Ancient China Law enforcement in
ancient China was carried out by "prefects" for thousands of years since it developed in both the
Chu and
Jin kingdoms of the
Spring and Autumn period. In Jin, dozens of prefects were spread across the state, each having limited authority and employment period. They were appointed by local magistrates, who reported to higher authorities such as governors, who in turn were appointed by the emperor, and they oversaw the civil administration of their "prefecture", or jurisdiction. Under each prefect were "subprefects" who helped collectively with law enforcement in the area. Some prefects were responsible for handling investigations, much like modern police detectives. Prefects could also be women. Local citizens could report minor judicial offenses against them such as robberies at a local prefectural office. The concept of the "prefecture system" spread to other cultures such as Korea and Japan.
Babylonia In
Babylonia, law enforcement tasks were initially entrusted to individuals with military backgrounds or imperial magnates during the Old Babylonian period, but eventually, law enforcement was delegated to officers known as , who were present in both cities and rural settlements. A was responsible for investigating petty crimes and carrying out arrests.
Egypt In
ancient Egypt evidence of law enforcement exists as far back as the
Old Kingdom period. There are records of an office known as "Judge Commandant of the Police" dating to the
fourth dynasty. During the
fifth dynasty at the end of the Old Kingdom period, warriors armed with wooden sticks were tasked with guarding public places such as markets, temples, and parks, and apprehending criminals. They are known to have made use of trained monkeys, baboons, and dogs in guard duties and catching criminals. After the Old Kingdom collapsed, ushering in the
First Intermediate Period, it is thought that the same model applied. During this period,
Bedouins were hired to guard the borders and protect trade caravans. During the
Middle Kingdom period, a professional police force was created with a specific focus on enforcing the law, as opposed to the previous informal arrangement of using warriors as police. The police force was further reformed during the
New Kingdom period. Officers served as interrogators, prosecutors, and court bailiffs, and were responsible for administering punishments handed down by judges. In addition, there were special units of officers trained as priests who were responsible for guarding temples and tombs and preventing inappropriate behavior at festivals or improper observation of religious rites during services. Other units were tasked with guarding caravans, guarding border crossings, protecting royal
necropolises, guarding slaves at work or during transport, patrolling the
Nile River, and guarding administrative buildings. By the Eighteenth Dynasty of the New Kingdom period, an elite desert-ranger police force called the
Medjay was used to protect valuable areas, especially areas of pharaonic interest like capital cities, royal cemeteries, and the borders of Egypt. Though they are best known for their protection of the royal palaces and tombs in
Thebes and the surrounding areas, the Medjay were used throughout
Upper and
Lower Egypt. Each regional unit had its own captain. The police forces of ancient Egypt did not guard rural communities, which often took care of their own judicial problems by appealing to village elders, but many of them had a constable to enforce state laws.
Greece In
ancient Greece, publicly owned slaves were used by magistrates as police. In
Athens, the
Scythian Archers (the 'rod-bearers'), a group of about 300 Scythian slaves, was used to guard public meetings to keep order and for
crowd control, and also assisted with dealing with criminals, handling prisoners, and making arrests. Other duties associated with modern policing, such as investigating crimes, were left to the citizens themselves. Athenian police forces were supervised by the
Areopagus. In
Sparta, the
Ephors were in charge of maintaining public order as judges, and they used Sparta's
Hippeis, a 300-member Royal guard of honor, as their enforcers. There were separate authorities supervising women, children, and agricultural issues. Sparta also had a secret police force called the
crypteia to watch the large population of
helots, or slaves.
Rome In the
Roman Empire, the army played a major role in providing security. Roman soldiers detached from their legions and posted among civilians carried out law enforcement tasks. The
Praetorian Guard, an elite army unit which was primarily an Imperial bodyguard and intelligence-gathering unit, could also act as a riot police force if required. Local watchmen were hired by cities to provide some extra security.
