[andrewla]

For the warehouse guards, to summarize, you're saying that night watchmen and city watchmen were de facto warehouse guards before the formation of professional police forces? That seems a far cry from "evolved out of warehouse guards". Police still put resources into protecting property, but this does not make them "warehouse guards" any more than resources put on petty crime make them "cutpurse chasers" unless you're just making rhetorical points.

For the slave patrol point, I would appreciate a single example of this phenomenon. Is it the claim that there exists at least one professional police force that was created to replace a "slave patrol", which previously performed some subset of the civil duties of police officers? I have not been able to find an example; can you point me to one?

[bcdtttt]

The establishment of the Charleston police department directly traces roots into slave patrols. The department was formed from city guard, who were used to round up spaces and put down slave revolts.

[andrewla]

From my admittedly cursory reading, this does not appear to be accurate.

The antecedent organizations to the modern Charleston police department, notably the Town Watch and the City Guard, were both dissolved in the aftermath of the civil war, while civil order was kept by federal forces until the end of reconstruction.

But regardless of whether we can chase down a chain of organizations that meets the colloquial meaning of "evolved", it does not appear that either the City Guard nor the Town Watch were principally slave patrols, although they did enforce the slavery regime as part of their policing functions.

An organization that participates in the suppression of slaves as part of its function is not a "slave patrol". If the statement "[modern police forces] evolved out of warehouse guards and slave patrols" is to be parsed as "modern police forces evolved out of earlier organizations that sometimes protected private property or enforced slavery laws" then I grant the accusation, but it is rather hollow and meaningless at that point.

[sangnoir]

> For the slave patrol point, I would appreciate a single example of this phenomenon

Potter, Gary "The History of Policing in the United States"[1] references Platt, Tony, "Crime and Punishment in the United States: Immediate and Long-Term Reforms from a Marxist Perspective, Crime and Social Justice 18"

1. https://www.academia.edu/30504361/The_History_of_Policing_in...

[adolph]

Did you read Platt? Its a mistake to grant any assertion as valid, especially given what we now know about academic fraud. The Platt article is freely available and does not reference slavery in any way that I can see from searching (the bad OCR) and quickly reading through the paragraphs.

Potter: The genesis of the modern police organization in the South is the “Slave Patrol” (Platt 1982).

Potter: Platt, Tony, “Crime and Punishment in the United States: Immediate and Long-Term Reforms from a Marxist Perspective, Crime and Social Justice 18 (1982).

  "CRIME AND PUNISHMENT IN THE UNITED STATES: IMMEDIATE AND LONG-TERM REFORMS FROM A MARXIST PERSPECTIVE"
  Tony Platt
  Crime and Social Justice, No. 18, REMAKING JUSTICE (Winter 1982), pp. 38-45 (8 pages)

1. https://www.jstor.org/stable/29766165

[sangnoir]

I have noted we have shifted from "I can't find a single example" to "I don't trust the first provided source", and yet there are plenty of other sources, if you're searching in good faith.

The history of the United States is well documented - it was only for a brief period during reconstruction that policing was deracialized in the American South, and even saw a number of formerly-enslaved lawmen. There were numerous violent revolts against this, and in support of white supremacy in places like Oklahoma, Louisiana[1], Mississippi and elsewhere where egalitarian leaders were ran out of town, and the law enforcement (along other administrative leadership) was reconfigured against the then "new", post-civil-war ways.

Do you see any functional differences between slave patrols (membership free from white land owners or their nominees) and the group that overthrew and reconstituted reconstruction-era law enforcement (mobs drew from white landowners, or their hired grunts).

https://naucenter.as.virginia.edu/blog-page/1761

[adolph]

Don’t “good faith” me with a reference that you claim supports your assertion but in actuality does not. You made an assertion and can defend it or abandon it.

If evidence for your claim was as plentiful as you claim, you would just add another link. You didn’t.

[sangnoir]

> If evidence for your claim was as plentiful as you claim, you would just add another link.

I gave examples of 3 southern states (and a link to one, detailing how the law enforcement was devolved to antebellum mores in Louisiana)

[adolph]

Did you post these under a different username? I see no evidence here:

https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=sangnoir

Again, if evidence was as plentiful as you claim, a person would add a link instead of typing about examples and links elsewhere.

[joemazerino]

Marxist references are valid?

[sangnoir]

I suppose if you dismiss an article out of hand due to the ideology of the author without even seeing what historical facts they claim or their references, they might not be valuable to you.

Should progressive academics declare all CATO papers invalid because they are ideologically misaligned with the institute?