Police (Part 2: Roles)
TLDR: Policing has ancient roots, co-evolving with cities. Increased specialization (e.g. crisis response, detectives, SWAT) can improve police efficiency.
Prerequisites: Part 1
Foundational to: Part 3
Police (in the Western world) can trace their roots, in a certain sense, to slavery. Specifically, some time around 500 BCE, the city of Athens likely established a force of hundreds of slaves (demosioi) called “Scythian archers,”1 who were owned by the state and tasked with maintaining order and following the directives of magistrates, which could include making arrests and managing crowds during events such as public punishments. Another classical example comes from 6 CE, where we have records that Octavian established the Vigiles Urbani — an institution of watchmen, also probably composed of slaves at its founding.2 Policing is a hard job, and the use of slaves reflects the way in which many occupations that we would now describe as “blue collar” were handled by slaves in those contexts.
While the Scythian archers were likely focused on public order, the Vigiles were, most centrally, firefighters. Fire was a huge threat in ancient cities, and by patrolling the streets the watchmen had some hope of being able to spot fires early and taking action before they became catastrophic.3 To boost the ranks of the Vigiles, former slaves (libertini) were hired for pay and given citizenship after six years of service. And as the ranks of the watchmen grew, so did their duties. By 27 CE the Vigiles were responsible for spotting and arresting criminals, capturing runaway slaves, and assisting other Roman police forces4 with their duties.
The Vigiles and the Scythian archers were, in many ways, exceptional. In most historical times and places, communities were simply too small and too poor to warrant or sustain anything like a full-time police force. The able-bodied men of a community, sometimes under the direction of nobility or a local warrior, would simply need to put down their work and do their best to catch and punish wandering criminals or members of the community who broke the law. If things in a country were going particularly well, the king’s soldiers might travel the roads, hunting bandits. But in general, law and order was a question of community norms and enforcement.
Where cities managed to grow to scale, however, more examples of pre-industrial police emerged, such as the berrovarii of 1200s Bologna. Like the Scythian archers, the berrovarii were largely outsiders, drawn to Italy from places as remote as Scotland and Africa. Their outsider status helped ensure impartiality to any of the noble families of the city, who couldn’t trust each other to enforce the law in a fair way. Like modern police, the berrovarii earned a salary, carried weapons, and wore uniforms. And like the Vigiles, they held many duties, such as patrolling the streets at night to enforce curfew, confiscating illegal weapons, and breaking up gambling rings.
It’s common in classrooms and casual summaries to frame policing as a uniquely modern phenomenon — often citing Sir Robert Peel’s work establishing the Metropolitan Police Force of London in 1829 as the origin of policing as we know it.5 But even in England there are obvious precursors, such as the Bow Street Runners (1749) and Marine Police (1798). Worse are the narratives that imply that “modern” policing was somehow an American invention, perhaps being developed in 1838 Boston, or as a natural evolution of slave-catching patrols in the American South. While each place has its own history, policing itself has evolved many times and in convergent patterns, due to the underlying social needs of urban life. Whether the police are slave-catchers or slaves, whether they fight fires or enforce curfews, the core functions of watching for crime and keeping the peace have remained a consistent part of the job wherever population density and wealth are sufficiently high.
Specialization
I find the Vigiles in particular to be a somewhat fascinating case of historical policing because of how they were primarily set up to handle fires, and only ended up policing as an afterthought. The dual role makes sense, in a way — strong watchmen who are out patrolling at night seem like they’d be useful for fighting fire and for fighting crime. And yet, virtually no modern society combines things in this way. Part of that is because of how technology changed fire-fighting, but part of it is because our cities are significantly more populous and wealthy. The few parts of the world where “public safety officers” exist, jointly responsible for fire and crime, are almost always small, rural communities that can’t afford to have a dedicated fire department and police department.
Specialization is useful. Once a city grows large enough to support it, civil servants can specialize in particular domains, carrying equipment that is narrowly useful for those problems and training exclusively for their focus. Civil ambulances first started to emerge in the 1800s, but it wasn’t until the 1960s that paramedics and EMTs became a meaningful role. In smaller communities, transportation of people to a hospital is still often done by general fire-fighters and police, but if you can get handled by an advanced paramedic, that’s obviously better.6 (Interestingly, it’s hard to statistically measure how much better because of a combination of (1) response time being extremely important — getting to a hospital sooner is often much more important than who transports you — and (2) Simpson’s paradox — having a first-responder with medical training is good news, but being dispatched a medically-trained first-responder is bad news, since it means you’re clearly in medical danger.)
The USA is currently going through another wave of specialization. Driven by the anti-police brutality movements of recent years, many cities have begun experimenting with unbundling police roles that center around violent confrontation from those where an unarmed specialist might be better suited, such as mental health crises. The most famous of these programs is probably CAHOOTS (established in Eugene, Oregon, in 1989), that handles a small fraction of emergency calls by sending medics and crisis workers to handle behavioral health issues, substance use, and homelessness.
Even skeptical voices agree that programs like this are probably good, on the margin. Armed police trained in the use of violent force can be intimidating, especially to people with mental health problems, and every hour spent training to catch a thief is an hour that could have been spent learning how to talk someone down from a ledge (or vice-versa). Even when police are also present, due to a need for coercive force, specialists who have trained in empathy and conflict resolution can be invaluable, as we can see in hostage negotiations.
