Stop Kidding Yourself: The Police Were Created to Control Working Class and Poor People

Portside Date: December 30, 2014
Author: Sam Mitrani
Date of Source: Monday, December 29, 2014

LAWCHA, Labor and Working Class History Association

Before the nineteenth century, there were no police forces that we would recognize as such anywhere in the world. In the Northern United States, there was a system of elected constables and sheriffs, much more responsible to the population in a very direct way than the police are today. In the South, the closest thing to a police force was the slave patrols. Then, as Northern cities grew and filled with mostly immigrant wage workers who were physically and socially separated from the ruling class, the wealthy elite who ran the various municipal governments hired hundreds and then thousands of armed men to impose order on the new working class neighborhoods.

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Source URL: https://portside.org/2014-12-30/stop-kidding-yourself-police-were-created-control-working-class-and-poor-people