The Brooklyn College professor and author of “The End of Policing,” and his academic peers, all experts in the history of American policing and police brutality, have been called on a lot since mass protests sprang up nationwide in the wake of the police killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and Tony McDade.
Can you talk me through a little bit of the history of American police departments and the enforcement of white supremacy?
The very first police force that meets the definition of a modern, 24-hour, uniformed, law-enforcement-oriented force is actually the Charleston City Watch and Guard, which is formed in the 1790s to manage a mobile slave population.
Alex S. Vitale, Author of "The End of Policing"
I would argue the very first police force that meets the definition of a modern, 24-hour, uniformed, law-enforcement-oriented force is actually the Charleston City Watch and Guard, which is formed in the 1790s to manage a mobile slave population that works outside the home of their owners.
The U.S. had police forces like the Texas Rangers, whose primary objective was to drive out Native American and Spanish and Mexican landowners to make way for white settlement in the South and Southwest.