In most places, police handle suicide threats, homeless people, vandalism, noise complaints, hostage negotiations, public drunkenness, assault, murder, rioting, accidents, wellness checks, surveillance, traffic stops, and dozens of other responsibilities. And for the most part, police officers simply handle each of these things with some degree of competence. In small communities, there is little option but to depend on generalists, but we shouldn’t be surprised if specialized units can outperform generalists, whether they count as police or not.
Investigators and Warriors
Speaking of “counting as police,” I want to highlight a couple other interesting cases where police are, from my perspective, under-specialized, beyond the community-health and crisis workers that have been the focus of reformers in recent years.
Let’s start with detectives. In almost all cities, detectives are police officers who not only have the powers and privileges of street cops, but also started their careers doing patrols in uniform. In most places this isn’t just a typical career pathway, but an explicit requirement — detectives are required to serve on the beat for several years before being allowed to even take their entrance exam.
This is almost certainly wasted motion. While experience on patrol is undoubtedly useful, the skills and talents that make someone good at one job or the other are different. Someone might, for instance, lack the temperament or physical strength for patrol work, but possess analytical skills that make for an excellent investigator. In the UK applying directly to become a detective became an option in 2017, and federal investigators in the USA, such as the FBI, do not generally require police experience as a prerequisite. Instead of spending years on the street, serving as a junior detective assisting a more senior investigator is likely a much more efficient path.
In a similar way, consider police tactical units, widely recognized in America by the term SWAT. These specialized teams emerged in the late 1960s, driven by the need to handle high-risk situations such as hostage rescues, active shooters, or heavily armed criminals, that exceeded the capacity of regular patrol officers. Events like the Watts riots in Los Angeles underscored the necessity for such dedicated training and equipment.
Like detectives, most tactical units draw their members from regular patrol officers. But the skillsets needed for these roles diverge significantly from routine policing. SWAT operations require military-like coordination and specialized weapons training. These skills have little overlap with community policing, traffic enforcement, or investigating property crimes.
Specialization is costly, and currently, most jurisdictions with SWAT teams maintain their own tactical capabilities, even though high-risk situations requiring extreme measures are relatively rare in any given location. We might consider whether some tactical specializations could function more effectively as regional or even national resources — similar to how wildland firefighters deploy across jurisdictions. During major forest fires, specialized teams like hotshot crews travel to wherever the crisis demands, rather than each community maintaining full capabilities for rare but catastrophic events.
The militarization of police has received substantial criticism in recent years, particularly when tactical equipment and approaches are used in situations that don't warrant such force. But this doesn't mean tactical units themselves are unnecessary — rather, it suggests we need clearer boundaries around when and how these specialized capabilities should be deployed.
The Golden Mean
As we look toward improving policing (or making any change to the world, for that matter), we would be wise to keep in mind that tradeoffs exist. For all the benefits of specialization, there are a range of different benefits to generalization. Part of why police forces are so generalized is that they are the ones that have to handle uncertain situations where authority and flexibility are key to handling whatever emerges.
People having mental health crises are sometimes violent. Detectives can find themselves needing to make arrests in the course of conducting interviews. And SWAT teams from a local community may think twice before shooting first and asking questions afterward. All these considerations should be mixed with an appreciation for the limited budgets and training resources that most departments have to work for, as we push for reform.
In Part 3, I'll explore my vision of Utopia, and how a better world might handle the various duties of the police.
The name “Scythian archers” is probably something of a misnomer. The Scythians were a nomadic people of the Near East, famed for their skill at mounted archery. The name “Scythian” derives from an Indo-European root literally meaning “archer.” What little evidence we have about the Athenian police force indicates that somewhere in the game of historical telephone some misunderstandings crept in. Some scholars argue that the Athenian police were unlikely to be armed with bows and arrows, and I’m inclined to agree. It’s even possible that many of the demosioi weren’t Scythian, and that there are additional, compounding misunderstandings at work. History tends to be fraught with this sort of thing. Stay skeptical!
The record seems clear that some Roman firefighters were slaves. The Vigiles were set up as an imperial government service in direct contrast to more privately-owned fire services like that of Marcus Egnatius Rufus. Some sources claim that Octavian set up a 600-man group of slaves to fight fires, then later created the Vigiles out of a group of 3,500 freedmen. Others claim there were originally 6,000 Vigiles and they were all slaves at first. Regardless of whether the initial Vigiles were slaves, they had their roots in slavery and sources seem to agree that by the 20s they were entirely or almost entirely freedmen. History is a rat’s nest of contradictions. Stay skeptical!
One amusing anecdote that feels related to police misconduct is that, apparently, during the Great Fire of Rome some of the Vigiles abandoned their fire-fighting duties and took to looting the city. Maybe! Stay skeptical!
In addition to the Vigiles Urbani there were two other noteworthy institutions contributing to what we’d now consider to be “policing:” the Praetorian guard and the urban cohorts.
Robert Peel was still an important figure! In particular, under his leadership as British Home Secretary he helped reform policing and criminal justice more broadly. He helped create the Metropolitan Police Force of London, and framed their authority as an extension of the community, rather than top-down control by the monarch. This “policing by consent” concept was his biggest intellectual contribution to the field, and deserves praise for encouraging transparency and accountability.
To be clear, some firefighters and police are also trained as paramedics. Big props to the men and women who manage to do both roles well.
Efficiency in policing is inherently unethical as long as the laws they're supposedly enforcing aren't ethical. There's also the issue of corruption which isn't overcome by efficiency.