How The First Police Went From Gangsters, To An Army For The Rich

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Behind the Police, a production of I Heart Radio.
Welcome back to Behind the Police of Behind the Bastard's
special mini series about you know, the police in America, Uh,
some of the most persistent bastards in our nation's long
and bastardful history. I'm Robert Evans Uh, the host and

(00:27):
the the researcher and the writer. And my guest today
is Jason Petty, better known as hip hop artist propaganda
prop How are you doing today? What out? What up?
What up? Socially and emotionally prepared for this train Did
you like how professional my introduction was? That was some
NPR ship. Here's the thing, bro, like you're you are

(00:47):
unmatched in intros and transitions. There's nothing like this. I
want to be the voice. I want to retrain yourself
talk voice and just cont tendue to say you nailed
it even when you didn't, just even when I didn't. Beautiful.
I will continue to point out when you suck it

(01:08):
up and praise you when you don't. Like now, wonderful intro, Robert,
very professional, Thank you, Thank you, way better than that
time I just shouted Hitler. That was That was a
train wreck. Yeah, I know what to do with that one.
Have you ever walked by like a wall of chords
and just felt the need like I'm going especially like

(01:30):
that stage somewhere in festivals. Yes, no, or like I'm
gonna yank them all out. It's gonna happen, And it's
like I'm holding my hand away, like I I can't
be backstage. I'm an a yank one of these out.
I feel like that was like you and like the
Hitler thing to where you're just like, yeah, don't say it,
don't say it, don't say it. Oh my god, I
want to say yeah. Because you can't script an introduction, right,

(01:52):
Like that's the first rule of of of broadcast as
you can never script an intro. So we're left with
me winging it so prop Yesterday we talked about the
origins of American policing with a focus on like the
slave patrols, and that is the thing like online since
kind of this whole uprising against the police began, that's
the thing everyone's been focusing on that, like police came
out of slave patrols, and that is very true for

(02:14):
a huge chunk of American policing. Today, we're gonna talk
about the other chunk because it was not just slave patrols,
because a sizeable chunk of American policing came out of
a desire to suppress folks number one that we today
would call white, but at the time kind of the
people with money didn't really consider to be white. Um.
But also more than anything, it came out of a
desire to police labor, like the working class. So today

(02:37):
we're going to kind of hit that other side of
the of the where cops come from, uh divide, um. Yeah,
this is there's a lesson in intersectionality, guys, right now. Yeah,
And and like all good lessons and intersectionality it comes
from it includes uh, people being racist when that's directly

(02:58):
in the opposition to their needs and an actual benefit. Yeah,
a deep seated oppression, yeah, and an oppression that's taken
advantage of by the ruling class in order to continue
to Yeah yeah yeah. And we're going up norf to
you know they free up there, you know, yeah, yeah,
lord yeah, yeah, the North, the North. I mean it

(03:22):
was better than the Confederacy. But that's like saying, yeah,
like vomiting in the toilet is better than vomiting on
your friends floor, which like yes, but it's both are
non ideal strict Yeah. So, um, you may not know this,
but President John Fitzgerald Kennedy designated the week of May
fifteen to be National Police Week. I don't think we

(03:45):
celebrated it this year. Yeah, I was like, I never
heard that. Yeah, it must have missed that one. Um.
During his speech announcing this, he stated that police officers
had been protecting Americans since the birth of the United States. Now,
we of course know this is untrue. First formal police
department was started in Boston in eighteen thirty eight. And
you know, slave patrols existed earlier, but they sure weren't

(04:06):
protecting people. Now. One of the inciting incidents that led
to the creation of the Boston Police, who again that's
the first police department, was the Broad Street Riot. And
the basic story of the Broad Street Riot is that
a funeral procession of Irish immigrants in eighteen thirty seven
ran into a volunteer firefighting company of US born Protestants
who are on their way back from fighting a fire.

(04:27):
And obviously, like now, I think most people just like, oh,
you know, Protestants and Catholics, they're all just sort of like,
you know, relatively mainstream Christian denominations. But you know, it
was like it was like a huge deal when JFK
became the first Catholic president. People were like, is he good? Sorry, yeah,
I was gonna say, yeah, that's how like open to
diversity and melting pot we are as a country that

(04:48):
like it was a scandal at this fool was at Catholic. Yeah.
I got like, yo, that's the that's just the other
room with the same house. Yeah. If you really want
an idea of like how funked up America has been
about diversity. Like we were like not even a decade
away from putting a man on the damn moon and

(05:08):
JFK came to power and people were like, is he
going to take secret pope orders? Oh yeah, And the
news flash to every Protestant was like, you know, we
was all Catholic until five years ago. I don't know,
but we was all Catholic you know. Yeah, uh, it
was It's wild. So yeah, um, Catholics and Protestants back

(05:31):
then had some real issues with one another. So this
this irish funeral procession like runs into the middle of
this Catholic or a Protestant firefighting company and the two
just start beating the ship out of each other, and
all of this spills out into a riot that eventually
involves one fifth of Boston's population, which is like fifteen
thousand people, which is still a pretty good sized riot today.
Um yeah, so ethnic tensions being what they were, the

(05:53):
riot quickly turned into erase riot, and Protestants burned and
looted the entirety of the heavily Irish Broad Street neighborhood,
just like Jesus would call him. Yes, he was a
big fan of burning and looting. Just burning, you know,
you turned it. He was like, hey, he flipped over
the tables. He clipped over the temple tables. Yeah, but
those weren't like his homies tables anyway. Yeah. And what

(06:15):
he didn't, he say, burned the other cheeks something like that,
So I may be missing. Yeah yeah, so yeah, very
very taking their religion seriously here. Um So, in decades
prior um to the Broad Street Riot, merchants had been
forced to finance their own guards to secure the transportation
of their goods. Establishing police, which were paid more by
the commonwealth shifted the burden for protecting capital off of

(06:37):
capitalists and onto the community. But even prior to the
establishment of the first police departments, law and order in
the United States was primarily a for profit endeavor and
not a manner of public safety. Um, the broad street
right was kind of used as an excuse for, like
why we need a police force. But the tensions had
been building and like frustration had been building, like, oh,
we gotta pay to take care of our own ship

(06:58):
from you know, the merchant class. So this was of
an opportunity for them to get people on board. Now,
as we covered in the first episode, most policing in
the English speaking world prior to the eighteen hundreds was
primarily a community affair. Enforcement of the law was done
by members of the community who tended to rotate through
shifts keeping order in their own towns. Public spirit is
generally the term used is what was like the primary

