Someone On The Internet™ recently pushed back against the idea that the precursors to modern cops in the USA were either “slave patrols” (actually anti-slave patrols) in the south, or union-busters in the north. He had two objections. The first was that the oldest police force in the USA is from Boston, which revealed that he couldn’t even finish reading the “union-busting” part of the sentence, but was so triggered by the words “slave patrols” that he jumped ahead and starting typing his reply. The second was that there were cops in ancient Rome.
This objection does not support his position as well as one might think.
The ancient city of Rome did not, in fact, have a police force like we think of them today, but they did have the “vigiles urbani”, which had two functions: fighting fires and catching runaway slaves.
Yes, that’s right, not just the first cops in the USA, but the cops highlighted as predating them by thousands of years, were also anti-slave patrols. And firefighters.
Oh, and for anyone who thinks it is important that the cops who beat Tyre Nichols to death were themselves Black, the vigiles were themselves slaves under supervision, slaves who spent their time catching other slaves.
What they did not do was investigate crimes. US cops have clearance rates well below 50% for everything but murder, and barely above 50% for murder, but the vigiles were closer to 0% unless you count “trying to run away from being enslaved” as a crime.
If you wanted evidence, you had to gather it yourself. If you needed a witness, you had to grab them and drag them in front of a magistrate yourself, or hire someone to do so. Even the accused, you had to capture and present them to court as well. No wonder, then, that justice was largely available to the wealthy, but not the poor. The poor had to police themselves.
One last point about the vigiles: I’ve mentioned a couple of times that one of their two primary functions was fighting fires. So it’s notable that during the Great Fire of Rome, they spent their time looting rather than trying to fight the fire. Plus ça change, etc.
@pwinn Neat.