The local press has produced various articles on why Kansas City does not control its own police department, with mixed explanatory success. The fact that the governor of Missouri selects almost the entirety of the KC board of police commissioners, whereas all other cities in the state form their own boards, no doubt inspires many confused and angry internet searches. Local control is step one of police reform here — the KCPD will not reform itself, and the deeply conservative state legislature will be of no assistance; both these bodies are desperate to keep control out of the hands of the relatively progressive city council. Pieces on how this absurd state of affairs came to be offer valuable information, but what is also needed is an article on what we don’t know. This is admittedly risky, as it’s possible someone knows the answers to the nagging questions herein, but if that’s the case then his or her historical research is itself difficult to find, or at least it has been for me.

Some articles, such as the one from FOX 4, only speak of 1930s Kansas City and the need to wrest police control away from mob boss Tom Pendergast. The Beacon focuses solely on this, yet notes that first Pendergast had to weasel control away from the state, without further comment. More outlets barely seem to realize that the Pendergast story is less important if Kansas City had state control before that; The Pitch and KCUR write that state management began in 1874, when the KCPD was first formed, but still focus on 1932-1939, when Tom ran it. The Star does a little better, explaining that during the Civil War, Missouri was one of the slave states that did not join the Confederacy, but sought to prevent arms and munitions in St. Louis from being used for Union purposes by seizing control of the St. Louis police department (local control was given back in 2013). The same set-up — a governor-decided board — was then used for Kansas City in 1874.

Little more is said, though this isn’t fully the fault of the journalists. It could be that no historian, professional or amateur, has researched the circumstances of 1874. Why was the St. Louis model used for Kansas City? Who were the key players? What motivated them to take their positions, whether for or against? And many other questions. Journalists typically have little time to turn around a story; if historians haven’t done the work, which can take weeks, months, or years, the article may not be properly fleshed out. This explains the focus on Pendergast and St. Louis — that’s the information available.

Some may be satisfied with the knowledge that KC’s state of affairs has its roots in St. Louis’. That is all that’s needed, after all, to show a link between American white supremacy (the desire to aid the Confederacy, which sought to preserve slavery, by controlling armories) and our lack of local control. This connection is being used in the crucial legal push to reestablish local power. (I will never forgive FOX 4 in that last link, by the way, for its headline “Woman Sues KC Police Board,” as if Gwen Grant, president of the Urban League, was a complete nobody, like some “Woman Eaten By an Alligator in Florida.” Try “Activist,” “Organizer,” “ULKC President” or something.) That historical link is undeniable, but it bothers the historian, and probably a lot of readers, that no further context is available. We want to know more. Say, for example, that those who pushed for state control of KC forces in the 1870s had their own reasons that related to race. Clearly, the Civil War had been over for a decade, but what if — and this is completely made up — they thought the state would be better than the city at keeping black officers off the force? This would be important to know for its own sake, significantly altering the meaning of state control of our police, but could also service the campaign to correct the problem. It would make any “rooted in racism” statement even more powerful; it’s a much more direct connection. Alternatively, of course, there could be an entirely different context. What if — and this is again imaginary — the intentional modeling of KC’s board on St. Louis’ was far less nefarious. Perhaps there were good intentions, even if one disagrees with the policy. Getting control of the police away from the mob in the 1930s might be a later example of this. Maybe the 1874 decision was likewise independent of racial questions. Or what if the city council was so racist someone wanted outside control? We can imagine anything we want, because we don’t know. (Uncovering a more benign motive would certainly be used against the campaign — knowledge, as much as we crave and cherish it, can come with a cost.)

The assumption seems to be that what happened in 1874 was due to mere precedent. In other words, St. Louis had a governor-appointed board of police commissioners, so it was decided KC should be the same without much thought. This is entirely possible, but without further research it could be entirely wrong.

So let’s examine what we do know of the events. We know that in 1874, representative James McDaniels introduced House Bill 866, entitled “An act creating a board of police commissioners, and authorizing the appointment of a permanent police force for the City of Kansas.” Formation and outside administration came at the same time. This language is identical to the act passed for St. Louis in the Civil War era. H.B. 866 (which one can read in its entirety here) passed easily, 92-10. In the Missouri senate, it was then called up by Senator John Wornall, a name Kansas Citians will recognize if they’ve ever driven down a certain road. In that chamber, the vote was 21-0 in favor. This is in contrast to the St. Louis bill, passing 50-32 and 24-8, with plenty of debate, as The Star documented.