(07:20):
method of social control in those days, rather than centralized authority.
And that is kind of the thing that like, I
was just in the Seattle autonomous zone or whatever you
wanna call it, you know, may not be really an
autonomous zone. I don't think they've actually kind of firmly
decided yet because the police got back in briefly, but
like public spirit is the primary manner of social control there.
There's no centralized organization, there's no like even mass kind

(07:42):
of votes because people are so distributed there. But there
is kind of a broad public spirit of like what
if we don't have cops here? Right, that's kind of
the ideal idea. Um And that was kind of the
way that it worked for a very long time, UM
in in particularly like English speaking chunks of the of
the world. UM. But but not just that. UM. So, yeah,

(08:02):
this system began to fade out as like, you know,
as the kind of industrial age dawn, and distinct communities
that had been like more or less like somewhat isolated
at least homogenized into cities and sprawling urban areas like
now you know, we say London, but back in the
day it was like a bunch of towns and then
a much smaller London. And then as they all turned
into like this big fucking metropolitan area. Um, this public

(08:26):
spirit fades. So. Historian Henry Pringle writes that by the
seventeen hundreds, the legal system had formalized enough that it's
architects were quote confident that they could by a system
of incentives and deterrence rewards and punishments, bribes and threats,
so exploit human greed and fear that there would be
no need to look for anything so nebulous and unrealistic
as humans or as public spirit. So that's kind of

(08:48):
like the real dawn of of formalized law enforcement is
is things get big enough in these people are like
public spirit, you can't really rely on it to do
what I wanted to do. And I'm the guy with
the money, So we need to build a system of
the terrence and rewards. Yeah it's scans. Yeah, Yeah, it's scans.
So gradually, yeah, it keeps scans. And I was also

(09:10):
gonna say, as a side note, the and I hate,
I hate the very principle of what I'm about to say. Sure,
but at the old folks in the church would say
it's true anyhow. Uh, I absolutely love like the Irish

(09:35):
like culture. It's just because it's just so irreverent and
like they just don't take themselves serious. Everything is sarcastic, Yeah,
drinking and going to sing at parties and I'm just like,
it's just it's just your normal slang, like old ball back,

(09:55):
how you doing, Like you call your homeboy a ball bag.
That's a strod um fam and that's what you refer
to your friends as your friends and scrotums all ball
back and it's like, look, I respect that so much.
I just so I I respect him. They're just ready
to fight at any moment. Yeah, drink a lot, you

(10:16):
know what I'm saying. And then when you got to America,
you created your own hood like just the South Boston,
just south the Irish pissy, don't even don't even mess
with your like your grandmother, ready to scrap. Like I
respect that so much. Yeah, I love this is my
favorite place to visit Ireland. I love the like what

(10:37):
you're talking about, like this idea that even with like
your elected leaders, like you should kind of be able
to shout at him, right. That's there's a bit of
that in England too, Like this idea that like we
had a thing here and it happened in Minneapolis with
Mayor Fray, where like he had to go out to
this crowd and like when he said something, didn't like
this crowd of thousands like told him to go to
the Funk Home. And we had that in Portland with
our mayor, Like he showed up in the middle of

(10:58):
this crowd to take questions and if one just told him,
like you had the cops shoot at us a bunch,
and we don't like that, and you're a bad mayor,
and everyone just got to like yell at the mayor.
And that's how it ought to be with all elected officials.
They should have to stand in the middle of a
crowd of their voters and get heckled when they funk up.
It's it's like, yes, every elected official should have to
do some sort of like open mic, like stand up,

(11:20):
just dive bar where you have to feel the heat. Dude.
My first few years of touring like the heat of
being like, okay, listen, it's it's almost it's it's eight fifteen,
you know what I'm saying. Everybody's just pregame in trying
to figure out who they're gonna hit on later, and
I have to go up and wrap for fifteen minutes

(11:43):
and try to convince this room to pay attention to
me for I got ten minutes of atention. Commissions like
that is the best school of hard knocks as like
a live performer that anyone could ever I feel like
every mayor should have to do that. Yeah, absolutely, absolutely,
like the public the whole public spirit thing. Obviously there's
a lot of more people now where there's a more

(12:04):
complexity you need, you need more than just public spirit.
But this idea that like, if everyone just kind of
hates this dude, like he should have to stand in
the middle of them and I try to convince them
that they're wrong or at least just take the fucking
fire for all right, if you could take that fire
and or win some of us over, I would be like,
you know what, Okay, maybe I was wrong, but maybe
I was wrong about this dude. Yeah, yeah, anyway, anyway,

(12:27):
back to the fucking cops. So um, Gradually the profit
motive became the central motivating force behind law enforcement. So
kind of public spirit moves aside for we just pay
people to do this ship um, and the change started
at the level of the constable. Traditionally, constables had been
unpaid members of the community who took turns at the job,
but most citizens came to dislike taking their turn as constable,

(12:50):
especially since each turn involved a one year, unpaid period
of working to enforce laws that were often very in popular.
Because there was like centralized state authority, it just there
was like super organized law enforcements like the king or
whoever would make like a law that people didn't like,
and then you would take your Turnity, you have to
enforce that law, and that doesn't make you popular, um,
which was an issue with the system who was making

(13:12):
the laws. So over time, deputies began to realize that
the power of their office held other opportunities for profit.
According to a paper on the development of private police
by Stephen Spitzer of Northern Iowa University and Andrew School
of the University of Pennsylvania, quote once in office, the
deputies soon found that profits could be gained from selling
protective and investigative services, or demanding rewards and fees in

(13:33):
return for recovered goods. Deputies often made such a profitable
trade of their offices that many were prepared to serve
for nothing. So this goes from like this ugly job
that you take because you have to to a job
that you know because you kind of find a way
to you kind of you kind of find side hustles
in your position allows you to exploit and then it
it becomes really profitable even though there's not a salary
for the gig. And so you're kind of freelance police

(13:56):
at this point, right, like, that's the gig. So this
suited early local governments in England and her colonies pretty
well because these these governments and these people's like just
because of an aspect of the culture, felt a deep
resistance to the idea of paying for a salary and
police force. Individual constables who were successful in their jobs
could sell their services to the highest bidder, augmenting their
official duties with what was essentially private security work. The

(14:19):
system made it over to the North American colonies during
the first decades of the eighteen hundreds. New York City
police officers were noted as being more quote private entrepreneurs
than public servants. The same was true in Boston before
and after the formal establishment of their police department Spitzer
and School right quote. Since the main concern of the
victim was restitution, they functioned then as personal injury lawyers

