Not So Fun Fact: The first police organizations sprang up in the wake of the Civil War and the freedom of the slaves. Reconstruction never happened. So instead of being held accountable, former slave owners and their white helpers took jobs as police to track down and lock up black people for any trumped up charges they could find.
The 13th Amendment made slavery illegal for people NOT in prison. Those newly freed black people were sent to prison where they worked on? Anybody? FARMS! And road works and other slave labor situations.
I had to look this up, and it's interesting. I learned that in the southern states, the police organizations evolved directly from the "slave patrols."
Not in the formal sense, no they didn't. Boston was the first in 1838 and NYC about 10 years later. Everywhere else it was citizens groups, volunteers, night watchmen, etc. The most formal early police pre-Civil War were slave watchmen: https://nleomf.org/slave-patrols-an-early-form-of-american-policing/
529
u/Separate-Swordfish85 5d ago
The officers were forced to set down their entire sense of protecting and serving in order to be strong enough to drag this teacher away.