Lictors, civil servants whose primary duty was to act as bodyguards to magistrates who held
imperium, could carry out arrests and inflict punishments at their magistrate's command. Magistrates such as
tresviri capitales, and investigated crimes. There was no concept of public prosecution, so victims of crime or their families had to organize and manage the prosecution themselves. Under the reign of
Augustus, when the capital had grown to almost one million inhabitants, 14
wards were created; the wards were protected by seven squads of 1,000 men called , who acted as night watchmen and firemen. In addition to firefighting, their duties included apprehending petty criminals, capturing runaway slaves, guarding the baths at night, and stopping disturbances of the peace. As well as the city of Rome,
vigiles were also stationed in the harbor cities of
Ostia and
Portus. Augustus also formed the
Urban Cohorts to deal with gangs and civil disturbances in the city of Rome, and as a counterbalance to the Praetorian Guard's enormous power in the city. They were led by the
urban prefect. Urban Cohort units were later formed in
Roman Carthage and
Lugdunum.
India Law enforcement systems existed in the various kingdoms and empires of
ancient India. The
Apastamba Dharmasutra prescribes that kings should appoint officers and subordinates in the towns and villages to protect their subjects from crime. Various inscriptions and literature from ancient India suggest that a variety of roles existed for law enforcement officials such as those of a constable, thief catcher, watchman, and detective. In ancient India up to medieval and early modern times,
kotwals were in charge of local law enforcement.
Achaemenid (First Persian) Empire The
Achaemenid Empire had well-organized police forces. A police force existed in every place of importance. In the cities, each ward was under the command of a Superintendent of Police, known as a . Officers also acted as prosecutors and carried out punishments imposed by the courts. They were required to know the court procedure for prosecuting cases and advancing accusations.
Israel In ancient
Israel and Judah, officials with the responsibility of making declarations to the people, guarding the king's person, supervising public works, and executing the orders of the courts existed in the urban areas. They are repeatedly mentioned in the
Hebrew Bible, and this system lasted into the period of Roman rule. The first century Jewish historian
Josephus related that every judge had two such officers under his command.
Levites were preferred for this role. Cities and towns also had night watchmen. Besides officers of the town, there were officers for every tribe. The temple in Jerusalem was protected by a special temple guard. The
Talmud mentions various local officials in the Jewish communities of the Land of Israel and Babylon who supervised economic activity. Their Greek-sounding titles suggest that the roles were introduced under Hellenic influence. Most of these officials received their authority from local courts and their salaries were drawn from the town treasury. The Talmud also mentions city watchmen and mounted and armed watchmen in the suburbs.
Africa In many regions of pre-colonial
Africa, particularly West and Central Africa, guild-like
secret societies emerged as law enforcement. In the absence of a court system or written legal code, they carried out police-like activities, employing varying degrees of coercion to enforce conformity and deter antisocial behavior. In ancient
Ethiopia, armed retainers of the nobility enforced law in the countryside according to the will of their leaders. The
Songhai Empire had officials known as
assara-munidios, or "enforcers", acting as police.
The Americas Pre-Columbian civilizations in the Americas also had organized law enforcement. The city-states of the
Maya civilization had constables known as . In the
Aztec Empire, judges had officers serving under them who were empowered to perform arrests, even of dignitaries. Aztec markets were patrolled by commissioners to prevent fraud and disorder. In the
Inca Empire, officials called
kuraka enforced the law among the households they were assigned to oversee, with inspectors known as () also stationed throughout the provinces to keep order.
