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Policing continues-
In some cases, whites would raid cattle from
Mexican ranches and then when Mexican vaque-
ros tried to take them back, the Rangers would be
called in to retrieve the whites stolen property.
Any Mexicans or Native Americans who resisted
Ranger authority were subjected to killings, beat-
ings, arrest, and intimidation. This includes the
horrific 1918 massacre at Porvenir, in which Rang-
ers killed 15 unarmed locals and drove the remain-
ing community into Mexico for fear of further vio-
lence. The massacres by the Rangers against
Mexicans led to a series of state legislative hear-
ings in 1919 about extrajudicial killings and racially
motivated brutality on behalf of white ranchers,
but those hearings resulted in no formal changes.
The graphic records of abuse were sealed for the
next 50 years to avoid staining the Rangers he-
roic record.
Slavery was another major force that shaped early
American policing. Well before the London Metro-
politan Police were formed, cities like New Or-
leans, Savannah, and Charleston had full-time
paid police that wore uniforms, were accountable
to local civilian officials, and were connected to a
broader criminal justice system. These early police
forces were not derived from the informal watch
system as in the Northeast but instead from slave
patrols. They had the power to ride onto private
property to insure that slaves were not harboring
weapons or fugitives, conducting meetings, or
learning to read or write. They also played a major
role in preventing slaves from escaping to the
North through regular patrols on rural roads.
While most slave patrols were rural and nonpro-
fessional, the urban patrols became professional
as early as the Charleston City Guard and Watch
of 1783. By 1831, the Charleston police had a
hundred paid city guards, 60 state guards, and
foot and mounted patrols that were on duty 24
hours a day. In Charleston and other major cities
of the South, slaves often worked away from their
owners property as part of the regions growing
industrialization. Professional police were deemed
essential for managing this mobile urban slave
population. The result, according to Richard Wade
in his Slavery in the Cities, was a persistent
struggle to minimize Negro fraternizing and, more
especially, to prevent the growth of an organized
colored community. This was done through the cerated on behalf of employers who would then
constant monitoring and inspecting of the black
population. The heavily armed police had to regu-
larly inspect the passes of employed slaves and
the papers of free Blacks. Police waged a con-
stant battle to close down underground meeting
places in the form of bars, study groups, and relig-
ious gatherings.
In rural areas, the transition from slave patrols to
police was slower, but the basic functional con-
nection was just as strong. In most southern
towns the main form of law enforcement was the
slave patrol that, in addition to controlling slaves,
was also involved in breaking up nighttime gath-
erings, hauling in suspicious characters, trying to
prevent mischief before it happened, and or cap-
turing the law breakers after the fact. But despite
this occasional enforcement action against whites,
the primary focus and purpose remained to man-
age the slave population.
At the end of slavery, the slave patrol system was
abolished and small towns and rural areas had to
develop new more professional forms of policing
that dealt with newly freed blacks. The main con-
cern of this period was not so much preventing
rebellion as forcing newly freed blacks into sub-
servient economic and political roles. New laws
outlawing vagrancy were used extensively to force
black people to accept employment, mostly in the
new sharecropping system. New poll taxes and
other voter-suppression efforts were enforced by
local police to ensure white control of the political
system.
Anyone on the roads without proof of employment
was quickly subjected to police action. Local po-
lice were the essential front door to the twin evils
of convict leasing and prison farms. Local sheriffs
made wholesale arrests of free Blacks on flimsy to
nonexistent evidence and then drove them into a
criminal justice system that subjected them to
cruel and inhuman punishments that often re-
sulted in death. These same sheriffs and judges
also received kickbacks and fees for carrying out
this work, and in some cases, they generated lists
of fit and hard-working black people to be incar-
lease them out to perform forced labor. In Slavery
by Another Name, Douglas Blackmon chronicles
the appalling conditions that black people were
subjected to in mines and lumber camps, resulting
in the deaths of tens of thousands and windfall
profits for southern industrialists. By the Jim Crow
era, policing had become a central tool for main-
taining racial inequality throughout the South,
supplemented by ad hoc vigilantes such as the Ku
Klux Klan, which often worked closely with and
was populated by local police.
Any efforts at police reform that fail to take this
history into account run the risk of further empow-
ering police by building their public legitimacy
without questioning their basic mission. Superfi-
cial reforms in training, enhanced diversity, and
body cameras dont address the ways in which
ongoing wars against crime, disorder, and drugs
serve to reproduce class and race inequalities.
