The division between the police and the youth is rapidly growing as we see more and more youth identifying with leftist and liberal beliefs in relation to our current justice system. The current law enforcement system has proven to be extremely flawed and bastardised, from the investigation of the abuse of power of at least 85,000 police officers in the USA in 2019 to the 437 indigenous deaths in Australia since 1991. The bastardisation of the law enforcement system and the further corruption perpetuated by the system's employees, the police, can be traced back to the origins and creation of the western world's current police force. The systemic flaws are more than clear and directly outline why systemic racism is still prominent in law enforcement today.
The racist origins and creation of the police
The bastardisation of the justice system is very much systemic in law enforcement. The creation of the police in America reveals the racist origins and systemic racism built into the current police force, the commencement dates back to colonisation. The U.S police force is a relatively modern invention, with the commencement of law enforcement starting as slave patrol and night watches which were both used to control the behaviour of minorities, specifically African American slaves, and later developing into modern police departments. This slave patrol formed into an informal organisation which was a for-profit, privately funded system that employed white colonialists part-time. Slave patrols first rose in South Carolina in 1704, by the time the second president was elected, John Adams in 1797, every state which had not yet abolished slavery had a slave patrol. Both the night watch and slave patrol were direct targets and attempts to control minorities and keep them enslaved and oppressed, For example, New England settlers appointed Indian Constables to police Native Americans (National Constable Association, 1995), the St. Louis police were founded to protect residents from Native Americans in that frontier city, and many southern police departments began as slave patrols.
As neighbourhoods became larger the night watch became ineffective and the first publicly funded, organized police force with officers on duty full-time was created in Boston in 1831. The Boston police forces mainly acted to protect the property and transportation of goods, as Boston was a large shipping commercial centre. However, the souths police forces were centred around the preservation of the slavery system which was driven by the economic feud between the North and the South, the preservation of African American slaves made for free labour for Southern states. In some of the primary policing institutions, there were the slave patrols tasked with chasing down runaways and preventing slave revolts which occurred during the midst of the civil war.
After the emancipation of the slaves on January 1, 1863 criminals were legally allowed to be sold into slavery. This created an indirect yet direct target against the now “free” African American slaves, criminalising minor felonies that prior slaves had to commit in order to survive. Actions such as being homeless were made criminal offenses, as governments knew that slaves who had just been released had no choice than to be homeless therefore making it legal to once again continue slavery against African Americans. This was a systemic flaw and indirect racial targets are mundane to our current law enforcement system.
This was super interesting and such an important topic !!