Who was James McDaniels? An 1874 book offering short biographies on the members of the Missouri legislature described him as “about twenty-seven years of age” and a native of Vermont. He was a real estate agent in Kansas City, and one of three representatives from Jackson County. The book describes him as a “progressive Democrat,” which marks him as a reformer. Progressives of the late 19th (and early 20th) century tended to seek government solutions to the problems wrought by industrialization and urbanization, like poverty, political machines (that’s what Pendergast had later), and corporate power. A progressive advocating a police force, state-controlled no less, could only be thought of as odd in the context of today’s sensibilities and meanings. With cities growing rapidly, and slums and crime a problem, a larger, more organized police force would have been seen as a fine way to create a better society, at least by someone like McDaniels. However, without more information, we simply do not know McDaniels’ true motives. Overall, his time in the legislature was brief; he was elected in 1872, served for a couple years, got H.B. 866 passed his final year, and disappeared.

What of the ten who voted against the bill? There were two representatives from St. Louis, Truman A. Post and Joseph T. Tatum. There was James B. Harper, Radical Republican from Putnam County, who fought for the Union in the Missouri militia. And there was the second representative from Jackson County, Republican Stephen P. Twiss (our third representative did not vote). Twiss grew up poor in Massachusetts but eventually became a lawyer and served in that state’s legislature, according to his (much longer) biography in the 1874 text. It is carefully noted that he “voted for the Hon. Charles Sumner in his second election to the United States Senate” (this was when legislators, not ordinary voters, chose U.S. senators). Sumner was head of the Radical Republicans, the anti-slavery advocates. Twiss moved to Kansas City after the Civil War and, after losing to the Democrat Wornall in a race for Missouri senate, was elected to the Missouri house. Why was Twiss against the bill (so fiercely he tried to repeal it in 1875), when McDaniels and Wornall were for it? As before, note that Republicans shooting down a police force and/or state control must not be thought of as strange here — Republicans and Democrats were very different ideologically in past centuries compared to the modern parties. Overall, eight Republicans voted No, alongside two Democrats. Other Republicans joined the mostly Democratic legislature to pass H.B. 866. So maybe that hints at something. Those generally against the bill were Republicans, who were generally against slavery. But whether the bill had any motives connected to post-war racial politics, we do not know.

I had hoped to offer more information than just the key players, but it became clear rather quickly that this would require weeks, months, or years. Perhaps I will circle back to this if I have the time and energy for such a project. So many vital questions linger — we still know next to nothing. Why did McDaniels base his bill on St. Louis’? Was it mere precedent and ease? “That’s how it was done before, and how it passed before, so why not?” Or were there political motives? Did the city council agree with the legislation? Did the more primitive police forces that existed before the formation of the KCPD, such as the sheriff and deputies, agree with it? Why did Twiss vote against it and try to have it repealed? Was he against a police force itself, against state control, or both? Or did he dislike some other aspect of the plan? Why did the third Jackson County rep, James R. Sheley, abstain from voting? Why did two St. Louis legislators vote Nay? Did they sympathetically oppose state power over another police force, frustrated by their own city’s experience, or was there another reason? Why did Republicans oppose the legislation? Does a large majority voting for the bill in both chambers mean there wasn’t much debate on it?

To answer these questions, one must put on the historian’s helmet. We’ll have to track down the journals and diaries of all those actors, in historical archives or by finding their descendants. Newspapers from the 1870s will have to be located and studied in the archives for stories of these votes and debates. We’ll need more government records, if they exist. And did any secondary sources, such as books, comment on these things later? These are huge ifs — even if these items were created, they may not have survived nearly 150 years. McDaniels, perhaps the most important person in the story, does not appear to have been a man of prominence, and will likely prove difficult to study. Twiss is a bit easier to find, as he became a judge and ran for KC mayor (and in the 1850s may have helped found the Republican Party). His (theoretical) documents could have been better preserved. Wornall’s, too. Hopefully this writing aids whoever undertakes this endeavor, whether my future self or someone else.

