Crime and Punishment in American History - Lawrence M. Friedman [95]
This was a serious admission. The judge, Peter Thacher, told the jury it was their duty to acquit if they believed the boy had been “put into a state of mental derangement” by virtue of the “noxious liquor” and the cigar. It was an “immoral act” to sell to children “such a vile composition, and it might well have happened that the combined influence of the liquor and cigar, on a child of so tender years, would produce a temporary insanity.” The lesson was not lost on the jury; they dutifully came back with a verdict of acquittal.96
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THE MECHANICS OF POWER II: PROFESSIONALIZATION AND REFORM IN THE LATE NINETEENTH CENTURY
THE POLICE, AS WE HAVE SEEN, WERE ESSENTIALLY AN INVENTION OF THE FIRST half of the century. In the latter half of the century, police departments were all over the map, and the old, more slipshod ways of patrolling urban (as well as rural) spaces were gone forever. Big cities had big forces; little cities had little forces. New York City was, naturally, the giant; according to the census of 1880, the city, with a population of about 1,200,000, had a force of 202 officers and 2,336 patrolmen; Kalamazoo, Michigan, with a population of 11,937, had one officer and two patrolmen (they made 175 arrests); Keokuk, Iowa, with a population of 12,117, had two officers and four patrolmen (who chalked up 1,276 arrests). 1 If we can believe the census figures, there were, all told, in 1880, 1,752 officers and 11,948 patrolmen in cities and towns with inhabitants of 5,000 or more.2
It was still the case—especially in big cities—that American police departments were more overtly political than, say, in England. In this country, police officers were “primarily tools of local politicians”; when the winds of politics changed, during or between elections, jobs and policy changed with it. In Cincinnati, for example, 219 of 295 patrolmen were dismissed after the election of 1880; six years later, after another election, 238 of 289 patrolmen, and 8 of the 16 lieutenants lost their jobs.3
Since local politics in many big cities meant, primarily, Democratic Party politics, the Republicans, who represented business and controlled more statehouses, found the idea of state control over the police unusually attractive. The state did take control over some cities (New York in 1857, Detroit in 1865, Cleveland in 1866, for example), but when the outs (the Democrats) regained office, they turned back the clock. Local control remained the general rule.4
That is, if there was any control at all. It would be a gross exaggeration to call the police “professionals.” The job had no prerequisites and called for no formal training whatsoever. The man on the beat was, most of the time, entirely on his own; there was no real supervision. Nothing kept a patrolman from drinking in a tavern, or sleeping on the job. There was a long struggle to bring the policeman to heel. Rule books and codes of conduct sprouted. In 1861, the police commissioners of Chicago issued orders that “prohibited mustaches, prescribed the proper style for beards, and required that all patrolmen eat with forks.”5 A military model was the ideal: clean, disciplined, regimented. Some cities instituted military drill. City after city put their police in uniform—Jersey City