(14:41):
operate today on a contingency basis, hoping to get a
large part, perhaps half, of the proceeds. So cops would
kind of hang around like a like a bad lawyer.
They would wait to see, Oh, somebody just got robbed,
somebody just got beaten up, somebody's store got broken into,
and then they would show up and be like, hey,
if I get that stuff back and I have half
of it? Like that was those were the first cop
like in the North and stuff. Yeah, before there's like

(15:02):
really police departments, you know, So like okay, so when
you it's so crazy when you think of it in context,
which is like the best thing to do as somebody
that really wants to understand humans, it's like, can you
blame them for being like, you know, maybe maybe we
should centralize this, what if? Like yeah, kind of like
maybe we should come up with some sort of department

(15:23):
that maybe above this. You know, Yeah that sucks, you
know what I'm saying. So you're like, it's it's maybe
it's I don't know, maybe this maybe it's a bad,
bad idea of the way we're doing. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
it's definitely like you you you kind of transition away
for everybody taking turns as the cops to like cops
being basically mercenaries, and people are like mercenaries kind of suck.

(15:45):
A fan of this strike two guys like yeah, you know, yeah,
so it's yes, You're you're absolutely right, Like you can't
totally blame people for being like, well, what if we
try to like make this a more official thing. Yeah,
like we can identify them and it's not just like
it's not just like my neighbor Dave down the street
that this trust is full, Like I don't trust Dave. Yeah,

(16:06):
you know, it's a shady son of a bit. It's
kind of shady man. Yeah, yeah, so yeah, yeah, this
was Yeah. Most police in this period worked as actually
not even uniformed thugs, um, just kind of thugs protecting
the businesses and streets that paid them, or as private
detectives hunting down stolen goods or other criminals and a
contingency basis. The system provided no real benefit for the

(16:27):
average person and only marginal benefit for the capital holding class.
See this was back before the dawn of the industrial economy,
and people weren't used to the idea of just working
all of the time because that was their job. Farm
labor was seasonal, and skilled laborers usually didn't work more
than they needed to in order to live comfortably. Law
enforcement officers kind of work the same way. So these
people would take enough jobs to maintain a decent lifestyle,

(16:49):
and then when they had enough money, they'd stop working.
So Suddenly the constably were like, yeah, I'm not gonna
do anything for the next couple of months. Like I'm good.
I had a big case, like sorry, you need help,
but like why would I work right now? I don't
need to and I'm not to work if I don't
need to. Um. Yeah, So to make matters worse, at
least for the business owning class, the way bounties were
structured actually discouraged police from catching criminals. Historian James F.

(17:12):
Richardson Rights and his History of the New York Police
quote the police reports published in the newspapers in these
years are filled with accounts of instances in which the
property was returned with financial rewards for the police officer,
but in which the criminal was not brought to justice.
The officer received a larger fee or reward for recovering
the stolen property than he would have received for bringing
the criminal in Often the arrangement was consummated even before

(17:34):
the robbery or burglary took place. An officer would be
privy to a crime, and after its commission, would endeavor
to recover the stolen property in return for a liberal reward.
Part of the reward within go to the thief as
a share she this is the shadow. So like you
me to tell me by design, the cop was crooked.

(17:55):
Like just yeah, it's just baked into the I am
instead of like listen to what listen what Professor Evans
just taught you. You know what I'm saying, I am
incentivized to cheat. It is better for all of us
if I just cheat, and y'all think and that's what's
crazy about Like here's here's why. Like what just just

(18:17):
pure unchecked capitalism does to your brain is you would think,
oh yeah, it's just it's just competition. You know what
I'm saying, Like, hey man, hey dude, if you get
my stuff back, I just want you to know, like
I'll pay you more if you get my stuff back.
You're good at your job. I'm just gonna pay you
more for it. It's like, well, I don't know, man,
maybe there's a way I can get both. Yeah yeah, yeah,

(18:40):
what if I just work with the guy that's going
to steal your stuff like that with a stuff he
wants money, Yeah, we all win and that sit you
got your stuff back, I mean it's money, like it
just yeah, yeah, yeah, it's great because like a tax
on rich people by I don't know, not necessarily poor people.
Well maybe the thieves were, but like, yeah, that's whatever. So,
up until the mid eight hundreds, policing in the cities

(19:00):
of the American North had been a fundamentally reactive endeavor.
Officers went off in response to specific criminal acts, rather
than seeking to prevent set acts. You know, there were
some exceptions, sometimes people will be like, well, let's hire
some officers to like watch this neighborhood where we have
a bunch of shops or whatever. But generally it was
pretty reactive. Um and as the first major metropolitan police
departments were established in the eighteen thirties and forties, this

(19:23):
started to change. These new police departments focused on the
dangerous classes. You remember hearing that in the first episode. Yeah,
the dangerous classes were largely made up of poor immigrants
who were seen as being fundamentally criminal. The idea began
to spread that by patrolling, surveilling, and deploying force against
these populations, police could stop crime from occurring. Now, whether

(19:45):
or not someone counted as a member of a dangerous
class had an awful lot to do with whether or
not that person also counted as white. The full subject
of what whiteness meant in the North in this period
of time is much too complicated for series that's already
going to be complicated. What is important to understand is
that a lot of groups, again that we all lump
in as white today, weren't really white yet during the
mid eighteen hundreds. This included, at varying points, Germans, Italians,

(20:09):
Jews of all national origins, and of course the Irish.
Now again, as I noted in the last episode talking
about this is is complicated or a fact that a
lot of modern racists, or at least kind of people
who like to deny the suffering of black people will
claim that, like, oh, it was just as bad for
the Irish, and it absolutely was not, but also anti
Irish bigotry was still a motherfucker, Like there was a

(20:30):
lot of that going around, and no one's yeah, it's
from from from as someone from the black community, I'm like, okay,
no one's arguing that the Irish who are not not
treated unfairly. It was what they went through, It's not
it was not the same. It's like, you know, I
like I am a you know, cis gender heterosexual male.

