Crime and Punishment in American History - Lawrence M. Friedman [96]
The uniform symbolized discipline, military precision, and the like; but it had other functions. It made the police very much a visible presence in the community. This was in line with the basic function of the police: to keep order in public places, to deter crimes of disorder by patrolling urban spaces. People think of the police as crime-fighters; but order is, and probably was then, their prime goal.
Order is definitely the aim of the traffic cop today; and the thousands of arrests for vagrancy, drunkenness, and disturbing the peace are supposed to guarantee order and discipline on the streets, roads, and open spaces of the city. This can be rough work at times, and hardly fit the more refined notions of due process. That concept has changed a lot over the years, but even in the nineteenth century there was some grumbling about police behavior. A lawyer in Detroit, in 1880, told the press that “Men have for years been arrested ... ‘on suspicion,’ confined for days and nights in a station house where nobody is allowed to ... communicate with him, and finally ... ‘discharged’ in the same arbitrary manner,” while no police judge or court would take notice of the incident.7 In Milwaukee, in the late nineteenth century, the police “maintained a rigid policy of arresting potential criminals on ‘suspicion’ and running them out of town.” If the police suspected a man of some property crime but could not prove it, they locked him up, investigated, and then ordered the man out of town.8
One can be sure that it was not the wealthy or the powerful who were arrested “on suspicion” and thrown into jail cells. This was also true of some (but not all) arrests for drunkenness. Drunkenness was technically a minor crime or offense. The police did not treat drunks as threats to society; after all, most police got drunk themselves once in a while. But they cleared them off the streets, or dragged them out of bars where they were brawling—or even from their homes, when they made trouble for the family. When the drunken husband of Mrs. Annie Hules, of Alameda County, locked her and her baby out of the house in 1891, she, of course, called the police.9
The police tended to treat the ordinary drunkard with a kind of amused, vacant paternalism. It was important to arrest drunks, sober them up, and keep the streets in shape for respectable people. Often, the police infantilized drunks, who were mostly laborers, and often immigrants; they treated their offenses with malicious humor. This was also the attitude of the newspapers, when they reported the goings on in police court. It was, in a sense, a big joke. Laughing at drunks and skid row bums was one way to avoid taking the problem seriously.
The police also acted as a kind of catchall or residual welfare agency. This was a period in which the state (from a twentieth-century point of view) was lax and anemic. Besides, the civil service closes up shop at five o’clock and is nowhere to be found on weekends and holidays, or even at lunchtime. The eye of the police never closes. Even today, when in doubt about whom to call, people call the police. All the more so in the nineteenth century. Thus, in Oakland, California, in 1894, when people in a neighborhood fell into “a state of violent excitement” because a ghost appeared in an empty house, along with much shrieking, groaning, and clanking of chains, they called the police to get rid of it.10
Ghost-busting was not a common police function, of course. But the policeman’s lot was a most miscellaneous one. The Boston police, during the fiscal year ending November 30, 1887, made (we are told) 30,681 arrests. But, in addition, there were
1,472 accidents reported; 2,461 buildings found open and made secure ... 37 dangerous chimneys reported; 169 dead bodies cared for; 181 defective cesspools reported; 66 defective drains reported ...