Post-classical of medieval Spain were formed to protect pilgrims on the
Camino de Santiago. In medieval
Spain, , or 'holy brotherhoods', peacekeeping associations of armed individuals, were a characteristic of municipal life, especially in
Castile. As medieval Spanish kings often could not offer adequate protection, protective municipal leagues began to emerge in the twelfth century against
banditry and other rural criminals, and against the lawless
nobility or to support one or another claimant to a crown. These organizations were intended to be temporary, but became a long-standing fixture of Spain. The first recorded case of the formation of an occurred when the towns and the peasantry of the north united to police the pilgrim road to
Santiago de Compostela in
Galicia, and protect the pilgrims against robber knights. Throughout the Middle Ages such alliances were frequently formed by combinations of towns to protect the roads connecting them, and were occasionally extended to political purposes. Among the most powerful was the league of North Castilian and Basque ports, the Hermandad de las marismas:
Toledo,
Talavera, and
Villarreal. As one of their first acts after end of the
War of the Castilian Succession in 1479,
Ferdinand II of Aragon and
Isabella I of Castile established the centrally-organized and efficient
Holy Brotherhood as a national police force. They adapted an existing brotherhood to the purpose of a general police acting under officials appointed by themselves, and endowed with great powers of summary jurisdiction even in capital cases. The original brotherhoods continued to serve as modest local police-units until their final suppression in 1835. The
Vehmic courts of Germany provided some policing in the absence of strong state institutions. Such courts had a chairman who presided over a session and
lay judges who passed judgement and carried out law enforcement tasks. Among the responsibilities that lay judges had were giving formal warnings to known troublemakers, issuing warrants, and carrying out executions. In the medieval Islamic
Caliphates, police were known as . Bodies termed existed perhaps as early as the
Rashidun Caliphate during the reign of
Uthman. The
Shurta is known to have existed in the
Abbasid and
Umayyad Caliphates. Their primary roles were to act as police and
internal security forces but they could also be used for other duties such as customs and tax enforcement, rubbish collection, and acting as bodyguards for governors. From the 10th century, the importance of the
Shurta declined as the army assumed internal security tasks while cities became more autonomous and handled their own policing needs locally, such as by hiring watchmen. In addition, officials called were responsible for supervising
bazaars and economic activity in general in the medieval Islamic world. In
France during the
Middle Ages, there were two
Great Officers of the Crown of France with police responsibilities: The
Marshal of France and the
Grand Constable of France. The military policing responsibilities of the Marshal of France were delegated to the Marshal's provost, whose force was known as the Marshalcy because its authority ultimately derived from the Marshal. The marshalcy dates back to the
Hundred Years' War, and some historians trace it back to the early 12th century. Another organisation, the
Constabulary (), was under the command of the
Constable of France. The constabulary was regularised as a military body in 1337. Under
Francis I (reigned 1515–1547), the was merged with the constabulary. The resulting force was also known as the , or, formally, the Constabulary and Marshalcy of France. In late medieval
Italian cities, police forces were known as
berovierri. Individually, their members were known as
birri. Subordinate to the city's
podestà, the
berovierri were responsible for guarding the cities and their suburbs, patrolling, and the pursuit and arrest of criminals. They were typically hired on short-term contracts, usually six months. Detailed records from medieval
Bologna show that
birri had a chain of command, with constables and sergeants managing lower-ranking
birri, that they wore uniforms, that they were housed together with other employees of the podestà together with a number of servants including cooks and stable-keepers, that their parentage and places of origin were meticulously recorded, and that most were not native to Bologna, with many coming from outside Italy. The
English system of maintaining public order since the Norman conquest was a private system of
tithings known as the mutual pledge system. This system was introduced under
Alfred the Great. Communities were divided into groups of ten families called tithings, each of which was overseen by a chief tithingman. Every household head was responsible for the good behavior of his own family and the good behavior of other members of his tithing. Every male aged 12 and over was required to participate in a tithing. Members of tithings were responsible for raising "hue and cry" upon witnessing or learning of a crime, and the men of his tithing were responsible for capturing the criminal. The person the tithing captured would then be brought before the chief tithingman, who would determine guilt or innocence and punishment. All members of the criminal's tithing would be responsible for paying the fine. A group of ten tithings was known as a "hundred" and every hundred was overseen by an official known as a
reeve. Hundreds ensured that if a criminal escaped to a neighboring village, he could be captured and returned to his village. If a criminal was not apprehended, then the entire hundred could be fined. The hundreds were governed by administrative divisions known as
shires, the rough equivalent of a modern
county, which were overseen by an official known as a shire-reeve, from which the term
sheriff evolved. The shire-reeve had the power of , meaning he could gather the men of his shire to pursue a criminal. Following the Norman conquest of England in 1066, the tithing system was tightened with the
frankpledge system. By the end of the 13th century, the office of constable developed. Constables had the same responsibilities as chief tithingmen and additionally as royal officers. The constable was elected by his
parish every year. Eventually, constables became the first "police" official to be tax-supported. In urban areas,
watchmen were tasked with keeping order and enforcing nighttime curfew. Watchmen guarded the town gates at night, patrolled the streets, arrested those on the streets at night without good reason, and also acted as firefighters. Eventually the office of
justice of the peace was established, with a justice of the peace overseeing constables. There was also a system of investigative "
juries". The
Assize of Arms of 1252, which required the appointment of constables to summon men to arms, quell
breaches of the peace, and to deliver offenders to the sheriff or reeve, is cited as one of the earliest antecedents of the English police. The
Statute of Winchester of 1285 is also cited as the primary legislation regulating the policing of the country between the
Norman Conquest and the
Metropolitan Police Act 1829. From about 1500, private watchmen were funded by private individuals and organisations to carry out police functions. They were later nicknamed 'Charlies', probably after the reigning monarch King Charles II.
