Terrorist Reaction, Slave Patrols and the Origins of Policing
Playthell Benjamin, “Aftermath of the Disaster“
I have heard one Christian cleric after another call for war against the Muslim terrorists with all the fervor of a medieval monk recruiting knights for the crusades - a term actually employed by President. The teachings of Jesus - whom they all give lip service to - along with reason, are the first casualties of the nationalistic war fever that has gripped the nation. In fact, the orgy of self-righteous anger my countrymen are engaging in just now is such that it is dangerous to try and offer a reasoned argument based upon the Christian principles taught by Jesus. Indeed, in a flurry of jingoistic indignation the clerics have scrapped the biblical injunction, “Vengeance is mine! sayth the lord,” faster than the Lone Ranger could draw his gun.
Christian Parenti, “Policing the Color Line“
But the real origins of today’s “Five-O,” “Rollers” or “Po-Po” lie with the slave patrols of the Old South. By the time of the Civil War, every county of the South deployed patrollers — or “pattie rollers” as African-Americans sometimes called them. These protocops, ubiquitous posses of armed white men, were the frontline defense against slave rebellions. They worked only at night, riding from plantation to plantation, stopping black people, searching their homes for contraband and whipping any slave caught traveling without a written pass.