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“How American Policing Started with Carolina Slave Catchers” and similar headlines need asterisks. There are big elements of truth in them, but also a betrayal of the nuance found in the historical scholarship on which they are based. There is also the problem of lack of context, which perhaps inappropriately electrifies meaning. American policing starting with slave patrols is a powerful idea, but does it become less so when, for example, we study what policing looked like around the globe — and in the American colonies — before slave patrols were first formed in the early 18th century?

Obviously, permanent city forces tasked with enforcing laws and maintaining order have existed around the world since ancient times. There was a police unit in Rome established by the first emperor, China had its own forms of policing long before Western influence, and so on. As human communities grew larger, more complex systems (more personnel, permanent bodies, compensation, training, weaponry) were deemed necessary to prevent crime and capture criminals.

Small bands and villages could use simpler means to address wrongdoing. In traditional societies, which were kin-based, chiefs, councils, or the entire community ran the show, one of unwritten laws and intimate mediation or justice procedures. Larger villages and towns where non-kin lived and worked together typically established groups of men to keep order; for example, “among the first public police forces established in colonial North America were the watchmen organized in Boston in 1631 and in New Amsterdam (later New York City) in 1647. Although watchmen were paid a fee in both Boston and New York, most officers in colonial America did not receive a salary but were paid by private citizens, as were their English counterparts.” There were also constables and sheriffs in the 1630s. True, American society has virtually always been a slave society, but similar groups were formed elsewhere before the African slave trade began under the Portuguese in the 16th century. There were “patrolmen, sergeants and constables” on six-month contracts in Italy in the 14th and 15th centuries. There were sheriffs, constables, and coroners (who investigated deaths) in England in medieval times. Before the 1500s, armed men paid (whether by individuals or government) to prevent and respond to trouble in cities had been around in the West for about 4,500 years — as well as in China, African states, and elsewhere (India, Japan, Palestine, Persia, Egypt, the Islamic caliphates, and so on).

This is not to build a straw man. One might retort: “The argument is that modern policing has its roots in slave patrols.” Or “…modern, American policing…” Indeed, that is often the way it is framed, with the “modern” institution having its “origins” in the patrolling groups that began in the first decade of the 1700s.

But the historians cited to support this argument are actually more interested in showing how slave patrols were one (historically overlooked) influence among many influences on the formation of American police departments — and had the greatest impact on those in the South. A more accurate claim would be that “modern Southern police departments have roots in slave patrols.” This can be made more accurate still, but we will return to that shortly.

Crime historian Gary Potter of Eastern Kentucky University has a popular 2013 writing that contains a paragraph on this topic, a good place to kick things off:

In the Southern states the development of American policing followed a different path. The genesis of the modern police organization in the South is the “Slave Patrol” (Platt 1982). The first formal slave patrol was created in the Carolina colonies in 1704 (Reichel 1992). Slave patrols had three primary functions: (1) to chase down, apprehend, and return to their owners, runaway slaves; (2) to provide a form of organized terror to deter slave revolts; and, (3) to maintain a form of discipline for slave-workers who were subject to summary justice, outside of the law, if they violated any plantation rules. Following the Civil War, these vigilante-style organizations evolved in[to] modern Southern police departments primarily as a means of controlling freed slaves who were now laborers working in an agricultural caste system, and enforcing “Jim Crow” segregation laws, designed to deny freed slaves equal rights and access to the political system.

Here the South is differentiated from the rest of the nation — it “followed a different path.” This echoes others, such as the oft-cited Phillip Reichel, criminologist from the University of Northern Colorado. His important 1988 work argued slave patrols were a “transitional,” evolutionary step toward modern policing. For example, “Unlike the watches, constables, and sheriffs who had some nonpolicing duties, the slave patrols operated solely for the enforcement of colonial and State laws.” But that was not to say other factors beyond the South, beyond patrols, also molded the modern institution. It’s simply that “the existence of these patrols shows that important events occurred in the rural South before and concurrently with events in the urban North that are more typically cited in examples of the evolution of policing in the United States.” In his 1992 paper, “The Misplaced Emphasis on Urbanization and Police Development,” Reichel again seeks to show not that slave patrols were the sole root of U.S. policing, but that they need to be included in the discussion:

Histories of the development of American law enforcement have traditionally shown an urban‐North bias. Typically ignored are events in the colonial and ante‐bellum South where law enforcement structures developed prior to and concurrently with those in the North. The presence of rural Southern precursors to formal police organizations suggests urbanization is not a sufficient explanation for why modern police developed. The argument presented here is that police structures developed out of a desire by citizens to protect themselves and their property. Viewing the development of police in this manner avoids reference to a specific variable (e.g., urbanization) which cannot explain developments in all locations. In some places the perceived need to protect persons and property may have arisen as an aspect of urbanization, but in others that same need was in response to conditions not at all related to urbanization. 

