[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.

[sangnoir]

What sort of falsifiable evidence would be sufficient to convince you? That specific named individuals who were on slave patrols later became sheriffs?

[adolph]

I’ve been thinking about it since asking for evidence. I studied 17-1800’s US history a long time ago and was oriented toward drawing insight from census and other quantifiable records and plugging them into SPSS.

Post-Belesiles [0], I would want to see a body of relatively objective records that can be independently verified in the form of adversarial cooperation. Say some significant number of individuals of slave oriented occupations moving into net new police-specific occupations.

Your use of the word “sheriff” is significant here because sheriff and constable are occupation terms that predate the Atlantic slave trade. These were civil enforcers for what represented law and justice in the English system. They still exist today in name and function. Moving from slave patrol to sheriff doesn’t necessarily support the thesis since sheriff and constable are not net new police forces.

0. https://quod.lib.umich.edu/p/plag/5240451.0001.016/--why-foo...