[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.

[lolinder]

> and I haven't been able to find information on whether they were uniformed

Why the obsession with the uniform? If the institution we have today was suddenly replaced with one that had all the same powers but no uniform, would that be a substantially different institution?

It feels like you included it in the definition mostly in order to more effectively exclude all pre-modern police forces.

[yareal]

Because it was a defining reason for their creation. Uniforms in policing represented a change in public thinking about crime prevention vs crime reaction. It marked the moment in time when the modern police force was effectively born.

Before that, we did have police, but they were different in meaningful ways. Such forces were largely concerned with dealing with crime post facto, and were not always considered particularly professional. The uniforms were a fundamental shift in the theory of policing.