The functions, responsibilities, and appearance of private police so closely resemble that of public police that it is sometimes difficult to tell them apart. Although, the law recognizes that there is an absolute distinction between public and private police, the two groups perform many of the same tasks. Today, private police protection involves crowd control, usually by uniformed officers, armed or unarmed, that provide an overt presence in order to deter crime in many places in which we live, work, and go to school, e.g., shopping malls, amusement parks, and gated communities.

Today, the public police are the legitimate law enforcement agency in force in society, and the division of labor and responsibility between public and private police appears obvious, but that was not always the case.1 Contrary to popular belief, private policing is not a new phenomena that was created post 9/11, or for that matter, during the twentieth century. I argue that it was the private police, in particular, Pinkerton National Detective Agency’s organizational and operational model established by Allan Pinkerton in 1850 that was used by Cities, particularly Chicago, as the model for organizing the operations of the public police.

Columbian Guards. Source: clumbianguard-from-columbus.gl_.itt_.edu-dreamcity.jpg

Although there were other police agencies during the nineteenth century, Pinkerton’s was by far America’s largest and most notorious private police force from 1850 until, at the very least, 1892,  when Officials of the Columbian Worlds Fair, organized a private police force called the Columbian Guards, as a temporary private police force to protect the property and grounds of the Columbian World Exposition, which opened to the public in Chicago in May 1893. At the time, the Columbian Guards–with over 2,000 uniformed men, who were trained in military style, became the largest private police force in Chicago, outnumbering both the public police force and Pinkerton’s.  However, the Columbian Guards was a temporary force. The World Fair ended in October 1893, and by May 1894, the Guard had been completely disbanded.2

The role that Pinkerton’s private police force played in protecting property and detecting crime during the late nineteenth century was quite different from the role played by public police during the era.  In fact, their roles were quite reversed: Private detective agencies such as Pinkerton’s provided crime detection, labor infiltration, spying services, and private watchmen for the protection of private industries and property.3 Public police provided social services to the indigent, returned lost children, and took care of the homeless. The public police even had soup kitchens, which they manned to feed the poor.4

Indeed, during the Nineteenth Century the boundaries, functions and responsibilities of private police were much broader, and their appearances were well above those of the public police. The private police of the mid-nineteenth century were in distinguishable from the operations and persona of the public police as they are known today.

HISTORY OF POLICING IN AMERICA

Public and private policing has existed in America since the first settlements by the British in the North American Colonies. Public policing during the colonial era took the form of a Sheriff, whom after receiving a complaint from a citizen brought the offender before a Magistrate or Justice of the Peace, who doled out punishment or assessed a fine to the perpetrator. The nearest thing to public policing during Colonial times was the militia or Safety Committee. It was the duty of all able bodied men who were at least 18 years of age to serve on the community safety or watch committee, or if there was a large enough threat to their community, as a volunteer in the local militia. Service in the volunteer militia usually lasted a minimum of 2 months and was not considered part of the regular army.5 Private policing in Colonial America followed the English form of community policing.6 However, the appearance of uniformed police and the organization of police departments as an institution was a latecomer to America. In fact, the term “policeman” was not used in Chicago until 1913. Before this “American cities were policed by a hodgepodge of traditional civil and private officials.”7

Footnotes

  1. See Joh, Elizabeth E., The Paradox of Public Policing, J. of Crim. Law & Criminology, Vol. 95, No. 1, Northwestern Univ. School of Law (2004).
  2.  See Norman Bolotin & Christine Laning, The World’s Columbian Exposition: The Chicago World’s Fair of 1893, University of Illinois Press, (1992).
  3. Morn, Frank, The Eye that Never Sleeps: A History of the Pinkerton National Detective Agency, Indiana University Press, (1937, Bloomington, IL).
  4. Monkkonen, Eric H., Police in Urban America, 1860-1920, (Interdisciplinary Perspective on Modern History), Cambridge University Press (1981).
  5.  See http://www.constitution.org/mil/cos/cos_setup.htm.
  6. Established by the Highwayman Act of 1692, which offered a reward to the public for the capture and prosecution of highway thieves and bandits who robbed citizens while in transit or while walking in the streets of London. See ‘William and Mary, 1692: An Act for encouraging the apprehending of Highway Men [Chapter VIII Rot. Parl. pt. 3. nu. 3.]’, in Statutes of the Realm: Volume 6, 1685-94, ed. John Raithby (s.l, 1819), pp. 390-391. British History Online http://www.british-history.ac.uk/statutes-realm/vol6/pp390-391 [accessed 20 May 2018].Community policing still exists today, e.g., rewards are paid by both State and Federal law enforcement agencies for public tips that lead to arrest and prosecution of wanted criminals.
  7. Monkkonen, Eric H., Police in Urban America, 1860-1920, at 24.