During the period following the Civil War, American policing developed the form and character that was to carry it into the 1980s. Uniformed police departments in the fifty-seven largest cities had been established between 1850 and 1880 (Monk-konen 1982, 54-57). Most cities had their own municipal police departments by the end of the nineteenth century. The social, political, and economic forces of the period between 1860 and 1920 defined the nature and scope of the police institution. By the 1920s, an outline of the parameters of police authority, a blueprint of the administrative structure of the police organization, and a rough approximation of the police function had emerged.
Although these characteristics developed more as a result of historical trial and error than careful planning, they collectively represented a foundation of policing that is recognizable to most people today. It is not an overstatement to say that in order to understand the strengths and weaknesses of American policing in the 1980s, one must be knowledgeable about the complex history of the police institution.
The purpose of this article is to present a historical analysis and overview of the significant themes surrounding the history of the police between 1860 and 1920. Details of that history will not be presented here, since they are available in the sources cited. Although much work remains to be done, available historical research provides a rich source of information about specific departments (Conley 1977; Monkkonen 1982).
Urban Conditions
Cities created police departments during a period of American history characterized by massive social change brought about by industrialization, immigration, and urbanization. Between 1860 and 1910, the modern American city emerged as the total population of the United States tripled to 92 million. The number of people living in cities grew from a low of 5% in the early nineteenth century to more than 45% by 1910. The largest cities—Boston, New York, and Philadelphia—had fewer than a hundred thousand people in the early nineteenth century but more than a million by 1890 (Johnson 1979, 4; Lane 1975, 161). This growth did not occur just on the eastern seaboard. Midwestern cities such as St. Louis, Cleveland, and Detroit ranked fourth, sixth, and ninth, respectively, by 1910. Chicago, which was eighth in 1860 with a population of a hundred thousand, moved to second place by 1910 with a population of more than two million.
Population shifts and immigration rates increased during prosperity and decreased during economic recessions. The resultant strains produced by these economic and population shifts created new challenges for the cities that had been organized and operated on a model more appropriate to the preurban period of the eighteenth century.
One of the new challenges was the need to address the problem of maintaining order in the cities. Cities such as New York, Boston, and Philadelphia created their uniformed police organizations during a period of great social and political turmoil. Some cities experienced riots, others saw rising property crimes, still others had social problems with immigrants and a mobile population. These problems varied in intensity and importance from city to city, but all cities experienced the effects of industrialization and urbanization in some form. Population growth mushroomed, and the demands on urban government for services increased dramatically.
There was a need for an effective order maintenance institution. The constable and watch systems of the eighteenth century did not contribute to a sense of security for the community and were not designed to address a preventive role. The constable was attached to the courts and did not serve as an official of city government. The constable-watch system did not act to prevent crime but operated on a reactive basis. For a fee, constables would investigate a crime after the fact and report to the victim who was paying the reward. This form of entrepreneurial policing, although beneficial to some, simply could not address the changing levels of disorder and crime (Lane 1975, 8-10; Richardson 1978, 17-19).
Theories on the Creation of Police
Historical research on the police has increased in quantity and quality in the past decade. Prior to the 1970s, histories of the police fell into the category of anecdotal or organizational descriptions with little analytical content or generalization (Conley 1977). Recent research has attempted to place police development in a larger context of the times, but more work on synthesizing and generalization is needed (Monkkonen 1982, 575).
There are three standard conceptual frameworks for examining the history of the police (Monkkonen 1981b, 49-61). One explanation for the rise of the urban police is that crime rose to such unprecedented levels that the constable-watch system was incapable of adjusting to the pressures of industrialization and urbanization and collapsed (Johnson 1979). There is no historical evidence that crime was rising, and if the evidence existed, it would have been verified by arrest data, which in turn would argue for the effectiveness of the traditional constable-watch system.
A second explanation argues that the riots of the early nineteenth century created such fears among the populace that alternative means of riot suppression were sought. Not willing to establish a standing army because of its potential threat to liberty, Americans created a paramilitary organization. This new police force contributed a visibility and continuity lacking in the traditional constable-watch system, presenting an organized show of force when required during civil disorders, but also allowed for civil control over the organization. The difficulty with this appealing interpretation is that only a few cities had riots before they established the new police, and even in these cities there was no connection between the riots and the creation of the police. The causal connection between riots and the establishment of the American police has yet to be proved.
