While I agree that officers should be accountable. More enforcement of them will not suddenly make them good officers. Other nations train their police for years prior to putting them into the thick of it. US police spend far less time studying, and it shows, in everything from de-escalation tactics to general legal understanding. If you create a pipeline to weed out bad officers, then there needs to be a pipeline producing better officers
> Law enforcement is an idea that originated when law originated. There is no law without enforcement.
To the extent this anything more than circular it's false. Although psychopaths exist, on the whole compliance to a lesser or greater degree is a normal human trait. So you can tell people what the rules are and they'll obey to some extent. How much varies from person to person.
So the creation of specialist law enforcement bodies is a distinct and relatively modern change to civilisations. Before this, there is either no actual enforcement or it depends on whether a powerful person knows you broke a rule and cares to enforce it.
Law enforcement organizations existed in ancient times, such as prefects in ancient China, paqūdus in Babylonia, curaca in the Inca Empire, vigiles in the Roman Empire, and Medjay in ancient Egypt. Who law enforcers were and reported to depended on the civilization and often changed over time, but they were typically slaves, soldiers, officers of a judge, or hired by settlements and households. Aside from their duties to enforce laws, many ancient law enforcers also served as slave catchers, firefighters, watchmen, city guards, and bodyguards.
By the post-classical period and the Middle Ages, forces such as the Santa Hermandades, the shurta, and the Maréchaussée provided services ranging from law enforcement and personal protection to customs enforcement and waste collection. In England, a complex law enforcement system emerged, where tithings, groups of ten families, were responsible for ensuring good behavior and apprehending criminals; groups of ten tithings ("hundreds") were overseen by a reeve; hundreds were governed by administrative divisions known as shires; and shires were overseen by shire-reeves. In feudal Japan, samurai were responsible for enforcing laws.
The concept of police as the primary law enforcement organization originated in Europe in the early modern period; the first statutory police force was the High Constables of Edinburgh in 1611, while the first organized police force was the Paris lieutenant général de police in 1667. Until the 18th century, law enforcement in England was mostly the responsibility of private citizens and thief-takers, albeit also including constables and watchmen. This system gradually shifted to government control following the 1749 establishment of the London Bow Street Runners, the first formal police force in Britain. In 1800, Napoleon reorganized French law enforcement to form the Paris Police Prefecture; the British government passed the Glasgow Police Act, establishing the City of Glasgow Police; and the Thames River Police was formed in England to combat theft on the River Thames. In September 1829, Robert Peel merged the Bow Street Runners and the Thames River Police to form the Metropolitan Police. The title of the "first modern police force" has still been claimed by the modern successors to these organizations
The Americans do have a history of using Police forces for Slave capture, but Police forces in the USA PRE DATED that
Following European colonization of the Americas, the first law enforcement agencies in the Thirteen Colonies were the New York Sheriff's Office and the edit County Sheriff's Department, both formed in the 1660s in the Province of New York. The Province of Carolina established slave-catcher patrols in the 1700s, and by 1785, the Charleston Guard and Watch was reported to have the duties and organization of a modern police force. The first municipal police department in the United States was the Philadelphia Police Department, while the first American state police, federal law enforcement agency was the United States Marshals Service, both formed in 1789. In the American frontier, law enforcement was the responsibility of county sheriffs, rangers, constables, and marshals. The first law enforcement agency in Canada was the Royal Newfoundland Constabulary, established in 1729, while the first Canadian national law enforcement agency was the Dominion Police, established in 1868.
Certainly agreed on that. I think part of it is training but also part of it is just vetting. There are pretty clearly too many people who get into policing out of a desire to wield authority rather than a desire to help people. In many cases I think there is not much use in trying to "train" such people; they just need to be doggedly weeded out. But yes, we need action on both ends, ensuring the pipeline produces good officers going in, and then also regular monitoring to ensure they stay good.