(20:54):
And when my wife got pregnant. No part to me
said we're pregnant. Yeah, that's just like I can't stand
when husbands say that, Yo, we're pregnant. I'm like, nigga, no,
we're not. You understand what I'm saying. She is doing
it while I'm in there with her, and you know

(21:14):
you are not. I remember standing on the side of
the room when my wife was about to go and labor,
being like, women are magical superheroes because then I don't
know a single male on earth that could do this.
So I'm like, no, no, man, it is not the same. Okay,

(21:38):
it's not the math same. We are not pregnant. Shut
your mouth. All I gotta do is go get weird
fucking ice cream and Dorito's. That's my job. Go get
somebodyce cream and Doritos. She is cooking a human. We
are not pregnant. So in the same way, I'm like, look, okay, yeah,
we're both going through this experience. I'm tired to I

(21:59):
gotta get up in you know, feed His child is
three in the morning. I'm tired, But I am not
the child's food source. The milk ain't coming out of
my boob is coming out of her boob. It is
not the same, just and it's like that's not a
disk I'm not It's just it's just not the same. Like,
let it not be the same, you know. Yeah, it's

(22:20):
okay that different groups suffer in different ways. It's even
in the same place that Yeah, we we can, we can.
We can explore the ways in which the suffering is
unique and also the ways in which it has common
roots of origin without conflating thing. I'm not going to
play the oppression Olympics. Like, that's what I'm not going
to do, not playing the oppression Olympics anyway. Yeah. Um,

(22:40):
we're talking a lot about how police departments developed out
of the desire for the capital holding classes to publicly
fund the protection of their ship, but also the increasing
populations and racial mixtures of American cities had a big
impact on it too. Race riots became increasingly common in
the eighteen thirties and forties as long as well as
other riots. There were just a shipload of riots in
this period of time, and all this unrest helps set
old the growing middle class on the idea of police departments.

(23:03):
Policing also opered offered an opportunity for non white groups
of white people like the Irish to gradually gain social acceptance.
The first Irish policeman in the United States is generally
believed to be have been a Bostonian dude named Barney mcginniskan,
which is an incredibly wow Barney mcginniskans. It's like they

(23:23):
made him in a lab at cartoon. Yeah. So Barney
mcginniskan was hired in eighteen fifty one, and a local
alderman was infuriated by this on the grounds that it
would create a dangerous precedent irishman. He continued commit most
of the city's crime and would receive special consideration from
one of their own wearing the blue Now. Mcginniskan's career

(23:46):
lasted only three years when the nationalist, anti Catholic No
Nothing Party took over the Massachusetts legislature. The Irish would
not make major inroads into northern police departments until their
population grew large enough that the Democratic Party realized they
could guarantee Irishes by giving irishman jobs on police departments.
And that's why there's kind of a stereotype of the
Irish police officer today. Like the Patty wagon went from

(24:07):
being a wagon that you throw Irish people onto on
their way to jail because they're all criminals to just
like a term for a cop car because all cops
are Irish like that. That that change happened over the course,
and it was kind of it wasn't the only thing
that had to do with this, but it was kind
of a part of Irish people sort of becoming white,
you know, as they kind of take up positions helping

(24:29):
to enforce the social order and stop being kind of
on the fringes of it. Yeah, that's the thing that
has rebellion type stuff. Okay. Yeah, So one thing all
scholars seemed to agree on is that these early police
departments were uniformly corrupt and violent. Local police party ward leaders,
who were like local politicians in charge of neighborhoods and

(24:49):
ship tended to appoint the police officers in charge of
their neighborhoods. In society being what it was back then,
these ward leaders often also owned the local cavern and
ran the local gambling prostitution rackets. So if you were
like if people like the equivalent of like a local
like senator or whatever, or an alderman or some ship
city council member, you would also own the bar in

(25:10):
your area, and you would run like the prostitution and
gambling rackets, and you would also run the police. Like
that's kind of how it worked, and so everybody was
it was just a bunch of gang bosses. Yeah, gang yes, yeah,
And that's you know, that's not that different from the
way the ancient rome worked too, to be honest, like
pretty similar. Yeah. Yeah. So these ward leaders controlled both

(25:33):
the police and the gangs um and both the police
and gangs mostly of local youths who would help organize
voter drives and would intimidate people into making the right
choices on voting day. The first police departments then were
just one of several violent tools available to these early
political bosses in the big cities of the north and
you know, kind of the middle of the country. It

(25:53):
wasn't really the middle. It would have been like the
fringe at that point. But like whatever, you get what
I'm saying, we get it. Yeah. Police salaries were also
augmented by bribes paid by the owners of illegal businesses.
And I'm gonna quote again from Dr Gary Potter here,
in the system of ice, organized violence and political corruption,
it is inconceivable that the police could be anything but corrupt.
Police systematically took payoffs to allow i legal drinking, gambling,

(26:15):
and prostitution. Police organized professional criminals like thieves and pickpockets,
trading immunity for bribes or information. They actively participated in
vote buying and ballot box stuffing. Loyal political operatives became
police officers. They had no discernible qualifications for policing and
little if any training in policing. Promotions within the police
departments were sold, not earned, police drink while on patrol.

(26:37):
They protected their patrons vice operations, and they were equipped
to use peremptory force. Yeah, yeah, yeah, all scans, scans. Yeah.
What's funny to me as two is like when you
from the street level. Part of the like outrage is
when that cop all of a sudden, just one day,

(27:02):
decides to ag like an upright citizen. Yeah, you know,
and and so if if you know, it's like any
other relationship to where it's like, Okay, you and your brother,
your little sister, like you're all scumbags, you're all stealing,
you're all you're all sneaking out, and then one day
your brother goes, you know, mom, Robert's been sneaking out

(27:25):
all week, You're like, what the so you serious? Are
you serious? Bro? Like, what are you talking about? You
know why I snuck out to steal you some weed?
You know what I'm saying? So like, yeah, anyway, So
it's like when you when you look at it from
that perspective, like why somebody would in turn being like, man,
you know what, I ain't got no time and I

(27:46):
got no mercy for y'all. Don't treat you no different
than anybody else, is because you don't act no different
than anybody else. Yeah, it's fucking uh yeah, it is
weird that like in this period to most people would
have looked at like a dude who was like a
fucking a pimp or uh yeah, like as the same
way they would a cop, Like you guys are two

(28:06):
sides of the same fucking coin. Yes, and then the
yeah this and we'll talk in a later episode we
will get to sort of the media operation that was
kind of helped to form what are what up Until
very recently, we're sort of the modern kind of mainstream
consensus on police officers as like upstanding members of the
community and ship um. But like, yeah, for a very
long time, they were just seen as another kind of thug, like,

(28:30):
yeah they're gay, Yeah, they're gay. Yeah. Now. Samuel Walker,
a professor and expert on the history of police accountability,
says that during this period, municipal police were used as
delegated vigilantes by the empowered classes of the new United States.
That's an interesting term. Now. They were men entrusted with
power by those in power to use violence against again,

(28:51):
the dangerous classes who were seen as fundamentally criminal. Interestingly enough,
Walker seems to believe this idea of having delegated vigilantes
grew into a central aspect of American identity. Quote, many
of the worst abuses of official criminal justice agencies represent
a form of delegated vigilantism. The public has tended to condone,

