America. The land of the free. Currently, the land of two warring main political parties, and most importantly, a land with great law enforcement. Today, I’m going to cover the history of American law enforcement. 

An early night watch was formed in Boston in 1631, and in 1634, the first U.S. constable on record was Joshua Pratt in the Plymouth Colony. The first paid law enforcement group was known as a Rattlewatch, established in New Amsterdam (New York) in 1651. The Rattlewatch was supposed to patrol the streets, discourage crime, and actually enforce the law.

When the English captured New Amsterdam in 1664, they installed a constable who kept the peace, suppressing excessive drinking, gambling, and disturbances during church services. Modern policing started to develop in Boston in 1838, with full-time police services. Slave patrols set up in 1704 were abolished in the 1860s along with the abolition of slavery. 

In the early 20th century (1900’s), independent detectives started identifying and arresting criminals and protecting property lines. Private detectives started to emerge around this time. The invention of the police car and the two-way radio made police a reactive service that began accepting calls for help.

 At this time, they adopted new technologies and implemented strict training, while O.W. Wilson in Wichita, Kansas started to help implement strategies to reduce police corruption. This era was known as the professionalism era of policing. Yet this point was the point from which it all went downhill.

Instead of being versatile and dealing with both petty crimes and bigger crimes like felonies, they just focused on the bigger crimes. This, understandably, made the public angry. People started saying that the police department was becoming “inefficient”, which is an extremely valid point.

Following urban unrest in the 1960’s, the police decided to emphasize community relations. In the 1990’s, CompStat was developed by the New York Police Department as a system for tracking crime trends and patterns, and holding police accountable for dealing with crime. Compstat has now been implemented across the US to this day.

Who knows which direction the police will take from here. Will it be more or less efficient? Who knows?