[janalsncm]

This is a genetic fallacy. The origins of policing don’t give you sufficient information to judge its present quality. Further, as many have also pointed out, many places didn’t even have slave patrols. Drawing a connection between contemporary Waco cops and Jim Crow is dubious but drawing that connection to e.g. LAPD is entirely unjustified. Bad police departments resemble something more akin to the Catholic Church than the KKK.

Assuming you are not making the entirely reductionist argument that requires every law be tied back to capital (in other words, murder is illegal because it brings down property values or something) this is an extremely narrow view of the purpose of police. This everything-is-capital framing doesn’t explain consumer protections or environmental laws or labor laws.

The purpose of police is to enforce the laws. Many of those laws have been significantly and disproportionately controlled by corporate and monied interests but again there are too many clear counterexamples to conclude as you did.