(29:11):
if not encourage, police brutality directed against the outcasts of society,
or the mistreatment of inmates in penal institutions. So this
thing that we all recognize, I think I don't have
to go into detail about this idea that like we
should have delegated vigilantes. It's okay if we have people
we all agree should be fucked up, that some people
go fuck them up. Like this really central aspect of

(29:33):
American culture starts in this period with this idea of
like the police as delegated vigilantes to damage the dangerous classes. Wow, yeah,
you know. And then yeah, it's the idea of like
something built in its like in the very construction of

(29:57):
the concept, like it's alts as. Compare this too, when
you try to tell somebody that, like, hey, your story
about like the founding of our nation wasn't It's not
as like pretty as you think it was. Just you
know what I'm saying, When you try to like start,
you're missing some paragraphs. Guys. It's like how earth shattering,

(30:19):
and just like I have to reconstruct reality. So like
so when you so when you fast forward and we go, no,
most of your most of our founding fathers slave owners,
they weren't. They were not at all Christians. I don't
know where you get this founding on Christian thing from.
You know what I'm saying, Like that's earth shattering. So
I think like like this one, this this series is
gonna be that for people. When you're they're just like, well,

(30:40):
then is the sky blue? Can I trust my eyes
with my hands? And like like the weird this is
multiverse level reality shattering for people. You know what I'm saying,
when you go back as far as you go on. Yeah, yeah,
I hope. So, I mean it's it's pretty it's interesting.

(31:00):
It's interesting to me because like if you, if you,
if you really sort of like dig into this idea
of delegated vigilantism. Um, it's kind of a central thing
that Americans believe in. Um. You you You're You're led
to some uncomfortable kind of patterns or pathways of thought
because like so one of the most popular methods used

(31:21):
today even to justify the violence of the police is
the supposed criminality or deviance of the people that the
police are victimizing. Um. And I it's interesting to me
that you can draw you really can't draw a direct
line between the delegated vigilantism that started in the eighteen
hundreds fucking Batman and the right wing reaction to the
murder of Trayvon Martin. Yeah, like, yeah, who he's a hero.

(31:41):
I mean it was the guy I shouldn't been back
there anyway. Yeah, it's exactly. Oh my god, it's Batman's Batman.
I never thought of it because I'm always like, because
I'm more of the trailer. Like I'm the seventeen year
odkay with a bag of skittles, cut in through a backyard,
you know what I'm saying, just trying to get home.
So my dad is the man, you know what I'm saying.
And if some dude is like following me, my thought

(32:05):
is I better beat this fool to a pulp because
it's scary, because I just don't want to, you know
what I'm saying. So like I never thought of it
as like, oh, this fool thinks he's Batman. Damn, this
fool thinks he's the fucking he's the vigilante hero that
Oh my god, I'm gonna check the city from scum
gum shoes. It's the same, Oh my gosh, Yeah, it's white.

(32:29):
Fucking cops have punish your patches on their fucking cars,
and it's white. All sorts of people are fucking punished.
Like it's it's this core, very core, even maybe even
more core than this, like nebulous love of freedom that
we have is like this. There should be people who
beat the funk out of people I think are bad.
Like it's just an origin story DNA strand, Okay, want

(32:52):
to take an advert real quick. Yeah, you know, who
won't beat the funk out of people who don't deserve
it and placed desire for vigilante justice. These disembodied products
that are keeping the lights on kind of constitutionally incapable
of of violence as as products. Yes, on autonomously, that's

(33:16):
not the word I'm looking for. Ontologically, that's not the word.
I'm like, I don't know. Okay, we're done, We're rolling
some ads, yes, all right, and we are returned. So
the system of American policing would have its next major
evolution in the late eighteen hundreds as a result of

(33:37):
the growing like union movements, So obviously like the late
eighteen hundreds is kind of the period in which Americans
really start to unionize. There had been unions in the
United States. I think the first one was seventeen seventy eight,
but their existence had been fairly scattered and of kind
of minimal consequence until eighteen sixties six, when the National
Labor Union formed to convince Congress to limit the workday

(33:58):
for federal workers to eight hours. For the eighteen eighties,
union membership had spread widely across the private sector, and
union strikes were constant across the big cities of the North.
From eighteen eighty to nineteen hundred, New York had more
than five thousand strikes involving more than a million workers.
Chicago had seventeen hundred and thirty seven, and I think
more than half a million workers. So I called these strikes,

(34:20):
and I think modern historians call these strikes, and modern
people would recognize them as strikes. But at the time, politicians,
business owners, and like the wealthy classes called them riots. Uh,
And they turned there's still fairly new police departments to
the task of breaking up these riots. They turn. Yeah, yeah,
that's the where riot police starts. Like all these people

(34:40):
don't want to work more than eight hours a day,
better have the cops beat the ship, like kyo yah man.
I before I did music full time, like I taught
high school for a todd ninth graders, you know, and uh,
I just knew instinctually, you know, I was a young teacher.
You know. I'm like before I thought neither, I thought seniors.

(35:02):
And I'm like, I'm four years older than you. So
I'm not gonna like I'm not gonna send you to
the office, Like that's stupid. Like I'm not gonna try
to act like some sort of boss here. I just
figured it was real simple. I performed better for teachers.
I liked, yeah, it's just that simple. So I'm just like, yeah,
so I just felt like this, you know, my best

(35:23):
the best way to have classroom management is if these
kids like you. Yeah, it's the It's the thing that
I said that made so much sense when I was
in Rojava in Northeast Syria, which is the idea that
like kind of the basic the stuff that we would
consider like the core of law enforcement is like patrolling
around a neighborhood making sure ship's fine. Like that's often
done by like local counsels heavily made up of like

(35:45):
old folks like fucking grandma and stuff, because like, yeah,
you don't want to you don't want to be acting
like a fucking piece of ship in front of your grandma,
Like grandma, you know what I'm saying, Yeah, yeah, straighten up,
fly right, Grandma, come around the corner. You know. So yeah,
that's that's the prince. So I just I've never understood
how the boss and I mean I got I got

(36:06):
like an assistant and you know, management and stuff like that.
Those people on my payroll, and I just never like,
why would they work? Why would I who want to
work for somebody they don't like? Yeah, you know what
I'm saying, Like, so if you just if you run
things like I just it just seems so logical to
me that you it's like two for bag security purpose.

