“It was not until the 1830s that the idea of a centralized municipal police departments first emerged in the United States. In 1838, the city of Boston established the first American police force, followed by New York City in 1845, Albany, NY and Chicago in 1851, New Orleans and Cincinnati in 1853, Philadelphia in 1855, and Newark, NJ and Baltimore in 1857 (Harring 1983, Lundman 1980; Lynch 1984). By the 1880s all major U.S. cities had municipal police forces in place.”¹ All public police departments share similar characteristics, i.e., they were publicly supported; bureaucratic in form; accountable to a central political authority; and, they had fixed rules and procedures for operating. But these centralized police departments were limited.
Public police specialized in foot patrols and detective work, designated as a specialized activity, was minimal. Moreover, policing outside urban city limits was nonexistent. More than crime, the modern police forces in the United States emerged as a response to social and public disorder, such as drunkenness and prostitution, during the 19th Century.
Private police agencies, on the other hand, provided detectives, watchman, and undercover operatives. Industrial barons, banks, and mercantile interests, who through taxes and political influence supported the development of bureaucratic policing institutions, but they had a greater interest in controlling labor forces and protecting business property than organized police.
Indeed, there were some areas in which the private police agency enjoyed greater freedoms than public police–due in part to American fears of a police state. In many cases, private police agencies were able to operate more freely and without fear of public accountability.
As businesses such as department stores, transit lines, hotels and sporting facilities increased–much faster than the capability of public police department to protect them, and public policing became far too corrupted by political bosses and too disorganized to fulfill their needs, they found private police agencies an attractive alternative–or, necessary evil, depending on which side one tends to take, to fill the gap. Thus, private police agencies such as the Pinkerton National Detective Agency, and other similar for hire private police agencies prospered during the era. “The result was commitment to the official police, carefully balanced with respect for unofficial policing.”²
Was there a relationship between the public police versus the private police that was established exclusively to protect the property and attendees within the confines of the Columbian Worlds Fair? How does that relationship compare with the relationships of Pinkerton National Detective Agency, which by 1893 was a well established private police force hired by industrialists to uncover union activities, strike break, and deter bank robberies, among other things, with America’s concepts during the era of proper policing.³
¹ Dr. Gary Potter, “The History of Policing in the United States, Part 1,” published June 23, 2013, online via URL: http://plsonline.eku.edu/insidelook/history-policing-united-states-part-1, quoting Harring, Sidney, Policing in a Class Society: The Experience of American Cities, 1865-1915, New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 1983; Lundman, Robert J., Police and Policing: an Introduction, New York, New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1980; and Lynch, Michael, Class Based Justice: A History of the Origins of Policing in Albany, Albany, New York: Michael J. Hindelang Criminal Research Justice Center, 1984.
²Quoting, Frank Morn, “The Eye That Never Sleeps: A History of the Pinkerton National Detective Agency,” Indiana University Press, Bloomington (1982), Preface, p. vi.
³There are a number of primary and secondary sources available from universities, newspapers and public institutions, as well as U.S. Congressional Records and books published during the period about private and public police, and the Columbian World Exposition, as well as relevant cases from the Crimes of the Century and Chicago Homicide Databases to round out my project and if time permits I would also like to review and analyze papers from the Pinkerton National Detective Agency housed at the Library of Congress.
