Eras of Policing
The Political Era
American ward (“machine”) politics reflected contests for power between ethnic groups and was
built on the patronage system (awarding city jobs in return for political support). Political ward
bosses had far more clout than supervisors in the chain of command. The police of the era were
often unskilled and corrupt, with no job security unless their patron remained in office, so they
were more loyal to the person who provided their livelihood than to any abstract notion of “rule
of law.”
The police were also the instrument of entrenched capitalist interests in the early days of the
labor movement. Police were used as strikebreakers and clashes with striking laborers were often
violent. The Pennsylvania State Constabulary, the first modern state police agency, was created
in 1905 to deal with striking miners.
Professional Era
The good-government Progressive movement of the late nineteenth century sought to reform
patronage politics (see Digital History 2007). The Pendleton Act of 1883 established the federal
civil service, under which public jobs were held on the basis of merit regardless of political view
(U.S. Department of State 2005). States quickly created their own civil service laws, though
machine politics and patronage survived in some cities into the latter half of the twentieth
century. When the Progressive movement ceased to be part of the American political scene, a
vanguard of police leaders continued to promote professionalism within the police service.
Police leaders advocated professionalism based upon education, training, and scientific crime
detection methods. August Vollmer, the chief of police in Berkeley, California, instituted many
innovations, including the first crime lab. His protégé, O. W. Wilson, was police chief in several
cities and, as commissioner of the Chicago Police Department, he established the fundamental
principles of police administration in the early 1960s.
Professionalism was stunted by the Boston Police Strike of 1919. When one of the nation’s
most professional departments went on strike for higher wages (Boston officers were paid less
than streetcar drivers), riots broke out. The union movement, with its socialist origins, was linked
to the “Red Scare” of the Bolshevik Revolution that was being fought in Russia at that time.
Governor Calvin Coolidge declared that “there is no right to strike against the public safety by
anybody, anytime, anywhere,” and called out the Massachusetts state militia to police the city.
The striking officers were fired, and the movement for police unionism collapsed until the 1960s.
Police remained low paid, largely uneducated, and ill-trained. As a result, bootlegger money in
the Prohibition era was used to corrupt the local police in many areas, allowing the illegal import
and sale of alcohol. Promotions and assignments often were based upon seniority and favoritism
rather than merit. The 1931 Wickersham Commission reported on the brutality of police
methods. Police brutality would resurface as one of the central themes of the most recent period
of social unrest, the 1960s.
The development of federal law enforcement in the twentieth century was most visible in the
rise of the Federal Bureau of Investigation under its most famous director, J. Edgar Hoover. A
canny use of publicity helped forge the “law enforcement” image of the police, especially against
the gangland murderers of the Prohibition era (such as Al Capone) and the bank robbers of the
Depression (Bonnie and Clyde, Pretty Boy Floyd, John Dillinger, Ma Barker’s gang, and others).
Critics blame three things for the failure of professional-model policing. One of these is the
isolation of the squad car, which discouraged police interaction with the public. Another is the
overreach and overdependence upon 9-1-1 systems, which relinquished control of the police
mission to those who were not as competent to direct it. Finally, there was increased emphasis on
felony-level crime because it was seen as the only “real” police work, with reliance on the UCR
crime rate as the only true measure of police effectiveness. After the problems of the 1960s,
dissatisfactions with the professional model led to calls for community policing, under which
police focused on improving citizen satisfaction with police services, reducing fear of crime,
improving quality-of-life problems, and enhancing community-building efforts.