THE ORIGINS OF AMERICAN POLICING BORN FROM SLAVE PATROLS American policing did not begin as public protection. It began as control. Long before modern police departments existed, colonial governments created slave patrols armed groups legally authorized to track, terrorize, and discipline enslaved Black people. They enforced curfews. They broke up gatherings. They searched homes without warrants. They used violence as policy. After slavery ended in 1865, the system did not disappear. It was rena

THE ORIGINS OF POLICING IN AMERICA Protests against police violence are shining new light on the role that police play in American society—now and in the past. Khalil Gibran Muhammad and Chenjerai Kumanyika explain how American policing grew out of efforts to control the labor of poor and enslaved people in the 19th century and beyond. Khalil Gibran Muhammad is a professor of history, race and public policy at the Harvard Kennedy School. He is the director of the Institutional Anti-Racism and Ac