Thief-takers were also rewarded for catching thieves and returning the stolen property. They were private individuals usually hired by crime victims. The earliest English use of the word
police seems to have been the term
Polles mentioned in the book
The Second Part of the Institutes of the Lawes of England published in 1642.
Early modern The first example of a statutory police force in the world was probably the
High Constables of Edinburgh, formed in 1611 to police the streets of
Edinburgh, then part of the
Kingdom of Scotland. The constables, of whom half were merchants and half were craftsmen, were charged with enforcing 16 regulations relating to curfews, weapons, and theft. At that time, maintenance of public order in Scotland was mainly done by clan chiefs and feudal lords. The first centrally organised and uniformed police force was created by the government of
King Louis XIV in 1667 to police the city of
Paris, then the largest city in Europe. The royal edict, registered by the of Paris on March 15, 1667, created the office of ("lieutenant general of police"), who was to be the head of the new Paris police force, and defined the task of the police as "ensuring the peace and quiet of the public and of private individuals, purging the city of what may cause disturbances, procuring abundance, and having each and everyone live according to their station and their duties". , founder of the
Prefecture of Police, the first uniformed police force in the world This office was first held by
Gabriel Nicolas de la Reynie, who had 44 ('police commissioners') under his authority. In 1709, these commissioners were assisted by ('police inspectors'). The city of Paris was divided into 16 districts policed by the , each assigned to a particular district and assisted by a growing bureaucracy. The scheme of the Paris police force was extended to the rest of France by a royal edict of October 1699, resulting in the creation of lieutenants general of police in all large French cities and towns. After the
French Revolution,
Napoléon I reorganized the police in Paris and other cities with more than 5,000 inhabitants on February 17, 1800, as the
Prefecture of Police. On March 12, 1829, a government decree created the first uniformed police in
France, known as ('city sergeants'), which the Paris Prefecture of Police's website claims were the first uniformed policemen in the world. In feudal Japan,
samurai warriors were charged with enforcing the law among commoners. Some Samurai acted as magistrates called , who acted as judges, prosecutors, and as chief of police. Beneath them were other Samurai serving as , or assistant magistrates, who conducted criminal investigations, and beneath them were Samurai serving as , who were responsible for patrolling the streets, keeping the peace, and making arrests when necessary. The were responsible for managing the . and were typically drawn from low-ranking samurai families. Assisting the were the , non-Samurai who went on patrol with them and provided assistance, the , non-Samurai from the lowest outcast class, often former criminals, who worked for them as informers and spies, and or , chōnin, often former criminals, who were hired by local residents and merchants to work as police assistants in a particular neighborhood. This system typically did not apply to the Samurai themselves. Samurai clans were expected to resolve disputes among each other through negotiation, or when that failed through duels. Only rarely did Samurai bring their disputes to a magistrate or answer to police. In
Joseon-era Korea, the
Podocheong emerged as a police force with the power to arrest and punish criminals. Established in 1469 as a temporary organization, its role solidified into a permanent one. In
Sweden, local governments were responsible for law and order by way of a royal decree issued by King
Magnus Ladulås in the 13th century. The cities financed and organized groups of watchmen who patrolled the streets. In the late 1500s in Stockholm, patrol duties were in large part taken over by a special corps of salaried
city guards. The city guard was organized, uniformed and armed like a military unit and was responsible for interventions against various crimes and the arrest of suspected criminals. These guards were assisted by the military, fire patrolmen, and a civilian unit that did not wear a uniform, but instead wore a small badge around the neck. The civilian unit monitored compliance with city ordinances relating to e.g. sanitation issues, traffic and taxes. In rural areas, the King's bailiffs were responsible for law and order until the establishment of counties in the 1630s. Up to the early 18th century, the level of state involvement in law enforcement in Britain was low. Although some law enforcement officials existed in the form of
