The Racist Roots of American policing: From slave patrols to traffic stops

#police #justicesystem

Did the police start from slave patrols?

No. While it is true that slave patrols were a form of American law enforcement, the claim that American policing “traces back” to, “started out” as, or “evolved directly from,” slave patrols is false. The modern policing system in the United States originated from patrols intended to corral escaped slaves. Before there were official police. source

Policing in southern slave-holding states had roots in slave patrols, squadrons made up of white volunteers empowered to use vigilante tactics to enforce laws related to slavery. They located and returned enslaved people who had escaped, crushed uprisings led by enslaved people and punished enslaved workers found or believed to have violated plantation rules.

The first slave patrols arose in South Carolina in the early 1700s. As University of Georgia social work professor Michael A. Robinson has written, by the time John Adams became the second U.S. president, every state that had not yet abolished slavery had them.

Members of slave patrols could forcefully enter anyone’s home, regardless of their race or ethnicity, based on suspicions that they were sheltering people who had escaped bondage. source