Instead, they provide the police with more re-
sources and give them political cover to continue
their discriminatory actions. Movements for police
accountability and reform must look not to re-
form police, but to reduce their scope and power;
at the same time, they should also be working
toward restorative justice practices as well as
jobs, education and health care for our youth.
-Alex S. Vitale
thenewinquiry.com

Bureaucrats With Guns

There are now more non-military government employees who carry guns than
there are U.S. Marines. Open the Books, a taxpayer watchdog group, re-
leased a study that finds domestic government agencies continue to grow
their stockpiles of military-style weapons, as Democrats sat on the House
floor calling for more restrictions on what guns American citizens can buy.
The "Militarization of America" report found civilian agencies spent $1.48 bil-
lion on guns, ammunition, and military-style equipment between 2006 and
2014. Examples include IRS agents with AR-15s, and EPA bureaucrats wear-
ing camouflage.
"Regulatory enforcement within administrative agencies now
carries the might of military-style equipment and weapons,
For example, the Food and Drug Administration includes 183
armed special agents, a 50 percent increase over the ten
years from 1998-2008. At Health and Human Services (HHS),
Special Office of Inspector General Agents are now trained
with sophisticated weaponry by the same contractors who
train our military special forces troops."
Open the Books found there are now over 200,000 non-military federal offi-
cers with arrest and firearm authority, surpassing the 182,100 personnelwho
are actively serving in the U.S. Marines Corps.
The IRS spent nearly $11 million on guns, ammunition, and military-style
equipment for its 2,316 special agents. The tax collecting agency has billed
taxpayers for pump-action and semi-automatic shotguns, semi-automatic
Smith & Wesson M&P15s, and Heckler & Koch H&K 416 rifles, which can be
loaded with 30-round magazines.
The EPA spent $3.1 million on guns, ammo, and equipment, including drones,
night vision, "camouflage and other deceptive equipment," and body armor.
When asked about the spending, and EPA spokesman said the report "cherry
picks information and falsely misrepresents the work of two administrations
whose job is to protect public health."
"Many purchases were mischaracterized or blown out of proportion in the
report," said spokesman Nick Conger. "EPA's criminal enforcement program
has not purchased unmanned aircraft, and the assertions that military-grade
weapons are part of its work are false."
"EPAs criminal enforcement program investigates and prosecutes the most
egregious violators of our nations environmental laws, and EPA criminal en-
www.greenfuse.work
forcement agents are law enforcement professionals who have undergone the
same rigorous training as other federal agents," Conger continued.
Other administration agencies that have purchased guns and ammo include
the Small Business Administration, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration, the Department of Education, and the National Institute of
Standards and Technology.
The report also highlighted that the Department of Health and Human Serv-
ices has "special agents" with "sophisticated military-style weapons." Open
the Books also found $42 million in gun and ammunition purchases that were
incorrectly coded.
"Some purchases were actually for ping-pong balls, gym equipment, bread,
copiers, cotton balls, or cable television including a line item from the Coast
Guard entered as Cable Dude," the report said.
Open the Books appealed to both liberals like Bernie Sanderswho has
called for demilitarizing local police departmentsand conservatives in its
report.
"Conservatives argue that it is hypocritical for political leaders to undermine
the Second Amendment while simultaneously equipping non-military agen-
cies with hollow-point bullets and military style equipment," Open the Books
said. "One could argue the federal government itself has become a gun show
that never adjourns with dozens of agencies continually shopping for new
firearms."
Adam Andrzejewski, the CEO of Open the Books who wrote the report,
pushed back against the EPAs statement, and providedcontract data to back
up his claims.
"How can the EPA spokesperson deny hard facts from their own check-
book?" he said. "Alongside our oversight report, OpenTheBooks.com also
released a PDF of all raw data. This line-by-line transactional record from the
EPAs own checkbook on page 113 clearly shows that in 2013 and 2014 the
EPA purchased tens of thousands of dollars of Unmanned Aircraft from Ber-
gen RC Helicopters Inc which on a net basis amounted to approximately
$34,000."
"All of the assertions in our oversight report are the quantification of ac-
tual spending records produced and reported to us by the federal agen-
cies themselves," Andrzejewski said.
-Elizabeth Harrington
freebeacon.com