Another explanation is that the elites feared the rising number of and threat from poor immigrants (Lane 1975, 23-25; Richardson 1970, 23-50). Whether it was a fear of the destruction of their societal values, a fear for their property, or a fear of the loss of control of the urban social order, the argument is that the elites established the police to control the ”dangerous classes.” This interpretation claims that the police served a social control function, while others claim a class control function (Harring 1983). The social control interpretation lacks evidence that connects this goal to the intent of the nineteenth-century proponents of the police.
The newest explanation for the creation of a uniformed police argues that the police represented just one of many urban government agencies created to provide services to meet the changing demands on city governments—just one example of the growth of ”urban service bureaucracies” (Monkkonen 1981b, 55), such as those concerned with health, fire, and sewage. As city governments began to absorb a variety of these services once provided by entrepreneurs, they established bureaucracies to deliver them. Once larger cities adopted these models, other cities followed. Smaller cities learned of the innovation and established uniformed police organizations as part of the national movement of expanding city government.
Urban uniformed police emerged as part of the movement that increased governmental responsibility for a variety of direct services to the public.
Although public concern with order, riots, and crime—as well as a growing fear of the ”dangerous classes”—played a role in shaping the new police, these issues did not dominate the debate around the establishment of the police. These specifically threatening social problems contributed to the debate and subsequent development of the police, but they served as precipitating events in most cases and not as preconditions to the establishment of the police.
Finally, there is no historical evidence to support the theory that any one or any combination of these social problems caused cities to create a uniformed police. In fact, most cities did not experience these social problems, yet they also created uniformed police organizations during the late nineteenth century. We have been too quick to seek out some catastrophic event as a causal factor for the origin of a uniformed police when the historical evidence suggests that its development was an innovation that followed a process of expanding urban government.
Decentralization and Authority
The police in America are unique in the Western democracies in that they are organized at the level of local government, with no formal connection to a central government. The nature of federalism in the United States and the inherent deep distrust of a central government dictated that governments be as close to the people as possible. For this reason police departments across the country are organized along the jurisdictional lines of the municipal government, not those of the county, the region, or the state. The decentralized nature of the American police, to a degree unheard of in Western Europe, dates back to the late nineteenth century (Fogelson 1977, 14-15).
Another characteristic of the American police system was deep partisan ties. Unlike their counterparts in England, the American police fulfilled the society’s expectation that the police be organically involved in the local community. This expectation was a local extension of the American commitment to democratic government. In order to control the potentially awesome power of the police, Americans placed administrative responsibility in locally elected officials, aldermen, rather than in mayors or police chiefs. As a result, police officers not only actively participated in local politics, they also gave their allegiance to locally elected officials. Local ward bosses appointed police officers, controlled promotions, and held police accountable. There was no bureaucratic buffer between the public and the police and, as a result, the police reflected and acted out community tensions.
They also reflected the political conflicts of the day. Political power and the control of the cities shifted back and forth between the coalition of white Anglo-Saxon Protestants and rural legislators, and the urban political machines dominated by ethnic immigrants. The political struggle between these power groups directly shaped the police in modern America. Unlike their counterparts in England, who attempted to remain neutral, the American police sided with the majority during political conflicts. First, American police lacked any identification with a national symbol of law and thus had no formally defined authority upon which to base a position of neutrality. Political disorders were local in nature, and the threat was to local institutions and values. Second, conflicts in urban America were ethnicity based, not class based, so the visibility and identity of the majority was clear. Workers joined the upper class in their fear of and willingness to control the foreign elements, with their strange cultures and different religions.
As a result of these conditions, the police represented the majority and upheld the existing political institution of representative democracy. They felt little pressure to remain neutral to transcend social conflicts. This historical context had long-term implications because these conditions shaped the definition of authority of the police that is still applicable today.
The distinguishing characteristic of American policing is that police authority is personal and guided by popular control rather than the formal standards of the rule of law. Police authority emanates from the political majority of the citizens, not from abstract notions of law. Authority rested on a local and partisan base within limited legal and symbolic standards and was legitimized by informal public expectations (Haller 1976, 30324). Because the police rested their authority on the basic principles of democratic government, closeness to the citizens, and informal power rather than bureaucratic rules and legal standards, they did not represent an impartial legal system, and they had wide discretionary powers (Johnson 1979, 184-85; Richardson 1978, 285).
