From Slave Patrols to Community Policing: The Evolution of Modern Law Enforcement

Abstract

Module 1 Assignment: History of Policing Policing has changed from the dictatorial nature to community-based approaches that prove essential in ensuring a corrective responsibility between police and community in solving contemporary problems across the globe. One can trace back this modern-day policing to earliest formal slave patrol of the early 18th century created in Carolina aimed at establishing a system of terror and squash slave uprisings. However such formalities in policing became enhanced through Metropolitan Police act of 1829 and Sir Robert Peel’s Nine Peelian Principles of policing to ensure that policing became a respectable profession and combating crime became a corrective responsibility. The Metropilitan Police Act of 1829 became influenced by Sir Robert Peel’s Nine Peelian Principles of policing to define an ethical police force (Peel, 2014). It is an Act that established a full-time professional and centrally-organized police force for the Greater London Area (Metropolitan police) implying that the Act proved an essential milestone in the history of policing as marked the creation of the first modern police force. For this reason, the Act centralized policing under one organization wiping away the corrupted and inefficient law enforcement that London experienced. While serving as the father of modern policing, Sir Robert Peels principles of policing guided the conduct and operations of Metropolitan policing system emphasizing on the importance of community cooperation, professionalism and public servant role of the police. The first three principles stated that a police must remain stable, efficient and organized along military lines, must be under government control and absence of crime would prove efficiency in police (Peel, 2014). The fourth five and sixth principles emphasised on the relevance of distribution of crime news, deployment of police strength in response to public support and the use of physical force as last option. The last three principles argued...