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The University of Wisconsin-River Falls has removed a recommendation on their website which encourages students to read an article titled “Why All Cops Are Bastards.” Along with other pieces encouraging rioting, this article was present on the University website until attention was called to it and it was removed by administrators, who claimed that it was posted mistakenly. The University apparently does not feel it expedient to support police abolition too publicly.
Law enforcement in America
The recommendations argue that police departments in America are inherently racist institutions that exist to oppress and uphold white supremacy.
The justification for this argument comes from the myth that police forces evolved out of groups which tracked and captured escaped slaves prior to the Civil War.
While this is a convenient origin myth for one of the great villains of modern liberalism, the real history and evolution of policing in America in fact shows how desperately needed an organized police force is in the United States.
For thousands of years most pre-modern societies were able to flourish without requiring formal police forces as we would understand them.
Generally these people lived in tight-knit and high trust communities, even in large cities, that enabled them to collaborate in catching common criminals and bringing them to justice on their own initiative.
Stable and healthy societies understood that it was in the interest of every individual to protect each other from crime; ancient Rome even with a million inhabitants could rely on citizens to bring petty criminals to court without direct intervention from higher authorities.
Birth of the modern police force
This pattern changed with the birth of modern London and the coming of the Industrial Revolution. The Industrial Revolution permanently broke up many traditional communities and as strangers poured into London crime skyrocketed
Several early police forces were created over several decades before Sir Robert Peel finally founded the Metropolitan Police.
It was this force which served as the template for most modern police forces, including those in America, where major cities were experiencing many of the same problems as London.
The slave catching patrols that the article recommended by the University identifies as being the source of modern policing should instead be viewed in the context of the earlier, community driven law enforcement in which private citizens would form a posse to pursue and deter.
Modern American police forces were formed as a direct response to rising urban crime, something which they face again today in almost every city in the United States In 2021 many Americans cannot even name their neighbors, let alone rely on them to guard against crime.
For leftists, many of whom hope to break down even the nuclear family, the idea of neighbors assisting each other in preventing crime is completely alien. If they succeed in abolishing urban police departments then there can only be anarchy and misery in American cities.