This combination of the need to rely on personal authority and their wide discretionary powers led the police to develop an “arrogant insistence on a respectful acknowledgment of their authority” (Johnson 1979, 136). Failure to give prompt attention to police commands could result in an arrest or physical harm to a citizen. Police had only vague notions of how to do their job, and thus ”personalized decision became the fundamental tool of policing” (Johnson 1979, 141-85). Yet the police also relied on cooperation from the public, partly because of their close social and political ties to the people on their beats and partly because of their need to maintain a level of order defined by the local neighborhood. As a result of these structural influences on the definition of police authority and the use of discretion, the application of police power resulted in a growing ”dependence on the police to regulate the tensions of urban society” (Johnson 1979, 143).
The combination of decentralization, local political ties, and a reliance on popular authority shaped how the police performed, or did not perform, their functions. Brutality was widespread and was either generally accepted or ignored by the larger community. Although corruption contradicted official morality, it existed on such a large scale that it was not difficult for a reformer to raise a hue and cry. Inside police departments, promotions were bought and sold, retirements with full pensions could be had for a fee, and even assignments that had the potential for graft carried a price in the corrupt market. Outside the departments, employers and factory owners bought the services of the public police to break labor picket lines by dispersing or arresting picketers. In some situations the police actually worked for the employer or company owner as anti-labor enforcers.
The police also used their official role in counting ballots, selecting polling sites, and verifying voter registration lists to guarantee that their alderman won the election. There is no question that the historical record is peppered with examples of brutality and corruption and that many people suffered at the hands of the police. What we don’t know is how functional this corruption may have been. One author suggests that it was a functional and also a logical extension of the informal political process of the time. Corruption provided a way of benefiting politicians for public service to their constituency and a degree of flexibility that allowed a wide variety of cultures and lifestyles to coexist in the urban environment, and it helped to modify official behavior (Richardson 1978, 186-287).
In spite of the contemporary charges and countercharges of corruption in the urban policing of the last half of the nineteenth century, which have to be viewed in the context of the intense political atmosphere of the era, there is evidence that support for the police institution did exist. The record, of course, is not clear. Competent and compassionate policing, heroic acts, and trustworthy officers who had good relationships with the citizens are not the stuff that ends up in official records, newspaper editorials, or reports of investigating committees. Yet from about 1860 until 1900, police departments had hundreds more applicants than positions available, and the earlier high turnover of officers subsided and stabilized by the last decade of the century.
Although politicians viewed urban police departments as agencies for the distribution of patronage, the competency and intelligence level of officers appeared to be average. The taxpayers approved attractive retirement pensions and paid salaries that competed well with contemporary wage rates. For example, the average police officer earned an annual salary of about $1,200 in the 1870s, which was $400-$600 more than that earned by skilled tradesmen and workers in manufacturing. These wages and the attractiveness of the job deteriorated around the turn of the century. Much of that change was probably due to the constantly changing economic conditions and the difficulty of performing the police function.
Role
If the police role originally was to prevent crime, there is little evidence that it became their primary function between 1860 and 1900. Indeed, created in the midst of social upheaval from rising immigrant populations and from the effects of the industrial revolution, the police absorbed tasks related more to social services than crime control. ”Demands of the populace and by representatives of local government” shaped the duties of the police (Lane 1975, 119).
The police responded to the demands of the urban poor in a variety of ways. They provided free overnight lodging to the homeless immigrants, managed soup kitchens, responded to inquiries from mothers about their lost children, participated in controlling local elections, controlled the distribution of vice through their arrest patterns, and otherwise absorbed a variety of functions that tended to serve the lower classes. By performing these tasks, the police of the late nineteenth century contributed to urban order by mediating class conflicts and managing tensions in the urban community. Crime control was not a primary function of the police, nor was it a primary contributing factor to urban order.
This is not to say that nineteenth-century American police did not address criminal behavior in urban America. The data on the exact level of criminal activity for this period are either not available or very unreliable, but they acknowledge that crime peaked in the 1860s and 1870s (Lane 1975,144). As is true today, crime patterns varied spatially and changed over time. Most of the criminal activity occurred in the heart of a city, which created some problems for the police. If they concentrated their forces in that area, citizens in outlying areas complained of not being sufficiently protected. On the other hand, commercial leaders obviously demanded more police in the center of the city. The police constantly had to balance their response to these contrasting political pressures.