parish constables and
watchmen, there was no organized police force. A professional police force like the one already present in France would have been ill-suited to Britain, which saw examples such as the French one as a threat to the people's liberty and balanced constitution in favor of an arbitrary and tyrannical government. Law enforcement was mostly up to the private citizens, who had the right and duty to prosecute crimes in which they were involved or in which they were not. At the cry of 'murder!' or 'stop thief!' everyone was entitled and obliged to join the pursuit. Once the criminal had been apprehended, the parish constables and night watchmen, who were the only public figures provided by the state and who were typically part-time and local, would make the arrest. As a result, the state set a reward to encourage citizens to arrest and prosecute offenders. The first of such rewards was established in 1692 of the amount of £40 for the conviction of a
highwayman and in the following years it was extended to burglars, coiners and other forms of offense. The reward was to be increased in 1720 when, after the end of the
War of the Spanish Succession and the consequent rise of criminal offenses, the government offered £100 for the conviction of a highwayman. Although the offer of such a reward was conceived as an incentive for the victims of an offense to proceed to the prosecution and to bring criminals to justice, the efforts of the government also increased the number of private thief-takers. Thief-takers became infamously known not so much for what they were supposed to do, catching real criminals and prosecuting them, as for "setting themselves up as intermediaries between victims and their attackers, extracting payments for the return of stolen goods and using the threat of prosecution to keep offenders in thrall". Some of them, such as
Jonathan Wild, became infamous at the time for staging robberies in order to receive the reward. In 1737,
George II began paying some London and Middlesex watchmen with tax monies, beginning the shift to government control. In 1749, Judge
Henry Fielding began organizing a force of quasi-professional constables known as the
Bow Street Runners. The Bow Street Runners are considered to have been Britain's first dedicated police force. They represented a formalization and regularization of existing policing methods, similar to the unofficial 'thief-takers'. What made them different was their formal attachment to the Bow Street magistrates' office, and payment by the magistrate with funds from the central government. They worked out of Fielding's office and court at No. 4 Bow Street, and did not patrol but served
writs and arrested offenders on the authority of the magistrates, travelling nationwide to apprehend criminals. Fielding wanted to regulate and legalize law enforcement activities due to the high rate of corruption and mistaken or malicious arrests seen with the system that depended mainly on private citizens and state rewards for law enforcement. Henry Fielding's work was carried on by his brother, Justice
John Fielding, who succeeded him as magistrate in the Bow Street office. Under John Fielding, the institution of the Bow Street Runners gained more and more recognition from the government, although the force was only funded intermittently in the years that followed. In 1763, the Bow Street Horse Patrol was established to combat highway robbery, funded by a government grant. The Bow Street Runners served as the guiding principle for the way that policing developed over the next 80 years. Bow Street was a manifestation of the move towards increasing professionalisation and state control of street life, beginning in London. The
Macdaniel affair, a 1754 British political scandal in which a group of thief-takers was found to be falsely prosecuting innocent men in order to collect reward money from
bounties, added further impetus for a publicly salaried police force that did not depend on rewards. Nonetheless, In 1828, there were
privately financed police units in no fewer than 45 parishes within a 10-mile radius of London. The word
police was
borrowed from French into the English language in the 18th century, but for a long time it applied only to French and continental European police forces. The word, and the concept of police itself, were "disliked as a symbol of foreign oppression". Before the 19th century, the first use of the word
police recorded in government documents in the United Kingdom was the appointment of Commissioners of Police for Scotland in 1714 and the creation of the
Marine Police in 1798.
