In 1981, Eric H. Monkkonen, currently a Professor of History and Policy Studies at UCLA, published Police in Urban America, 1860-1920. Monkkonen's work was
a social history of policing in urban America. He was concerned with the role of the police and the changes in that role over a period of time. He recognized the inconsistencies and pitfalls apparent when one attempts to "define" the police role. He also reconginized the implications on both policing and the community.
...although we have in the police a municipal agency capable of both social service and disservice, the best and most positive role that they can play is not clear. In the nineteenth-century the police took care of the homeless and even had soup kitchens, but we cannot easily return to that century's welfare-oriented
policing...if we choose to continue with the current model of policing, which emerged between 1890 and World War I with an emphasis on crime prevention, we must accept the increasing separation of the police from the policed, a division that opened dramatically with the decline of the welfare-oriented police...1
His description of our 19th century cities demonstrated the challenge awaiting those who enforced our laws.
As the United States industrialized in the nineteenth century, Americans experienced physical uncertainty and insecurity we would find intolerable today. Steamboats blew up. People drowned in shallow water, unable to swim. Trains regularly mutilated and killed pedestrians. Children got run over by wagons.
Injury very often meant death. Doctors resisted the germ theory of disease. City elites responded to the horse manure that filled the streets by banning the pigs of the poor, which ate the manure. People too poor and too decrepit to support themselves when ill or old died in poorhouses, when fortunate. And in the midst of all, the police
patrolled-men who at best had been trained by reading pathetic little rule books that gave them virtually no help or guidance in the face of human distress and urban disorder.2
"Chicago police ride streetcar to their beats-1905"
Monkkonen also placed historical significance on the issue of "uniforming" the police departments. He felt that the creators of the new police had followed the thories of
the Italian criminal law reformer, Cesare Beccaria, and his belief that "regular patrolling, predictable detection of offenses and rational punishment would deter potential offenders." Some even felt that the uniform itself
would deter crime. Others feared municipal authorities had it in mind to create a standing army.3
He did not believe that the original reason for the creation of the larger forces had anything to do with a desire to engage in "class control," though he understood
what path would soon appear.
The nebulous idea of preventing criminal behavior found the perfect means of implementation in the concept of an identifiable, crime-producing "dangerous class;" for only by focusing on
crime producers could criminal behavior be prevented, and the "dangerous class," by definition, produced the criminal behavior. Thus, although it is erroneous to see the new police as originally created with a
purposeful class-control function, class control resulted from their efforts to prevent crime, one of the major reasons for creating the new police...the goal of class control followed as an unintended consequence
of the new idea of preventing crime.4
"Officer Edward Plenskofsky, Phila PD, Killed on Duty, 8-8-27"
Monkkonen believed that conflict over the new police was related to battles over what "elite" was going to control
their activites. It was apparent that departments were going to become powerful agencies of control.
...the police were one of the earlies urban bureaucracies to unify communications and control of the city. This unique position helped the police
provide patronage, social control, electoral control and vice control. The latter generarated bribes and protection money. Only a portion of this money stayed in the
hands of the police, the remainder going to political parties that forced officers to contribute to campaigns. The support and control of the police ensured dominance
of competing political factions, whether the challenges came from reform efforts, state versus local control, ethnic versus nativist control or Democrats versus Republicans.5
He discussed the three main explanations that historians have oft cited when attmpting to explain the creation of uniformed municipal police
departments. The first involved the seriousness of crime and the even greater perception of criminal activity during this period. Cities were not going to continue to tolerate
existing conditions. The second reason was that property owners, more politically powerful than ever, refused to tolerate the riots and conditions which threatened their
status. This was especially true in the case of strikes and the takeover of industrial facilities by strikers. Other historians trumpeted a third reason for the creation of city forces.
...they were created because of elite fears of the rising proportions of poor immigrants in cities...accompanied by a decrease in the ability of urban elites to control
the social order fo the cities informally, and they responded by creating the police to control the "dangerous class."...The police departments were not created to reduce crime or
control increasing riots...They were established to control strangers and the poor in the main.6
"New York City Officers remove belongings of fire victims Triangle Factory Fire-1911"
Whatever the reason for its creation, the municipal police wasted no time in being recognized as a control agency.
The uniform concretly symbolizes the changed system of social control represented by the new police, asserting publicly and unequivocally the difference between the old and the new...
Whether the presence of a uniformed officer provokes public reactions of fear, hatrded, anxiety, relief or security is not a crucial matter; what counts is that the uniform is a statement of power. And when in the
19th century a city took the step of uniforming its police, it clearly stated its power to control its inhabitants.7
Monkkonen felt that American policing had gone through two eras of reform by 1920. One period was 1850-1885 and the second was in the 1890's. He noted the confusion over
the "role" of the police.
Each period shaped a new model of social control for cities; however, the precise way each model worked and to whose benefit ti functioned could neither have been clearly perceived nor precisely
intended at the time. Even today the existence and nature of these two innovational periods remain obscured by misfocused arguments over the social causations of criminal behvaior, by analyses of social control
agencies that assume all important consequences were intended and had simple antecedents, and by confusion over the behavioral outcomes of the progressive reforms of police.8
"Philadelphia Officer and Patrol Car-1930's"
He recognized the issue of crime prevention as one which created problems for the police and continues to do so today.
Even from the first half of the nineteenth century, one element of the crime-control focus of the police had posed a potential threat to civil liberties and to the police implementation of justice: the notion of
crime prevention. When the prevailing assumption had been that the "dangerous class" produced crime, the prevention ideology focused on the repression and control of the "dangerous class." Class containment accomplished
crime prevention...As a component of police duties since the introduction of the uniform, the prevention mission grew in importance in the twentieth century, and, with a goal irreconcilable with Anglo-American notions of civil
liberty, the police were cast into the position of subverting civil liberty. For to ask the police to act to prevent crime assumes that the police can identify potential offenders and on the basis of this identification act in such a way
as to prevent a criminal offense. Of course, such prevented action cannot be empirically examined, and unprevented action can be defined as the result of poor prevention means. The prevention goal, which had accorded so
well with class control, would be destined to keep the police involved in criminal activity themselves in efforts to prevent crime.9
