be harshly punished. (The aristocrats specialized in military violence, but it was tedious for them to moderate disputes between commoners, so they farmed some of that work out the the constables, who of course were commoners.) When historians say the world's first police force started in England in 1810 or whatever year it was, they mean the first force with a monopoly on violence that was a net benefit to the every class of society including the commoners.

[JumpCrisscross]

> The first, iirc, police force was in Glasgow in 1800

They were a thing in Imperial Rome [1]. I believe they got the idea from the Egyptians, who seem to have invented civil policing (or the Chinese, depending on how you categorise police).

Otherwise, what we today consider police work would have been handled by an army.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vigiles#Police_force

[yareal]

The Vigiles come up a lot in this conversation, however, they were a military unit.

In most cases when people think of police in the contemporary setting, they think of a non military force. But you are correct that I should probably say "uniformed civilian police force" rather than "uniformed police force", as there have been a couple historic examples of the military being used to police people in uniform.

[JumpCrisscross]

> Vigiles come up a lot in this conversation, however, they were a military unit

Source?

They certainly weren't organised under the Roman military. Until the 2nd century, Roman citizens weren't even allowed to serve as vigiles. We could argue they were a paramilitary, but then almost every contemporary police force would qualify as well.

> there have been a couple historic examples of the military being used to police people in uniform

This was the status quo. The exceptions were the civilisations which invested into legal systems and the investigation of crimes, and even then generally only for a minority. One could argue that industrialisation increased the value of a human life enough that a lord dealing with crimes by murdering random peasants (or a nightwatch "cleansing" its community by beating up a pariah) became untenable.

[yareal]

My understanding of the vigiles was that they were under the direct command of centurions, despite being largely slaves, and were organized into barracks. Vigiles could achieve higher or more desirable ranks directly through their service.

The vigiles centurions were military men.

I think it's fair to say, "welllll sorta" to my assertion that they were military, given it was predominantly their individual commanders that were military. But I would assert most folks would find it unfamiliar to think of their local police force being commanded by a military commander.

Edit: I want to address directly the idea that the role of police would be conducted by the army, historically. One, sorta, depends historically, but two that's reinforcing my point -- the role police fill has been achieved by many different things in human history, from mobs to armies to uniformed civilian police. We must not accept that the police as they exist today are the only way policing can be done. So often, people fail to imagine better or different ways of achieving that role because they assume it's the way it's always been.

My whole point is that police, as we understand them today, is not the way they've always been. We can and should question whether this latest evolution of the role is still the right one.

[JumpCrisscross]

> the vigiles was that they were under the direct command of centurions, despite being largely slaves, and were organized into barracks

I've had difficulty determining if these were military centurions, or a broader use of the term.

Also realised: it’s uniquely difficult to draw a civil-military distinction in ancient Rome given how they thought about leadership--a good politician was a good general and vice versa. Within that context, given they were a mix of slaves and freedmen, had short life expectancies and were lightly armed [1], arguing they were more military than civil is like saying our police are military on the sole basis of being commanded by seargeants.

> must not accept that the police as they exist today are the only way policing can be done

Agree. A lot of things we administer today, on the other hand, were never publicly administered. Like mental health.

[1] https://novelsofcolinhough.wordpress.com/2021/03/27/the-vigi...

[yareal]

Fair enough. Of all the historical policing systems, the vigiles seem to be more similar to modern police forces than other systems.

I still think the vigiles are probably notably quite different from police - operating mostly at night, being able to move directly into the military, sleeping in a barracks. Much of the policing during the day was carried out by cohortes urbanae, which definitely were military units.

But they were an organized firefighting and policing force (and I haven't been able to find information on whether they were uniformed). I can see the resemblance, but they also existed in Rome for 300 years then disappeared.

[gjsman-1000]

Yeah, like that’s a preferable system. Basically, the powers of a police officer on steroids.

[yareal]

I don't believe I said the historical systems were better or preferable.

Please double check the post I made, I highlighted the existence of alternative systems not to say "return to tradition", but rather to say "police forces as we know them today are not axiomatic. We can invent other systems."

Police may be an improvement on those past systems, while at the same time be outmoded (if one believes they are outmoded.)