One of the core beliefs of contemporary movements calling for the abolition of police is the notion that American policing had its origin in the slave patrols of the antebellum South. This interpretation has added fuel to existing tensions between police departments and minorities in inner-city communities. Though long contested among historians, the argument has moved from the activist fringe into mainstream discourse.
The NAACP's website states that the "origins of modern-day policing can be traced back to the 'Slave Patrol,'" a legacy that has resulted in a "continuing bias" against black Americans in police enforcement and the criminal-justice system. Numerous academic research articles and books explore the slave-patrol model, such as Ben Brucato's Race and Police: The Origin of Our Peculiar Institutions. The concept also features in university social-science and ethnic-studies textbooks. In Race and Crime, Shaun Gabbidon and Helen Taylor Greene write that slave patrols were the "first distinctively American police system."
The gist of the argument is that the persistent conflict and friction between the police and elements of the African American community — leading to the disproportionate incarceration of blacks and sometimes their brutal deaths — can be traced back to the racist origins of policing in America, beginning with the patrols that monitored the slave populations in the antebellum South. White authorities tasked these patrols with preventing the escape of slaves, capturing runaways, and deterring slave revolts. Given this pernicious lineage, anti-police activists and groups such as Black Lives Matter argue that no one should be surprised about the continued strained relationship between police and black communities throughout the nation. The tragic murder of George Floyd in May 2020, after a white police officer pressed his knee on Floyd's neck for more than nine minutes, further galvanized the movement and led many to advocate "defunding" or "abolishing" the police.
The agenda of the anti-police movement is to brand police departments in America as the heirs of slave patrols and therefore institutionally racist, and to then pursue the reallocation of funding from police departments to other forms of communal support. Before we take these claims at face value, however, it is worth examining the actual history of policing in America. Such an inquiry will demonstrate that while slave patrols were a real and abominable feature of the South before the Civil War, their historical legacy and influence are more limited than activists peddling misguided ideologies would have us believe. Moreover, the use of this tendentious historical narrative to defame the role of modern police threatens to harm the very minority communities that anti-police groups claim to defend. If we are to secure a more just policing and criminal-justice system for all Americans and especially minorities, we must first approach our past in a more evenhanded manner.