Maddog wrote:Are the police in communist countries, fascists?
The Police wouldn't exist in a communist society, its function as the the upholder and defender of capitalist property relations would no longer be required.
There is a reason the Police didn't come into existence until the 19th century (London Met was the first in 1829) - the working class had become too unruly with strikes, riots, protests, etc.
Another fun fact - Police in the American south grew out of slave patrols, their literal function from the start was to go after black people
One of the world’s first modern-type police forces developed in Charleston, South Carolina, in the years before New York force became fully professional. The precursor of the Charleston’s police force was not a set of urban watchmen but slave patrols that operated in the countryside. As one historian put it, “throughout all of the [Southern] states [before the Civil War], roving armed police patrols scoured the countryside day and night, intimidating, terrorizing, and brutalizing slaves into submission and meekness.”
The Charleston Guard and Watch developed by trial and error into a recognizably modern city-run police force by the 1820s, performing both nightly harassment of the Black population and staying on call for rapid mobilization to control crowds. Blacks, even free Blacks, caught out after curfew without an acceptable excuse were subject to overnight arrest by the Guard and up to 39 lashes after a magistrate looked at the case in the morning. This practice went back to colonial days and mirrored the methods of the rural slave patrols. The first major difference, even early on, was that the Guard was a paid force rather than a group of conscripted citizens.
https://libcom.org/history/origins-poli ... whitehouse
Posted: Mon Oct 08, 2018 2:44 pm
