"Police in the Old West?" Topic

So, I've been watching that show Copper on Netflix lately, pretty good so far. Just wondering, how common were uniform police officers back in the day? Was it only something you would ever see in a big city like New York or maybe Chicago? How big would a town have to be until it started to get a real organized police force with sergeants and detectives, instead of marshals, sheriffs and deupites?

Correct. Only large cities had professional uniformed cops. Later in the period, uniforms spread along with the creep of civilization. By 1900, they were very common. I'm not sure it was a function of size as much of a function of time.

In 1870 it would have been unusual, by 1890 fairly common.

Once the idea of a uniform had lodged in the public mind even many small towns liked the idea of appearing "civilized". Plus it told strangers that law and order would be expected.

Correct – while the Canadian West had the Northwest Mounted Police (which became the RCMP) from a very early time, the American West was largely police by town sheriffs, some Federal marshals and fairly often the US Army

The bigger towns did have police forces – San Francisco formed their police department in 1849 with a chief, six sergeant and 30 constables while the LAPD were formed in 1869 with a mere six constables

It's worth pointing out that large swaths of America still do not have "police." They are Sheriff's Deputies to this day. It's a matter of how the county laws structure the law enforcement, not an indicator of quality.

Likewise, there are still Federal Marshals…. It's not something that just vanished when the period ended.

The 1870 era shootout between rival (Ex-Union & ex-CSA) factions in Springville Alabama involved well-dressed sherriff and civilian deputies. There was no mention of uniforms.

link

The concept of uniformed police goes back to Sir Robert Peel in London in 1829. US policing is based in large part on his work. American police could be in uniform almost anytime after that. Cities and towns with less money would have less ability to pay someone to keep the peace.

In the United States we have Federal Police agencies that enforce Federal laws and help state and local agencies and provide enforcement on Federal lands. State agencies do the same at the state level, often patrolling the state highway system.

In most counties there is a County Sheriff that provides Deputies for county property and for local cities that contract with them for police services. Then each city or town usually has their own police. The are also many specialized police agencies, like Indian Tribal Police, Railroad Police, and Transit Police.

Then there are Marshalls who work for the various court systems. Most of these agencies were in service as far back as the ACW in one form or another. For many agencies the only uniform as such would be the badge until the 20th Century, except for large cities.

Uniforms allow a certain amount of crime prevention, in small towns everyone knows you and the uniform is redundant. At least until the need to carry all the equipment made a uniform more necessary.

Mike Bunkermeister Creek
SGT Says police blog

Large cities such as St. Louis, Cheyenne and Kansas City, KS had uniforms relatively early. Due to their size they also had a rank structure. Terminology really doesn't mean much in practical terms re. town marshals and police officers. Tombstone had a town marshal and St, Louis had a police chief. A number of towns in the U.S. still have town or village marshals and deputies, even if the dept is called a police dept. You don't even want to know about constables.

The US Marshals Service dates back to 1789.

As a Brit, and a retired police officer, I find the plethora of US law enforcement agencies utterly confusing. Just who has jurisdiction over what? Does the normal citizen know, having grown up with the system?

Having said that the situation here is getting more confusing as successive governments have created more and more agencies with 'police powers' and allowed what seems like virtually every local government department to conduct surveillance of the general public.

Once upon a time I knew who could do what to me. Now I just have no idea, and I was part of the system!

Deephorse,
With 9/11 it has gotten worse. I did contract work for the Emergency Management Agency, then all of a sudden I was woeking for Homeland Security becasue in most States created a State DHS after 9/11 the EMA has been given to that department for control reasons.

I agree it is confusing. In our county on tyhe same stretch of road , you could be given a citation by the County Sheriff, City Municipal police or the Alabama State Police. If your actions were especially dangerous or you were involved in a felony, you may also be arrested by the local FBI or ABI agent who would hold you until the local police arrived. On a stretch of State highway out on Fort Benning , you may also get a citation from MPS.

Yes quite confusing.

Deephorse,

Ex-Fed here, and I agree its confusing. The police structure is actually fairly easy to understand until you get into city areas and start mixing federal and state.

City or township: police department

County lands not within a city/township: Sheriff's office

These two will often mix stuff as they won't stop chasing someone because they leave a certain area etc.

Then each state has a dedicated highway patrol unit which is primarily tasked with monitoring their inter/intrastate highway systems.

Federal agencies operate across state lines and operate within most states. It is all rather ridiculous. I was in a 120 mile chase one time which ended with (if I can recall…)

My station's agents
Neighboring station's agents
Arizona DPS
Casa Grande PD
Pima county Sheriff's office
Pima county drug task force office
Eloy PD

…all involved in the same chase. My partner and I got the kid and then we had a small pow wow about who had the best case against him. He had tried to ram into a Sheriff's car so we turned the guy over to the Sheriff's department for prosecution. It was…mayhem though. One chase and no less than seven agencies/departments…

Depends on the state. In Ohio, the sheriff has jurisdiction and can take enforcement action anywhere in the county, to include townships and cities but is only responsible for providing police services to the unincorporated areas of the county (or an area of the country that contracts with the S.O.). Then you have airport police, university police, park police, hospital police, mutual aid policies, concurrent jurisdiction, etc. etc.