In other words, different areas of the nation had different conditions that drove the development of an increasingly complex law enforcement system. A common denominator beyond the obvious protection of the person, Reichel argues, was protection of property, whether slaves in the South or mercantile/industrial interests in the North, unique needs Potter explores as well.

Historian Sally Hadden of Western Michigan University, cited frequently in articles as well, is likewise measured. Her seminal Slave Patrols: Law and Violence in Virginia and the Carolinas makes clear that Southern police continued tactics of expired slave patrols (such as “the beat,” a patrol area) and their purpose, the control of black bodies. But, given that Hadden is a serious historian and that her work focuses on a few Southern states, one would be hard-pressed to find a statement that positions patrols as the progenitor of contemporary policing in the U.S. (In addition, the Klan receives as much attention, if not more, as a descendant of patrols.) Written in 2001, she is complaining, like other scholars, that “most works in the history of crime have focused their attention on New England, and left the American south virtually untouched.” She even somewhat cautions against the connections many articles make today between patrol violence and 21st century police violence (how one might affect the other, rather than both simply being effects of racism, is for an article of its own):

Many people I have talked with have jumped to the conclusion that patrolling violence of an earlier century explains why some modern-day policemen, today, have violent confrontations with African Americans. But while a legacy of hate-filled relations has made it difficult for many African Americans to trust the police, their maltreatment in the seventeenth, eighteenth, or nineteenth centuries should not carry all the blame. We may seek the roots of racial fears in an earlier period, but that history does not displace our responsibility to change and improve the era in which we live. After all, the complex police and racial problems that our country continues to experience in the present day are, in many cases, the results of failings and misunderstandings in our own time. To blame the 1991 beating of Rodney King by police in Los Angeles on slave patrollers dead nearly two hundred years is to miss the point. My purpose in writing this text is a historical one, an inquiry into the earliest period of both Southern law enforcement and Southern race-based violence. Although the conclusions below may provide insight into the historical reasons for the pattern of racially targeted law enforcement that persists to the current day, it remains for us to cope with our inheritance from this earlier world without overlooking our present-day obligation to create a less fearful future.

It may be worthwhile now to nail down exactly what modern policing having roots in slave patrols means. First, when the patrols ended after the Confederate defeat, other policing entities took up or continued the work of white supremacist oppression. Alongside the Ku Klux Klan, law enforcement would conduct the terrors. As a writer for TIME put it, after the Civil War “many local sheriffs functioned in a way analogous to the earlier slave patrols, enforcing segregation and the disenfranchisement of freed slaves.” An article on the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund (!) website phrased it: “After the Civil War, Southern police departments often carried over aspects of the patrols. These included systematic surveillance, the enforcement of curfews…” Second, individuals involved in slave patrols were also involved in the other forms of policing: “In the South, the former slave patrols became the core of the new police departments.” Patrollers became policemen, as Hadden shows. Before this, there is no doubt there was crossover between slave patrol membership and the three other forms of policing in colonial America, sheriffs, constables, and watchmen. Third, patrols, as Reichel noted, had no non-policing duties, plus other differences like beats, steps toward contemporary police departments (though they weren’t always bigger; patrols had three to six men, like Boston’s early night watch). Clearly, slave patrols had a huge influence on the modern city police forces of the South that formed in the 1850s, 1860s, and later. (Before this, even the term “police” appears to have been applied to all four types of law enforcement, including patrols, though not universally — in the words of “a former slave: the police ‘were for white folks. Patteroles were for niggers.'” But after the war, Hadden writes in the final paragraph of her book, many blacks saw little difference “between the brutality of slave patrols, white Southern policemen, or the Klan.”)

