The Problem
According to Tony Platt, author of Crime and Punishment in the United States, “The genesis of the modern police organization in the South is the ‘Slave Patrol.’” That assessment is further corroborated by criminal justice researchers K. B. Turner,David Giacopassi and Margaret Vandiver, who concluded the following:
The literature clearly establishes that a legally sanctioned law enforcement system existed in America before the Civil War for the express purpose of controlling the slave population and protecting the interests of slave owners. The similarities between the slave patrols and modern American policing are too salient to dismiss or ignore. Hence, the slave patrol should be considered a forerunner of modern American law enforcement.
Whenever Blacks fought and ran away seeking freedom from slavery, more laws and organized enforcement were established to secure the institution of slavery by capturing, punishing, and controlling runaways. Those slave patrols, author Philip L. Reichel notes, were created in the Carolinas in the early 1700s and spread throughout the colonies.
According toThe History of Policing in the United Statesby Dr. Gary Potter, “Slave patrols had three primary functions: (1) to chase down, apprehend, and return to their owners, runaway slaves; (2) to provide a form of organized terror to deter slave revolts; and, (3) to maintain a form of discipline for slave-workers who were subject to summary justice, outside of the law, if they violated any plantation rules.”
This concept has not changed much as it relates to modern law enforcement. Far too often police brutality against Blacks commonly occurs as police (1) chase down, apprehend, and subdue Blacks, often resulting in death or severe injuries; (2) provide armed-organized terror squads to deter Blacks from building a viable alternative to a repressive system; and (3) punish Blacks and put them in their subjugated place, especially those who violate today’s plantation-like rules.
Slave patrols and modern police demonstrate the same essential functions as occupying forces of containment, especially in the Black community. They are the same conditions Frederick Douglass described when attempting his first escape from slavery: “At every gate through which we were to pass we saw a watchman—at every ferry a guard—on every bridge a sentinel—and in every wood a patrol. We were hemmed in upon every side.”
For those who know the history, it isn’t shocking to see that the pattern has not changed much in over 300 years because such a system was never designed for true freedom, justice, and equality.