In 1915, Raymond Blaine Fosdick, a lawyer and former Commissioner of Accounts in New York City,
was retained by the Bureau of Social Hygiene, which was funded by John D. Rockefeller, to conduct a comprehensive study of policing
in Europe.1 His resulting work, European Police Systems, was published in 1915.
Fosdick's work focused on the nations of England, Scotland, France, Germany, Austria-Hungary, Italy, Holland and Belgium. Fosdick's naiveness in some areas of policing was readily apparent, though
he does recognize the difficulties in conducting a comparative analysis between different nations.
The police problem is a variable problem, not only as between different countries, but as between different cities in the same
country, and even as between different periods of time in the same city...Three hundred thousand paupers settled in Liverpool during the four years
which followed the Irish famine in 1849, with consequences visible even today in the peculiarly difficult problems which face the police authorities
of that city...In Dresden, a German city of approximately the same size, the police problem is far less acute. For this
condition a variety of causes may be assigned, but prominent among them is the absence of a pauper class...
2
"London Metropolitan Police-late 1800's"
Fosdick's analysis of European systems, though almost totally lacking in any historical examination of the forces,
is an interesting study of the various localities' expectations of their departments. Though unrecognized by Fosdick, these expectations were largely a result of the
locale's historical experience with their police. He is critical of the American policing system, while at the same time noting that departments in some European areas were
more autocratic in nature.
The police forces of all of the larger cities of Austria-Hungary...are under the strict supervision of state authorities. As in Germany, so here, popular control of the
police through democratic machinery is not seriously considered for the reason that in the larger cities, at least, there is no pretense of democracy. A police force is a govermental
organ autocratically managed on a semi-military basis, for the purpose of maintaining order...In an excitable population, whose brief experience with limited self-government has
been marked by instability and continual inter-racial disorder, the need is felt for the firm control of a centralized police. 3
"Assembly Warning, London 1848"
Fosdick was especially complimentary in his evaluation of the London Metropolitan Police (Scotland Yard). Though he pointed out that
police forces belonging to individual cities in Britain were controlled locally, the London Metropolitan Police came under the authority of the British Crown. Fosdick asserted that this
independence from local control assured that the officers were more apt to respect the rule of law. They were not subject to local control, political parties or the whims of local politicians.
Their efforts were more likely to be directed towards crime and social welfare issues than to events or incidents arising from political concerns. Fosdick also conceeded that this type of
system was not acceptable in other cities in Britain, nor would it have been tolerated in the United States. 4
Fosdick also largely ignored the issue of social unrest in his analysis of European forces. He felt that British forces were least likely to resort to physical force
in the execution of their duties, while departments in other European locales were quick to respond with varying degrees of violence. He attributed British success in the avoidance of force to their
training methods and the general favorable disposition of the British public.5
"London Metropolitan Police 1850"
In 1920 Fosdick completed his project with the Bureau of Social Hygiene and published American Police Systems. He visited over seventy-seven American cities and
claimed to have studied every jurisdiction with a population exceeding 100,000. His analysis of police operations and administration was intense, and his recommendations prophetically anticipated the findings of two task force reports (The Police (1967), The Challenge of Crime in a Free Society (1967)) published by the Federal government
almost fifty years later. Fosdick was not kind in his assesment of American urban policing. He condemned the political interference, the lack of civil service protection, the corruption, the brutality and especially the ineffectiveness of crime control
efforts. He viewed the concentration on foot patrol officers as being an extreme waste of resources. He ridiculed the police of the late nineteenth and early twentieth-century for their anti-labor union bias, but he exhibited, as did many writers of his day,
his own prejudices regarding the negro and immigrant populations. 6
Fosdick includes politics as one of the reasons that police work in America had to be viewed as "perhaps the most pronounced failure in
all of our unhappy municipal history."7 He does not however, attribute the unfavorable comparison of European and American departments solely to politicians. He credits the homogeneous nature of the populations in European cities as a factor which significantly
simplifies European policing. He noted that 1920 statistics showed London's foreign born population at three percent while the number for New York City was forty percent. The figure increased to eighty percent if second generation Americans were included in the count.
He also referred to the problems caused by negroes and immigrants.
In London and other cities of Great Britain the negro population is so negligible that the census statistics make no mention
of it. Only rarely does one see negroes on the street and a "color problem" does not exist. In America, in consequence of the great numbers of
negro inhabitants, this problem has assumed startling proportions...It is this complex problem of nationality that the police are called upon to
grapple with...They must be prepared to understand the criminal propensities of Sicilians and Poles, of Chinese and Russians. They must become
expert in detecting crime characteristics as shown by twenty different races...They must have a ready knowledge of national customs and habits
so as to be forearmed against an Italian festival, a Polish wedding or a Russian holiday.8
Fosdick also decried the American legislative habit of passing laws which were unenforcable by police.
He was not in favor of the regulation of one's personal habits with public laws. He felt that it was a waste of police resources and also put the department in
a unfavorable position in the eyes of the city residents.
It suits the judgment of some and the temper of others to convert into crimes
practices which they deem mischievous or unethical. They resort to law to supply the deficiencies of other
agencies of social control. They attempt to govern by means of law things which in their nature do not admit
of objective treatment and external coercion.9
"Editorial Cartoon-Chicago 1890's"
Fosdick felt that police should not be involved in the enforcement of laws that regulate moral conduct. He felt
it was a waste of resources for police to be making arrests for gambling, liquor laws and minor municipal regulations. He recognized that nothing had
been accomplished through these efforts and viewed the policies as the prime cause of police corruption.
...men cannot be made good by force. The attempt to coerce men to render unto Caesar the things that are God's
must always end in failure. The law cannot take the place of the home, the school, the church...It cannot be made to assume the
whole burden of social control. Permanent advance in human society will not be brought about by night sticks and patrol wagons...
10
He condemned the fact that police agencies were frequently employed as tools of the upper classes in their
efforts of social control. He felt they were used by employers against employees under circumstances where they should not be required
to become involved. He noted that "lawful meetings of strikers had been brutally dispersed." The police often used obscure "infractions of ordinances
which would have gone unnoticed had the violators been engaged in another cause." Police often closed newspaper offices or seized
publications, framing the reasons behind their actions as the fear that the publications would "incite to riot." 11
In 1940, Bruce Smith, of the Institute of Public Administration at Columbia University, published Police Systems in the
United States, a study of policing and the problems associated with the effectiveness of American forces. Smith felt that since American forces "grew up with the
country," and because of the rapidity of that growth, policing has never had the "opportunity for orderly and consistent development."
From the earliest days of modern police forces, and down through the fivescore years that have followed, police have been
the object of attack by press and pulpit, bench and bar, civic and commercial associations, labor leaders, professional politicians, ambitious office
seekers, reformers, and criminals...Police have been denounced as relentless man hunters, as oppressors of the weak and helpless, and as the tools of
sinister influences and interests. They have also been described as largely ineffective agencies which fail to realize their objectives, and in any case
cost too much.12
: Smith advocated a strong civil service system, a concept that became popular at the turn of the century, and would assist in removing
the police from the control of local politicians. He condemned political control, and he also criticized the officers who participated in its benefits. He viewed reform of the urban
police as a critical factor in the development of our cities.
...but there can be little uncertainty concerning the future importance of the police of great urban centers. As nearly as we may judge, ours will continue
to be an urban civilization for a long time to come, and the place of the city police force in that setting seems assured. With all their political crosscurrents and other unfavorable
features, municipal police seem destined to make the same deep impression upon the police developments of the future that has been theirs in the recent past. If they do not accomplish
this by skill and effort, they will do it by sheer weight of numbers.13