Notice that the above are largely framed as post-war developments. Before the war, patrols, sheriffs, constables, and watchmen worked together, with plenty of personnel crossover, to mercilessly crush slaves. But it was mostly after the war that the “modern” police departments appeared in the South, with patrols as foundations. Here comes a potential complication. The free North was the first to form modern departments, and did so before the war: “It was not until the 1830s that the idea of a centralized municipal police department first emerged in the United States. In 1838, the city of Boston established the first American police force, followed by New York City in 1845, Albany, NY and Chicago in 1851, New Orleans and Cincinnati in 1853, Philadelphia in 1855, and Newark, NJ and Baltimore in 1857” (New Orleans and Baltimore were in slave states, Newark in a semi-slave state). This development was due to growth (these were among the largest U.S. cities), disorder and riots, industrialization and business interests and labor conflict, and indeed “troublesome” immigrants and minorities, among other factors.

That point is raised by conservatives to suggest that if Northern cities first established the police departments we know today, how can one say slave patrols had an influence? A tempting counter might be: these states hadn’t been free for long. Slavery in New York didn’t end until 1827. While that is true, the North did not have patrols. “None of the sources I used indicated that Northern states used slave patrols,” Reichel told me in an email, after I searched in vain for evidence they did. Northern sheriffs, constables, and watchmen enforced the racial hierarchy, of course, but slave patrols were a Southern phenomenon. One can rightly argue that patrol practices in the South influenced police forces in the North, but that’s not quite the strong “root” we see when studying Southern developments.

This is why boldly emphasizing that modern departments in Southern states originated with patrols is somewhat tricky. It’s true enough. But who would doubt that Southern cities would have had police departments anyway? This goes back to where we began: policing is thousands of years old, and as cities grow and technology and societies change, more sophisticated policing systems arise. The North developed them here first, without slave patrols as foundations. Even if the slave South had never birthed patrols, its system of sheriffs, constables, and watchmen would surely not have lasted forever — eventually larger police forces would have appeared as they did in the North, as they did in Rome, as they did wherever communities exploded around the globe throughout human history. New Orleans went from 27,000 residents in 1820 to 116,000 in 1850! Then 216,000 by 1880. System changes were inevitable.

Consider that during the 18th and early 19th centuries, more focused, larger, tax-funded policing was developing outside the United States, in nations without slave patrols, nations both among and outside the Euro-American slave societies. In 1666, France began building the first modern Western police institution, with a Lieutenant General of Police paid from the treasury and overseeing 20 districts in Paris — by “1788 Paris had one police officer for every 193 inhabitants.” The French system inspired Prussia (Germany) and other governments. There was Australia (1790), Scotland (1800), Portuguese Brazil (1809), Ireland (1822), and especially England (1829), whose London Metropolitan Police Department was the major model for the United States (as well as Canada’s 1834 squad in Toronto). Outside the West, there were (and always had been, as we saw) evolving police forces: “By the eighteenth century both Imperial China and Mughal India, for example, had developed policing structures and systems that were in many ways similar to those in Europe,” before European armies smothered most of the globe. Seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth century Japan, one of the few nations to stave off European imperialism and involuntary influence, was essentially a police state. A similar escapee was Korea, with its podocheong force beginning in the 15th century. As much as some fellow radicals would like the West to take full credit for the police, this ignores the historical contributions (or, if one despises that phrasing, developments) of Eastern civilizations and others elsewhere. Like the North, the South was bound to follow the rest of the world.

It also feels like phrasing that credits patrols as the origin of Southern departments ignores the other three policing types that existed concurrently (and in the North were enough to form a foundation for the first modern institutions, later copied in the South). Sheriffs, constables, and watchmen were roots as well, even if one sees patrols as the dominant one. (Wondering if the latter had replaced the three former, which would have strengthened the case of the patrols as the singular foundation of Southern law enforcement, I asked Sally Hadden. She cautioned against any “sweeping statement.” She continued: “There were sheriffs, definitely, in every [Southern] county. In cities, there were sometimes constables and watchmen, but watchmen were usually replaced by patrols — but not always.”) Though all were instruments of white supremacy, they were not all the same, and only one is now in the headlines. In their existence and distinctiveness, they all must receive at least some credit as the roots of Southern institutions — as our historians know, most happenings have many causes, not one.

“Many modern Southern police departments largely have roots in slave patrols but would have arisen regardless” is probably the most accurate conclusion. Harder to fit in a headline or on a protest sign, but the nuanced truth often is.

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