Criminal activity was lively, and the police did respond. In the early nineteenth century, the primary crimes were burglary and arson. The later period saw increased activity in pickpocketing, theft, burglary, and vice. Criminals plied their trades, but there was no attempt to eradicate crime. The police regulated crime, which seemed to satisfy the community and to serve police objectives. The police worked closely with the criminal element to keep crime at an acceptable and nonthreatening level to avoid a public outcry or pressure from community elites. Vice was not suppressed; it was licensed by the police. Some of these conditions included payoffs to officers, keeping undesirable establishments out of middle- and upper-class neighborhoods, and maintaining an orderly place of business. The criminal was not totally secure, however, for there was a political need to make arrests, not all cops were crooked, and periodic enforcement crackdowns did occur. The overall evidence, however, does not portray the urban police as a crime fighting or primarily law enforcement institution.
From 1900 to 1920 and beyond, reformers attempted to change the police from a catch-all service agency of urban government to a specialized crime control bureaucracy. This transformation occurred in reaction to larger changes in urban America. The constituency of the police—the sick, poor, migrants, unemployed, mentally ill—began to have their own agencies of assistance because of the development of specialized organizations in the broad social services area. The change resulted, in part, from a national reform movement led by the Progressives, who argued for clean government, professional government employees, and rationalized and specialized governmental structure. The result was a reversal of the precinct-based, decentralized structure of the police organization, an upgrading of personnel through civil service requirements, and a change in function from maintaining urban order to crime control (Fogelson 1977, 92-116).
By the early twentieth century, this impetus for police reform came from within its ranks. The coalition of civic, religious, and commercial groups that led the reforms of the late nineteenth century gave way to leaders from the police field after the turn of the century. This period of reform has been labeled the second wave of reform (Fogelson 1977, 166-82) or the second transformation of the police (Monkkonen 1981b, 148-50). These leaders concluded that the police function was spread too thin and that the organization was a catch-all agency that absorbed too many social service responsibilities. They argued that these responsibilities detracted from what they saw as the primary goal of the police, crime control.
Relying on a model of professionalism, police leaders pushed for more centralization in the administration of the departments by lengthening the chief’s tenure, developed a model that organized the departments along functional rather than geographic lines in order to close precincts and lessen the political influence of ward aldermen, and hoped to insulate the administration from politics by demanding more autonomy in controlling the police. These reformers hoped to remove police decision making from the ordinary citizen and place it in a rule-bound bureaucracy. They also proposed tougher entry requirements, increased salaries, and expanded promotional opportunities. These changes established a new image of the police based on a vocational, not a political, model and demanded a commitment from the officers in the organization.
The result of these reforms carried the police into the 1980s. They narrowed their functional responsibility to crime control and they changed their image from a social service agency to that of a crime fighting organization. The cost of that success was high, however, and for the past two decades those reforms have been questioned. The police succeeded in insulating themselves from the public, but they have also become isolated. The image of a crime control agency has had to be manipulated because of the impossibility of achieving that self-imposed mandate. The professional model they advocated has developed only at the top of police organizations; rank-and-file unions have filled the gap at the lower levels. The challenge of the next generation of police leaders will be to \address the legacy of the reforms implemented between 1860 and 1920.
Conclusion
The formation of the urban police in America in the nineteenth century and the reforms attempted through 1920 represented a societal acknowledgment that the police function is vital to the well-being of the cities. This vitality emanated from the role played by the police in contributing to an orderly environment within which cities expanded, populations grew, and political processes developed.
That role, although cloudy, is still vital today. The lessons and legacy of the period from 1860 to 1920 are crucial to an understanding of the current pressures on the police. The reliance on personal authority rather than formal standards of the legal culture combined with the American citizen’s unwillingness to accept governmental power without question places the police in the position of having to justify their actions in each police-citizen encounter. This climate contributes to an increase in community tensions and confrontations. The historical record shows that over time the police have learned to use their wise discretionary powers to ameliorate that tension.
The close linkage between the police and local politics, a linkage that relies on a process of informal political influence, allows the various publics to influence police policy and actions, but it also places the police in the position of choosing between groups. History informs us that the American urban police emerged as representatives of the political majority and have always sided with that majority. Again, the historical record suggests strongly that the police used their wide discretion and their capacity to provide immediate service to minority groups to forestall and ameliorate the potentially harsh effect of unchecked majority political rule.
The failure of the professionalism movement to become institutionalized and to permeate the organization, let alone the whole field, created a natural tension between administrators and the rank-and-file. In addition, the historical record makes it clear that at best, the professionalism movement masked many of the inherent characteristics of urban policing, such as its parochialism, its basis in local politics, and its inability to prevent crime. Current reformers who ignore that historical record are doomed to limited success or, quite possibly, failure.