Modern Scotland and Ireland Following early police forces established in 1779 and 1788 in
Glasgow,
Scotland, the Glasgow authorities successfully petitioned the government to pass the
Glasgow Police Act establishing the
City of Glasgow Police in 1800. Other Scottish towns soon followed suit and set up their own police forces through acts of parliament. In
Ireland, the
Irish Constabulary Act 1822 marked the beginning of the
Royal Irish Constabulary. The act established a force in each barony with
chief constables and inspectors general under the control of the civil administration at
Dublin Castle. By 1841 this force numbered over 8,600 men.
London , founder of the
Thames River Police In 1797,
Patrick Colquhoun was able to persuade the
West Indies merchants who operated at the
Pool of London on the
River Thames to establish a police force at the docks to prevent rampant theft that was causing annual estimated losses of £500,000 worth of cargo in imports alone. The idea of a police, as it then existed in
France, was considered as a potentially undesirable foreign import. In building the case for the police in the face of England's firm anti-police sentiment, Colquhoun framed the political rationale on economic indicators to show that a police dedicated to crime prevention was "perfectly congenial to the principle of the British constitution". Moreover, he went so far as to praise the French system, which had reached "the greatest degree of perfection" in his estimation. ,
Wales, April 1850 With the initial investment of £4,200, the new force, the Marine Police, was formed in 1798, composed of about 50 men charged with policing 33,000 workers in the river trades, of whom Colquhoun claimed 11,000 were known criminals and "on the game". The force was part funded by the
London Society of West India Planters and Merchants. The force was a success after its first year, and his men had "established their worth by saving £122,000 worth of cargo and by the rescuing of several lives". Word of this success spread quickly, and the government passed the
Depredations on the Thames Act 1800 on 28 July 1800, establishing a fully funded police force, the
Thames River Police, together with new laws including police powers. Colquhoun published a book on the experiment,
The Commerce and Policing of the River Thames. It found receptive audiences far outside London, and inspired similar forces in other cities, notably,
New York City,
Dublin, and
Sydney. His other contribution was the concept of
preventive policing; his police were to act as a highly visible deterrent to crime by their permanent presence on the Thames. It became clear that the locally maintained system of volunteer constables and "watchmen" was ineffective, both in detecting and preventing crime. A parliamentary committee was appointed to investigate the system of policing in
London. Upon
Sir Robert Peel being appointed as
Home Secretary in 1822, he established a second and more effective committee, and acted upon its findings.
Royal assent to the
Metropolitan Police Act 1829 was given and the
Metropolitan Police Service was established on September 29, 1829, in
London. Peel, widely regarded as the father of modern policing, was heavily influenced by the social and legal philosophy of
Jeremy Bentham, who called for a strong and centralised, but politically neutral, police force for the maintenance of social order, for the protection of people from crime and to act as a visible
deterrent to urban
crime and disorder. Peel decided to standardise the police force as an official paid profession, to organise it in a civilian fashion, and to make it answerable to the public. ,
Suffolk,
England, c. 1900|left Due to public fears concerning the deployment of the military in domestic matters, Peel organised the force along civilian lines, rather than
paramilitary. To appear neutral, the uniform was deliberately manufactured in blue, rather than red which was then a military colour, along with the officers being armed only with a wooden
truncheon and a
rattle to signal the need for assistance. Along with this,
police ranks did not include military titles, with the exception of
Sergeant. To distance the new police force from the initial public view of it as a new tool of government repression, Peel publicised the so-called
Peelian principles, which set down basic guidelines for ethical policing: • Whether the police are effective is not measured on the number of arrests but on the deterrence of crime. • Above all else, an effective authority figure knows trust and accountability are paramount. Hence, Peel's most often quoted principle that "The police are the public and the public are the police." has been called "an iconic symbol of British policing". The Metropolitan Police Act 1829 created a modern police force by limiting the purview of the force and its powers and envisioning it as merely an organ of the judicial system. Their job was apolitical; to maintain the peace and apprehend criminals for the courts to process according to the law. This was very different from the "
continental model" of the police force that had been developed in France, where the police force worked within the parameters of the
absolutist state as an extension of the authority of the monarch and functioned as part of the governing state. In 1863, the Metropolitan Police were issued with the distinctive
custodian helmet, and in 1884 they switched to the use of whistles that could be heard from much further away. The Metropolitan Police became a model for the police forces in many countries, including the
United States and most of the
British Empire. Bobbies can still be found in many parts of the
Commonwealth of Nations.
