----- Original Message ----- From: "Philip F. Lee" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Tuesday, June 08, 2004 9:34 AM Subject: [inbox] Re: Making an arrest (was: Wounding Shots)
> Professional police forces date from the early 19th Century (1829 in > London, England and 1844 in New York City, US -- see: > http://www.met.police.uk/history/definition.htm > http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/historyonline/policing.cfm ) > > It should be no surprise that citizens would have police powers since > they were the law enforcement officers at the founding of our > republic. Sheriffs would be elected from the body of the citizens and > would call upon the help of citizens when needed for police actions. > But Sheriffs were frequently distant from the need for policing. While reading through the diaries of a frontier Indiana sheriff (frontier meaning 1810-20), I was startled at how little of his job involved policing in the modern sense. His job seemed to be primarily execution of judgments from civil suits, dealing with the occasional runaway slave, and rather rarely, dealing with a criminal. One of the few examples that stuck out of his enforcement of criminal law was probably unlawful, though just. A guy had beat his wife one too many times, the neighbors brought him to the sheriff, and he basically turned a rail fence into stocks for several hours. This apparently taught the guy a lesson. My impression from reading other legal materials of the period is that a lot of a sheriff's job in many counties was attachment of assets related to civil suits. While regular professional police forces are 19th century (and come out of slave patrols in the South), the tradition of a night watch is present in the colonies from the beginning. In Massachusetts, militia members rotated night watch duties. Clayton E. Cramer [EMAIL PROTECTED] _______________________________________________ To post, send message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To subscribe, unsubscribe, change options, or get password, see http://lists.ucla.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/firearmsregprof