(36:30):
Even if I'm just go that like, I'm just trying
to secure this bag. I feel like my employees should
feel like I like them. Yeah. Maybe that's why I'm
not a kajillionaire, because yeah, there's something I don't get
caring about what people think. Yeah, man, I'll never account
being accountable to feeling like I don't have to be

(36:51):
the smartest guy in the room all the time. That's
why I hired an accountant, because you better needing this
shout out to my accountant to thank you, Sean. So right,
yeah again, So riot police kind of get started to
break up these fucking um these these what what are
essentially strikes are definitely strikes um. And you know, this
was a really good deal for the owners of businesses

(37:13):
because since the police departments were now funded by the state,
they got to break up strikes against their businesses without
spending you know, their own money to do it, and,
as Dr Potter notes, the use of delegated vigil anties
to break up strikes confused the issue of workers rights
with the issue of crime. So people might be sympathetic
towards workers who are striking for a better deal, but

(37:35):
they're not sympathetic towards criminals who are rioting. So you
frame a strike as a riot, then you have a
freer hand and just beat the ship out of everybody involved.
These they're just thugs. They had drugs on them. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
definitely got it. So early police broke up strikes in
the same way we're familiar with riot cops breaking at

(37:57):
protests today unspeakable violence. But they all had subtler methods
of achieving the same end. Public order arrests, which were
essentially police declaring someone's behavior a crime for a non
specific reason and then arresting them. These gave police a
way to break up union meanings and gatherings before they
could turn into strikes. In Chicago during this period, eight
percent of all arrests were public order arrests of workers.

(38:21):
Yeah yeah, so the infraction is y'all standing around, Yeah, yeah, exactly,
that's that's the that's the okay, Yeah you're loitering. Yeah,
you just know you're going to jail. Yeah, allowed to
stand here? Yeah. Again. You can make some comparisons to
all the states that put in curfews and then suddenly

(38:42):
said now it's illegal to be out after five, So
if you're out after five, we can funk you up.
Did you see it once? I forget. I think there
was a few of them out here in California. One
of the one of the cities was like, things you
can do after the curfew, go to the store, go
to the groceries, pick up your children, being stuck in traffic.
Things you can't do after after curfew, gather in large

(39:04):
groups in front of city hall. Yeah. I was just like, oh, work, okay.
So yeah, really like, oh we're okay, too much free
speech going on here. You gotta stop that ship. Yeah,
carry cardboard signs you can't do after got it? Yeah yeah, yeah,
great first amendment we have. So between eighteen seventy and

(39:24):
nineteen hundred, nearly a million workers were jailed for public
order offenses and just Chicago. Now, a lot of cities
also made use of what we're called tramp acts. These
criminalized traveling without having a visible means of support. So
if you were moving around in the city or the
world and you didn't weren't you didn't have money, clearly
like you didn't clearly have a job, Um, you were

(39:47):
committing a crime. So in other words, it was illegal
in a lot of cities to be an unemployed, poor
person who left their home. So when workers would go
on strike and would lose their jobs for going on strike,
they were then breaking the law because they were out
side in the city and doing something besides looking for
a new job. What the I know, right, Land of

(40:07):
the Free, Like maybe serious? How good? Lord? Pretty good?
Pretty good? Yeah? And again like the arrests are of
these people. So if you're talking about, like the police
protecting people, who are they protecting? Who are they serving?
It's not most of the people anyway. Yeah. Yeah. Tramp

(40:30):
acts were of course not applied to members of the
middle class or wealthy individuals. It was only illegal to
be out and not laboring if you are a member
of the dangerous classes. Meanwhile, good citizens, respectable citizens, these
were all regular terms used, which again we're all kind
of terms for fully white citizens with money and property. Yeah,
these people were increasingly able, rather than being increasingly suppressed

(40:52):
by the police. Those folks were increasingly able to call
on the police when they felt uncomfortable or afraid. The
very first alarm boxes were set up in major cities
during this period of time, and these were similar to
the dedicate you know in like on a college campus
there will be like very well lit like police phones
that like, you know, presumably if you're getting sexually assaulted
or something, you'd like run over to it and call
the cops. Um. This this was the same basic idea, um,

(41:15):
and they were set up started being set it up
in cities in this area, particularly in like parts of
cities where they were like businesses and you know, upper
upper income housing and stuff. Um. And but they were locked,
so you couldn't most people couldn't actually use the alarm boxes,
but local businessmen and wealthy people were all given keys
because the police existed to be their on call personal security.

(41:39):
She oh my gosh, like just all allowed in the open. Yeah. Yeah,
there's not a lot of not a lot of i
don't know, masks on it and stuff, so it doesn't
even seem convenient. I'm like, if I'm not if I'm rich,
and I'm being robbed. You think I got time to
like figure out which key to this is. Yeah, And

(41:59):
I don't think that was mostly them being robbed. I
think they would see like, oh, there's a bunch of
fucking Italians hanging out in this corner. I'd better get
the cops over here to kick their asses, Like I don't.
I don't want Italians on my street corner, like they're
caring ing, you know. Yeah, yeah, yeah, they're all there's
more than one of them, must be a gang. So yeah.
Thanks to the advances of technology that allowed alarm boxes

(42:20):
to exist, property owners were able to call on the
police department, which was funded by everyone's taxes, in order
to protect their private wealth and increasingly just to kind
of protect their sense of comfort. So policing tools developed
with the need to break up strikes and riots. Patrol
wagons began taking to the streets. This allowed police to
easily travel in large groups and easily arrest large groups

(42:41):
of people. Police on horseback also started to appear, because
horses were seen as the most effective way to break
up a group of protesters. Officers began carrying long night
sticks because breaking an activist skulls was an increasing part
of their job. Yeah. Throughout the later half of the
eighteen hundreds, early police departments were faced with the of
whether or not officers should be uniformed and given firearms.