Australia officers on
police motorcycles with sidecars in 1938 In
Australia, organized law enforcement emerged soon after British colonization began in 1788. The first law enforcement organizations were the Night Watch and Row Boat Guard, which were formed in 1789 to police
Sydney. Their ranks were drawn from well-behaved convicts deported to Australia. The Night Watch was replaced by the Sydney Foot Police in 1790. In
New South Wales, rural law enforcement officials were appointed by local
justices of the peace during the early to mid-19th century and were referred to as "bench police" or "benchers". A mounted police force was formed in 1825. The first police force having centralised command as well as jurisdiction over an entire colony was the
South Australia Police, formed in 1838 under
Henry Inman. However, whilst the
New South Wales Police Force was established in 1862, it was made up from a large number of policing and military units operating within the then Colony of New South Wales and traces its links back to the Royal Marines. The passing of the Police Regulation Act of 1862 essentially tightly regulated and centralised all of the police forces operating throughout the Colony of New South Wales. Each Australian state and territory maintain its own police force, while the
Australian Federal Police enforces laws at the federal level. The
New South Wales Police Force remains the largest police force in Australia in terms of personnel and physical resources. It is also the only police force that requires its recruits to undertake university studies at the recruit level and has the recruit pay for their own education.
Brazil motorcycle officer in 1935 In 1566, the first police investigator of
Rio de Janeiro was recruited. By the 17th century, most
captaincies already had local units with law enforcement functions. On July 9, 1775, a
Cavalry Regiment was created in the state of
Minas Gerais for maintaining law and order. In 1808, the Portuguese royal family relocated to Brazil, because of the French invasion of Portugal.
King João VI established the ('General Police Intendancy') for investigations. He also created a
Royal Police Guard for Rio de Janeiro in 1809. In 1831, after independence, each province started organizing its local "
military police", with order maintenance tasks. The
Federal Railroad Police was created in 1852,
Federal Highway Police, was established in 1928, and
Federal Police in 1967.
Canada officers present at a meeting between
Ronald Reagan,
Nancy Reagan, and
Pierre Trudeau, 1981 During the early days of English and French colonization, municipalities hired watchmen and constables to provide security. The
Toronto Police Service was established in 1834 as the first
municipal police service in Canada. Prior to that, local able-bodied male citizens had been required to report for night watch duty as special constables for a fixed number of nights a year on penalty of a fine or imprisonment in a system known as "watch and ward." The
Quebec City Police Service was established in 1840.
India officers patrolling in a police car in
Chennai,
India Under the
Mughal Empire, provincial governors called
subahdars (or nazims), as well as officials known as
faujdars and thanadars were tasked with keeping law and order.