Sheriffs are elected. Which makes them politicians. And therefore, naturally untrustworthy.

79th PA is right in that Sheriff's do have full county jurisdiction, they just happen to be busy with most of the non-city stuff because the local PD's are more likely to handle stuff in their town's jurisdiction etc.

Peel's mansion Drayton Manor is now an amusement park. The family history is amusing. Peel made the money, his son spent it, the grandson carried on spending it even though it was all gone & the great grandson picked up the pieces.

As a Brit, and a retired police officer, I find the plethora of US law enforcement agencies utterly confusing. Just who has jurisdiction over what? Does the normal citizen know, having grown up with the system?

As a expat Brit I am confused. For example, this morning I had a meeting with a client about 20 miles away in another suburb of the Minneapolis/St Paul metropolitan area. The trip involved me cross a county line and involved driving on Interstates (Motorways), Federal Highways (A Road), County Roads (B Roads) and suburban side streets. In that time I noticed the following police vehicles:

Minnesota Highway Patrol – the state traffic division.
Ramsey County Sheriff's Department. (Most of Ramsey County is urbanised).
Hennepin County Sherriff's Department. (Ditto)
City of Roseville Police (population 33K)
City of St Paul Police (pop. about 285K)
Cities of St. Anthony & Lauderdale Police (Covers three small suburbs population about 10K combined)
City of Minneapolis Police (pop. about 387K)
City of St. Louis Park Police (pop. about 45k)
Metropolitan Transport Police – deals with crime on the public transport.
University of Minnesota Police – deals with crime on the university campus.
Minneapolis Parks Police – deals with crimes in city parks.

I did not notice any Federal policing authorities which would include, of the top of my head, the following:

The Federal Bureau of Investigation.
The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives,
The Secret Service, (investigate counterfeiting, major fraud cases and presidential security. – the role of the Security Service M.I.5, being handled by the FBI).
The US Marshal Service.
The Drug Enforcement Agency.
The U.S. Customs and Border Protection.
The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

This does not include some of the other Federal Services with police powers – such as the Criminal Investigation Division of the Internal Revenue Service (H.M. Inspector Revenue and Customs.)

Criminals may be charged with breaking City Ordinances for petty crimes. For more serious breaches under State Law or Federal Law. It Is possible to be charged both Federal and State crimes for what the British would regard as one act. This has been done for political reasons; for example Minnesota, like many of the Northern tier of states does not have a death penalty, but there are various Federal charges that are capital crimes. We have had a Federal prosecution for capital crimes to try to get the voters used to the idea and then pressure the lawmakers to introduce the death penalty at a state level under that 'eye for an eye' version of justice – what we Brits would term the 'hang 'em and flog 'em brigade'. Under certain Federal Administrations this was more common than under others – in other words the political masters in the Department of Justice will pressure the local CPS equivalent to bring capital charges.

I suspect that the reason we have so many police forces is because many senior police officers – for example the County Sheriff's are voted into office every four years by direct elections. In the cases of police chiefs they are appointed but that way they are directly responsible to the local community through the city council.

I do hope this helps.

Each layer of law enforcement mentioned enforces laws enacted by that layer of government:
Local police enforce local law (town, city etc)
County police enforce county law
State police enforce state law
Federal police enforce Federal law.
Railroad, airport, security police, park rangers etc. all operate under the auspices of one of the regulatory branches above. They are basically guards but are given police powers so they can arrest malefactors on their property.
There are arrangements for one layer to enforce laws for other layers (i.e. a local officer may be able to arrest you for violating state law), and arguments about which laws they are going to enforce (California isn't enforcing Federal laws about marijuana).
Criminals go to different jails depending on which law they break, county lockup, state or federal Penitentiary.
Considering that the US is four times the population of the UK, the system is naturally going to be 4 times more complicated…

Also guys, while it adds more confusion…remember that very often, college or university police departments are normally just a "branch" of a city department. They are simply assigned to that task. Same thing goes for park police etc. They're very likely all part of a single department – just split into divisions in which they specialize.

It's all a bunch of mayhem. There are over 150 federal law enforcement agencies…

I do hope this helps.

It does. I now know that I don't want to be an ex-pat Brit living in the USA!!

Funny enough, some French films now show French police officers coming from a big town into a small French village and having to deal with unhelpful local French gendarmes as if they were FBI agents dealing with local sheriffs. Although the French system does not works like this, but French film authors tend to copy what the public sees in American films even if it's not accurate in France.

Is the French system anything like 'Engrenages' (Spiral in the UK)? It looks crazy but it's very entertaining!

I won't even ask if it's anything like Braquo.

@Turnstyle: University police are almost never a branch of the local police dept unless the campus is so small that it does not maintain its own force.

deephorse: Confusing? Yes.

But it does stem from the fact that this is a HUGE country and has a wide array of social structures. Villages, Townships, Cities, and more unincorporated areas than you can imagine. Plus, you have Louisiana with its Parishes, and don't forget that there is Indian Land with its own police.

And folks above didn't even mention constables, who provide yet another level of service.

Confusing? Yes. But as someone who's grown up with it, it all makes sense most of the time.

Dear 138th RAF,

Having lived there, it translates to, too many cops.