(43:04):
Sir Peel, the father of police work, the guy who
created the London Metropolitan Police, was pretty stringently against cops
packing heat. American police, though, began carrying guns independently by
virtue of arming themselves years before such equipment became standard.
So decades really before police departments are giving everyone a gun.
Cops are just kind of buying their own guns because
it is America. Yeah, and you know what, you're right,

(43:28):
it's effective if it's just like it's like drinking again,
it's like drinking bleach y. Yeah, i mean it'll cure.
I mean I'm pretty sure it'll. You will. Yeah, you
won't die from coronavirus. You if you drink enough bleach.
If you drink enough bleach. Just like, you know what,
if you really want to send everybody home, you know what,
you're right, beat the ship at him with billy clubs

(43:51):
and guns. You're right, that will end the protest. So
the US police departments first started a kind of like
in an organized way issuing arms to police and like
the eighteen forties, um, and when this started to happen,
the American public was extremely skeptical of the idea because again,
we are a freedom loving people, and the idea that
police would be allowed to deploy deadly force at will

(44:12):
against citizens was extremely unpopular. At first, people are like,
what the funk are you talking about? You? Like, again,
these people, we all understand, these people are basically the
same as thugs. And you want to you want to pay,
have the state pay for them to have guns. Now, Like,
that's not a great idea. Yeah, yeah, But, as Dr
Gary Potter writes, quote, the value of armed paramilitary presence

(44:33):
authorized to use indeed deadly force served the interests of
local economic elites, who had wanted organized police departments in
the first place. The presence of a paramilitary force occupying
the streets was regarded as essential because such organizations intervened
between the property and elites and property less masses, who
were regarded as politically dangerous as a class. Now, these

(44:55):
propertied classes also considered it essential that police be uniformed
so that actable citizens could identify them when they needed help,
and so that they would create an obvious, visible presence
to clamp down on unrest by the dangerous classes. Now again,
uniforms would appear kind of scatter shot in different police departments,
and not for never for all of the police, but
for like some units and stuff would be uniformed for

(45:17):
a period of time. Many officers resisted uniforms because again
they're basically criminals, and it made them into a target.
The very first like uniformly uniformed, like everybody wears a uniform,
and that's that's part of the definition of what this
this group is. The very first police force for that
to be standard in was the Pennsylvania State Police. This

(45:37):
is in the United States at least, so the Pennsylvania
State Police the first explicitly fully uniformed police force we
have in this country. Now. The Pennsylvania State Police were
formed in nineteen o three in the wake of the
Great Anthracite Coal Strike of nineteen o two. For reference,
the strikers were fighting for a pay increase, a reduction

(45:58):
from ten to eight hours a day in their work day,
and a fairer system for weighing coal. This strike caused
the price of coal to skyrocket right as winter hit,
which put enormous pressure on the state government and on
the federal government to put Pennsylvania's minds back to work,
because Pennsylvania's like the fucking the coal basket. Um. Yeah,
So the Great Anthracite Coal Strikers were opposed by a

(46:18):
mix of Pinkerton's who were essentially a mercenary police force.
We'll talk more about him a bit later, and the
Coal and Iron Police. Now, the Coal and Iron Police
was a five thousand man army run by the coal
companies in Pennsylvania but empowered and funded by the State
of Pennsylvania to basically do whatever they had to do
to break strikes. This generally involved terrific violence, and over

(46:38):
the course of the Great Anthracite Coal Strike, the Coal
and Iron Police gunned several people down. But the strikers
were able to put pressure on mine owners for a
hundred and sixty three straight days, and they eventually gained,
you know, modest concessions, and they didn't get a raise
in an eight hour work day, but they got a
ten percent raise in a nine hour work day, so
you know, take what you can. Yeah, this was okay.

(47:00):
Now I was gonna ask the question, but I answered
it myself. I mixed it with like I thought maybe
that was like the railway company guy that like started
a city and had a Yeah, that's something else. Okay,
never mind that is happening during this period, you know
you're having and that the coal and iron police are
kind of the same thing, like they're these communities are
all miners and using state partially ely state funds, the

(47:21):
mine companies establish a police department to keep their minds
in order and really to keep their workers from striking.
So the Pennsylvania State Police was established after the Great
Anthracite Coal Strike or Anthracite Strike or whatever, because the
state was governed by mine owners and their friends and
the state wanted a dedicated paramilitary unit to violently suppress
future strikes. The coal and iron police weren't good enough

(47:43):
at their jobs, so this is where we get the
first uniformed police department in US history. Is specifically, like,
we didn't kill enough people last time. We needed like
a force that can really funk with people who go
on strike. So in our last episode, we discussed the
fact that police departments in the American South of all
out of slave patrols, which were essentially a counter insurgency force.

(48:03):
That similar evolution at least occurred elsewhere in the United States,
even outside of the South. In eighteen ninety eight, the
United States went to war with Spain, one of the
least justified wars in our long history of unjustified wars.
But because Spain was at the time also a terrible
colonialist empire, the US wound up fighting them for control
of the Philippines. Now Spain had controlled that massive islands

(48:25):
quite brutally, and the US continued this tradition, murdering as
many as two thousand civilians battling the insurgency that followed
our occupation of the Philippines. Much of this murdering was
done by the Philippine Constabulary, the occupation force our government
put in place over those islands. And back in the
United States, the Pennsylvania State Police were formed directly an

(48:45):
imitation of the Philippine Constabulary. So, yeah, the the and
this is still the state police in Pennsylvania today. They
started out as people looking at Okay, you remember when
we killed we committed that quasi genocide in the Philippines.
What if we take all of that advice use it
to make the Pennsylvania State police and have them sunk
up anyone who goes on strike. That's where the Pennsylvania

(49:05):
State Police come from. What the okay god, Like, oh yeah,
so Pennsylvania residence. The next time you see a Pennsylvania
State Police car, be like, hey, man, granddad's an asshole anyway. Yeah. Yeah.

(49:28):
So the Pennsylvania State Police were formed as an all white,
all native meaning you know, born in the United States force.
So that's what you mean by native. Yeah, exactly, white
people born in the US, as opposed to white people
who immigrated here, right, Like that's what they mean. Yeah, okay, buddy. Yeah.
So the singular purpose of the Pennsylvania State Police was

(49:49):
to break the strikes that increasingly popped up in Pennsylvania's
coal fields near the turn of the century. Mine workers
tended to be a mix of Irish, German, and Eastern
European immigrants. A lot of checks were in this kind
of like mining population. Also lot of Russians and kind
of people we don't call Russians today, but we're Russians
back then because Russian was bigger um and it was
only logical to the rich white mine owners and their
friends in government that the same tactics that worked on

(50:11):
undesirable races in Southeast Asia would also work on undesirable
races right here in the United States. It was seen
as critically important then to stop the Pennsylvania State Police
from developing any kind of rapport from the people they controlled.
The state police lived in special barracks is outside of
the mining towns, and this was done to avoid any
kind of social intermingling. The only time these people should

(50:33):
see the folks that were policing is when they were
cracking their fucking skulls the road horses to allow them
to more effectively trample strikers. In nineteen o six, five
thousand Windburg, Pennsylvania miners went on strike against their employer,
the Berwin White Coal Mining Company. Berwin White was anti union,
and the largely Slovak miners of Windbur wanted to join
the United Mine Workers of America. The Pennsylvania Police responded

(50:54):
by writing into town, murdering three adult miners and one
young boy, by firing while lee into crowds, and brutally
trampling anyone who fell down, and letters home to their families.
The immigrant miners referred to the Pennsylvania State Police as Cossacks.
Do you know what the Cossacks were? I mean, they're
still around, Like, where have I heard that word? It's

(51:15):
um it's an ethnic group in Russia. But it was
during the period of the Czar. These were like basically
kind of like these tribes of horse mounted warriors who
the Tsar used as his shock troopers. Primarily like they
fought in wars, but like their biggest job was fucking
up riots and protests and comedics and genocide occasionally. Yeah.
So these people who are like used to the Czar

(51:36):
sending in his Cossacks when there's unrest to murder people.
They come to the US and they see the Pennsylvania
police murdering them and they're like, oh, these are like
the same fucking things as the Czar's shock troopers. Yeah. Yeah.
The risk you know, coming across the whole ocean before
airplanes just to get this what do we even doing?

