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But...this...this is what the police HAVE ALWAYS BEEN!!
Let DadPod give you the straight dope about the police. [Hikes up jorts, sits down on turned-around chair]...A THREAD!!
(1/10) https://twitter.com/NPR/status/1356841858555670538
Let DadPod give you the straight dope about the police. [Hikes up jorts, sits down on turned-around chair]...A THREAD!!
(1/10) https://twitter.com/NPR/status/1356841858555670538
"Slave" patrols were an important feeder stream for the modern US-ian police dept., as others on here have shared. But there's ANOTHER precursor, just as significant--the world's first modern metropolitan police force. And it didn't come from the South, or even the U.S.
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(2/10)
It came from London. The London Metropolitan Police was created in 1829 by Sir Robert Peel. (English cops are called “bobbies” after him.) But why Peel? What made him so special? What’d he have on his resume that made him a good candidate for this first-of-its-kind job?
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He was the manager of the the British colonial occupation of Ireland!! There, Peel developed ideas for new forms of social control that would help England maintain political and economic domination against a growing number of local insurrections and uprisings.
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Usually, you would just use your military to suppress your colonial subjects, but Peel was running Ireland for an Empire during a time of expansion and war (think Napolean), which reduced the number of forces available for, y’know, keeping the Irish down.
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(5/10)
Plus! (does this sound familiar??) “armed troops had limited tools for dealing with riots and others forms of mass disorder. Too often they were called upon to open fire on crowds, creating martyrs and further inflaming Irish resistance”...
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So! “Peel was forced to develop a lower-cost and more legitimate form of policing: a ‘Peace Preservation Force.'"
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This new *force* “was “made up of professional police who attempted to manage crowds by embedding themselves more fully in rebellious localities, then identifying and neutralizing troublemakers and ringleaders through threats and arrests.” 
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So while we’re taught to understand police as an inherently domestic, local, community safety, public service profession, really the very DNA of policing is firmly rooted in colonialism, empire, and the strategic oppression of local populations!!! What?? Mind blown.
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(9/10)
Btw, this information is all from an amazing book called The End Of Policing, by @avitale. Fin.
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