The Police Were Created to Control Working Class and Poor Poeple, Not 'Serve and Protect'

http://inthesetimes.com/working/entry/17505/police_and_poor_people
Date Written:  2015-01-06
Publisher:  In These Times
Year Published:  2015
Resource Type:  Article
Cx Number:  CX24798

On the history and origins of policing in the US.

Abstract: 
-
Excerpt:

This liberal way of viewing the problem rests on a misunderstanding of the origins of the police and what they were created to do.

The police were not created to protect and serve the population. They were created to stop crime, at least not as most people understand it. And they were certainly not created to promote justice. They were created to protect the new form of wage-labor capitalism that emerged in the mid- to late-19th century from the threat posed by that system's offspring, the working class.

Subject Headings

• Police