Analytical Article on Policing in a Developing America

     Throughout civilized history there has always been necessity of the law, and enforcing it. In modern day we call the people who enforce and carry out the law the Police. The police as we know it is very organized, efficient, well informed, and pervasive across most parts of the world. Not many people think about the reasons behind why we have such an effective police force. We have this established police force mainly based on need, because of how rapidly hundreds of thousands of people immigrated to america, and realizing how out of hand the urbanizing cities were becoming. The homocide rates skyrocketed, specifically leading up to and during prohibition in 1919.

       In the early to mid eighteen hundreds the leadership in america began realizing through "rising civil disruptions in the north regarding racial or ethnic disputes and skyrocketing immigration rates"(Policing In america) that the night watch system used in the seventeen hundreds was not effective enough to keep order inside these rapidly growing cities during the day time. Immigration led to urbanization because of the amount of poor people immigrating to the united states. They could not afford suburban housing so people took advantage of that and made tenements causing a huge overcrowding problem and also causing a large amount of the population to congregate in one area making a rapid and overwhelming change in crime rates.These events led to the establishment of the first police stations in New York City-1844 and Boston-1838 These two large cities became pioneers and models for what the police would come to be in the near future. These kinds of large booming cities were the primary ground to start a Police enforce because of rising tension between races, ethnicities, the higher likelihood of crime because of the proximity of people from one another combined with the poverty rate, and the huge amount of strikes and riots being carried out because of wage gaps and poor working conditions. “New York City had 5,090 strikes, involving almost a million workers from 1880 to 1900; Chicago had 1,737 strikes, involving over a half a million workers in the same period” to control these massive riots and strikes business owners tried to hire people to subdue the workers, but that only made the employees further resent them. This is where the  police came in, a third party figure to subdue the rioting while staying mostly impartial. The only problem was that in the early stages of policing there was a  massive amount of corrupt officers.

       The large amount of immigrants coming to the United states caused multiple things, a large overcrowding issue and a wage gap. People who provided tenements and such services profited greatly from the great number of migrants coming into america's cities, while the immigrants got poorer and poorer. The poverty in the tenement buildings and areas similar to the tenements drove many people to crime, the new and undertrained inefficient police force followed this trend and either focused on the larger problem at hand or were corrupted and payed to look the other way. The wage gap created a stressful environment in which Political bosses, gangs and the wealthy ran rampant without any police interference. These wealthy people and political bosses were the ones starting and funding these police stations which was the reason for the high amount of corrupted police. The american leadership in these cities were realizing the necessity for a incorruptible strong police force.

The reactive nature of the new police system was found to be ineffective and they started shifting toward a preventive system, starting first with getting police officers much more training, vetting, uniforms,

Uniforms implemented in Americas Police

and eventually multiple branches and forms of policing. The need to innovate and stay ahead of criminals created a whole new world of career for an american citizen. Police officers were dying because of the lack of actual authority of organization within the policing system. These deaths of police officers eventually led to officers carrying guns, being able to use deadly force on a citizen. This changed how people looked at the police forever. This was when the police truly started to take control and show they had authority and were going to maintain order.

Homicide rates in america Police officer deaths in america


The development of the police force in urbanizing america aided in the innovation of many other fields(through necessity to have a successful police force)  and opportunities in america, it sparked the start of american policing, investigation, forensic science, fire control, fixing homelessness, and a large number of other important themes that needed fixing in this time period. This necessity to innovate the police force led to the beginning of Forensic Science in 1880 when the first forms of fingerprinting was being used in america, it changed how we kept track of criminals in america,

First fingerprints officially taken in america

the development of vice squads to enforce laws regarding prostitution, gambling, and alcohol and narcotics abuse. This was further specializing the police and making them much more efficient. The police still walking a beat began using special telegraph systems to report crimes, or call for assistance which turned into a telephone that police and citizens could use to contact the police.

To the left: Police Woman using police Contact Phone
The police also started implementing hand writing analysis, and legitimizing early polygraph use. All of this innovation culminated in the development of the first forensic criminal investigation labs in america, and the start of federal involvement in policing. The bureau of investigation, the first version of the FBI was created in 1908. This sparked the rush of government involvement in the policing area. The government involvement in policing eventually led to the establishment of the first federal crime laboratory in 1932, and the National Police Academy in 1935.
        The rapid innovation and success of the police force can be directly related to urbanization in that if it weren't for the massive amount of immigrants flooding the urban areas of america causing much to rapid urbanization of the largest cities. As a result of this crime went up and order went down. To respond to this problem the Police Force had to become more efficient in order to keep society afloat, and be a conducive environment for the people of america. Without the problems created by the large scale immigration the government would have never been pushed to create such an effective police force and the police as we know it today would be completely different, for the worse of all of our well being.

Works Cited

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