[clbrmbr]

Appreciated. Could be a fascinating read, how societies through history have maintained internal order with various approaches to security. Did Rome have police? What about the Venetians or 16th-18th century europe? Any reading recommendation?

Also, I’m now curious what a the future of homeland security could look like. Is anyone writing rationally about this?

[yareal]

Rome had a few different approaches, the Vigiles mentioned elsewhere in this thread. Several countries had armies enforce legal codes. Some places had night watches run by their local communities. Some had night watches you could pay to avoid participating in. It was considered quite unpleasant and low class to perform a night watch, so the people paid to do it were often those who could not otherwise find work or found it difficult to work elsewhere.

In some societies you could seek justice via a duel, essentially calling out the criminal and relying on social pressure to see the duel adhered to.

In England there's a system of tithings, shires and shire reeves, individuals who were kept employed and told to keep the peace. The shire reeves could muster people to enforce the law, temporarily.

In the 1600s-1800s the monarchs in various countries instituted police forces, but they were typically plainclothes or carried only a symbol of office. (E.g. a badge) These police were closer to what we expect police to be in the modern era, but were not typically or consistently in the same visible, standard uniform. (Though they may have carried, e.g. a sword that might mark them out.)

The U.S. also had other police systems, including slave patrols, essentially self formed posses that would ride down escaped slaves.

In the 1800s, police forces in England thought, "you know what would deter crime? Visible police!" And they began to standardize uniforms with the intent to prevent crime, rather than react to crime. Prior to this moment, policing was typically reactionary -- an aggrieved party seeking justice. The innovation was that if people saw a neighborhood patrolled by uniformed police, they might believe that area was safer and criminals might go elsewhere.

Around the 1860s, this idea really took off, and you see many places copying it.

I'm on my phone, I'll dig for sources later.

[red_admiral]

Great post, but I feel an aside on the England situation is in order. Prior to police forces, for anything too big for the Shire Reeves or Justices of the Peace to handle, the solution was "send in the army". This came to head at the Massacre of St Peter's Field (often called the "Peterloo Massacre", for example on its wiki page) where several hundred protesting workers were killed in a cavalry charge in 1819.

The massacre caused such public outrage that, among other things, London set up the Metropolitan Police (a.k.a. "the met") 10 years later. They were deliberately designed to be a non-militarised force: they wore visible uniforms, but they were black instead of the army's red; they carried truncheons instead of swords or firearms (this is also why most police in the UK to this day do not carry firearms); they were deliberately "civilian" not "paramilitary"; and they were "answerable to the public" in the words of Home Secretary Sir Robert Peel (under whom the force was set up). The preventative instead of reactionary nature of policing definitely fits into this context too.

[thaumasiotes]

> Several countries had armies enforce legal codes.

We do that now. The division of the army responsible for that is called "the police".

[gattilorenz]

No, you don’t. Police in the US is militarized but still police (which ironically is part of the problem, AFAIK. They would have better training had they been in the army in some cases).

Countries like Italy have Army corps (the Carabinieri and Guardia di Finanza) that do police work but are still part of the army, in addition to also having regular Police. I think this is not uncommon in countries where Napoleonic France had a strong influence, but there’s plenty of commenters here with a better knowledge of the domain, so please correct me if I misremember:)

But having part of the army do police work doesn’t really fix most problems with the police, of course.

[int_19h]

The problem is that they are equipped like the army in many cases, and certainly seem to have the mentality that they are some kind of counter-insurgency force on occupied hostile territory.

[yareal]

No, the term for that is gendarmerie.

If you've read my other posts you've probably been able to infer that I'm not a fan of the police, but I find that being quippy about them undermines actual meaningful conversation about their history and how they could change.

[thaumasiotes]

> No, the term for that is gendarmerie.

That doesn't mean anything. If we renamed the police "gendarmes", what would be different?

[gattilorenz]

That the gendarmes wouldn't be a part of the army (but at that point the police might be).

[yareal]

I'm sorry, but it does have a different meaning. The gendarmerie are military units, police departments are typically civilian units. There's a clear difference in reporting, accountability, access to weaponry, training, and cultural expectations.

It's not just a different word. Maybe you are from a part of the world where military operate the police force and we have different experiences? I'm from the U.S.

[thaumasiotes]

> There's a clear difference in reporting, accountability, access to weaponry, training, and cultural expectations.

I'm happy to stipulate this. But it doesn't mean what you think it means.

> The gendarmerie are military units, police departments are typically civilian units.

Because this is clearly false.

Think about the Air Force. Compared to the Army, there is a clear difference in reporting, accountability, access to weaponry, training, and cultural expectations.

And yet, obviously, the Air Force is a division of the army (small 'a'). There are no civilians who care about the distinction between the Army and the Air Force, because it is meaningless outside of paperwork.

This is also true of the police. They have their own reporting structures, accountability procedures, weaponry, training, and internal culture, and they are very clearly a military organization. Their entire purpose is to enforce the will of the state by using violence. They do not have any function other than that. And that function is what defines the military.