Kotwals were responsible for public order in urban areas. In addition, officials called amils, whose primary duties were tax collection, occasionally dealt with rebels. The system evolved under growing British influence that eventually culminated in the establishment of the
British Raj. In 1770, the offices of faujdar and amil were abolished. They were brought back in 1774 by
Warren Hastings, the first
Governor of the Presidency of Fort William (Bengal). In 1791, the first permanent police force was established by
Charles Cornwallis, the
Commander-in-Chief of British India and Governor of the Presidency of Fort William. A single police force was established after the formation of the British Raj with the
Government of India Act 1858. A uniform police bureaucracy was formed under the Police Act 1861, which established the Superior Police Services. This later evolved into the
Indian Imperial Police, which kept order until the
Partition of India and independence in 1947. In 1948, the Indian Imperial Police was replaced by the
Indian Police Service. In modern
India, the police are under the control of respective
States and union territories and are known to be under
State Police Services (SPS). The candidates selected for the SPS are usually posted as
Deputy Superintendent of Police or
Assistant Commissioner of Police once their probationary period ends. On prescribed satisfactory service in the SPS, the officers are nominated to the
Indian Police Service. The service color is usually dark blue and red, while the uniform color is
Khaki.
United States officer ticketing a motorist for a traffic violation, 1973 In
Colonial America, the county sheriff was the most important law enforcement official. For instance, the
New York Sheriff's Office was founded in 1626, and the
Albany County Sheriff's Department in the 1660s. The county sheriff, who was an elected official, was responsible for enforcing laws, collecting taxes, supervising elections, and handling the legal business of the county government. Sheriffs would investigate crimes and make arrests after citizens filed complaints or provided information about a crime but did not carry out patrols or otherwise take preventive action. Villages and cities typically hired constables and marshals, who were empowered to make arrests and serve warrants. Many municipalities also formed a night watch, a group of citizen volunteers who would patrol the streets at night looking for crime and fires. Typically, constables and marshals were the main law enforcement officials available during the day while the night watch would serve during the night. Eventually, municipalities formed day watch groups. Rioting was handled by local militias. In the 1700s, the
Province of Carolina (later
North- and
South Carolina) established
slave patrols in order to prevent slave rebellions and enslaved people from escaping. By 1785 the
Charleston Guard and Watch had "a distinct
chain of command,
uniforms, sole responsibility for policing,
salary,
authorized use of force, and a focus on
preventing crime." In 1751 moves towards a municipal police service in
Philadelphia were made when the city's night watchmen and constables began receiving wages and a Board of Wardens was created to oversee the night watch. In 1789 the
United States Marshals Service was established, followed by other federal services such as the
U.S. Parks Police (1791) and
U.S. Mint Police (1792). Municipal police services were created in
Richmond, Virginia in 1807,
Boston in 1838, and
New York City in 1845. The
United States Secret Service was founded in 1865 and was for some time the main investigative body for the federal government. –
NYPD Joint Terrorism Task Force carrying evidence as part of an investigation in the early 2000s Modern policing influenced by the British model of policing established in 1829 based on the
Peelian principles began emerging in the United States in the mid-19th century, replacing previous law enforcement systems based primarily on night watch organizations. Cities began establishing organized, publicly funded, full-time professional police services. In
Boston, a day police consisting of six officers under the command of the city marshal was established in 1838 to supplement the city's night watch. This paved the way for the establishment of the
Boston Police Department in 1854. In
New York City, law enforcement up to the 1840s was handled by a night watch as well as city marshals, municipal police officers, and constables. In 1845, the
New York City Police Department was established. In
Philadelphia, the first police officers to patrol the city in daytime were employed in 1833 as a supplement to the night watch system, leading to the establishment of the
Philadelphia Police Department in 1854. In the
American Old West, law enforcement was carried out by local sheriffs, rangers, constables, and federal marshals. There were also town marshals responsible for serving civil and criminal warrants, maintaining the jails, and carrying out arrests for petty crime. In addition to federal, state, and local forces, some
special districts have been formed to provide extra police protection in designated areas. These districts may be known as neighborhood improvement districts, crime prevention districts, or security districts. In 2022, San Francisco supervisors approved a policy allowing municipal police (
San Francisco Police Department) to use robots for various law enforcement and emergency operations, permitting their employment as a deadly force option in cases where the "risk of life to members of the public or officers is imminent and outweighs any other force option available to SFPD." This policy has been criticized by groups such as the
Electronic Frontier Foundation and the
ACLU, who have argued that "killer robots will not make San Francisco better" and "police might even bring armed robots to a protest." ==See also==