(51:56):
Like it was different here? Yeah yeah, I'm like, yo,
this saying like the five will American you know American
tale story I thought was I thought there was no
cats in America? You know what I'm saying. This supposed
to be when we get here. Yeah, yeah, yeah, y'all
came by choice. So that's the part where I'm just like,
why didn't y'all look at each other and be like,
you know what, guys, this was a bad call. Beer's

(52:19):
worse too, beers. So on a related note, while doing
my research, I came across a January article in the
Pittsburgh Post Gazette about the Pennsylvania State Police. In case
you're curious about how the Pennsylvania State Police is doing
to day, this article points out that in two thousand two,
following a New Jersey scandal over state troopers engaging in

(52:39):
racial profiling, the Pennsylvania State Police began collecting racial data
on their traffic stops and sending it to the University
of Cincinnati for analysis and to its credit. To their credit,
the data revealed that the Pennsylvania State Police were not
exhibiting any racial bias and who they pulled over, so
that's nice. However, the data did show that they were
exhibiting hell of bias when it came to who they searched.

(53:00):
Troopers were two to three times as likely to search
black or Hispanic drivers as white drivers, even though black
and Hispanic drivers were vastly less likely to have contraband
on their persons than white drivers. Now and again, this
is pretty true across the nation, but it was specifically
true for the Pennsylvania State Police. They're like three times
it's likely to search you if you're black or Hispanic,
but white people are the ones actually bringing all the

(53:22):
drugs in. So when this data was made public, the
Pennsylvania State Police ended their relationship with the University of
Cincinnati because the University of Cincinnati show that they were
being racist as hell. Uh. And the Pennsylvania State Police
is now the largest of only eleven statewide law enforcement
agencies in the nation who do not collect racial data
during stops. Wow, so that's good, good on you. Okay,

(53:45):
there it is Pennsylvania State Police. Yeah, if I can,
if I can draw some logical like ties with this one,
Like you know, why black and brown people are less
likely to have contraband on them is because we more
likely to be searched. That's just as reels. It's real simple,
you know, like you know, so we're not gonna have
it on us. Also, and and I a little a

(54:09):
little tangent on this, but like your and it's so
crazy that like it's it's all out of this fear
of these you know, this dangerous class. But like the
truth is, we're probably not gonna rob that Chad or

(54:29):
Tyler or Hunter or Karen because the police will come
if we rob you. So the truth is you're actually
more safe than the rest of us because because if
if one of us die, if one of us get robbed,
please don't care, you understand I'm saying. But but I

(54:50):
know the police come in if if Karen has issues.
So it's such a like this like this this bias
that like is just a reality of our life, you know.
In some ways, again, I get how it's worked. If

(55:14):
we're talking sheer pragmatism in favor for this white ruling class,
which is why we called it privilege. If you can't
follow along, you know what I'm saying, Like, it's but
it's just it's but it's privileged, but not how you
think it's. Like, it's it's different. It's not it's not
the way you set it up for. Yeah, yeah, it's

(55:36):
this thing. It's like there was that video going around
of I don't know a week or so ago and
maybe a wee get into the protests when like those
I think it was in l A. This like big
group of like white people all like recited a thing
renouncing their white privilege, and I'm like, it doesn't work
like that. You can't just it's guys. Thanks, Like yeah,
I'm sure you feel good. But like now, if you
were to get rid of the l A p D,

(55:57):
then you actually have reduced your white privilege. That's that's
a step then you have. Yeah, I'm like you could
just like use it for good, you know, Like there's
that I'm saying. Yeah, it's so funny. It's like we're
like man, some some some somebody somebody's and it sucks
to say it because I'm like I am deeply and

(56:19):
intimately involved with and love white progressive circles. I am involved.
These are my friends in my family, you know what
I'm saying. Um, But it's so funny to watch them
like simultaneously do the most and nothing at all at
the same time, you know what I'm saying, Like, that's
such a such a grand statement to be like I'm

(56:41):
denouncing my privilege, but that literally does nothing for me.
So like it's like it's it's I can't It's like
I don't know, I don't know what to tell you
guys like I just just you know, treatus fairly and
help was to fund the police, that's all. Like, you know,

(57:04):
you ain't gotta what fun you were wearing a kintake
cloth for, Like, just make some good laws, makes some
good laws. Just makes some good laws or remove bad
ones either helps, just just one of the things. Yeah,
thank you, I appreciate it. I see you're we're here,
we're listening. I see it. Can you just like make
some laws though, you know, unfuncked the funks a little bit? Yeah, anyway, Yeah,

(57:28):
that feels like a good note to take a break on.
I'm just saying, speaking of unfucking the funcknus. You know
what what fuck the funcknus? More is these product We're
back and we're talking about talking about for good. And

(57:48):
one way you can use your privilege to good for
good is I don't know, if you're listening and you
happen to have purple heart plates and you have a
bunch of friends who have to drive substances somewhere, maybe
you ought to be the one driving the substances because
the police aren't going to give a shit about you.
That's what I'm saying that's what I'm saying, Yeah, veterans
for drug smuggling, is that, yes, yes, record that, like,

(58:14):
I'm not trying to go hard. I'm not trying to
go hard at my wife progressives like I appreciate something
to cast. It's just I just want to say that, Okay,
this is fun day. So yeah, It's worth considering within
the broader context of the development of US law enforcement
that the cops did not always site enthusiastically when cap
with capital when it came to struggles over labor. We

(58:34):
previously did a two part episode on the Battle of
Blair Mountain, which was a massive coal strike that ended
it in an enormous, pitched battle that included aerial bombardment,
machine guns, and thousands of combatants on both sides. One
of the great Union heroes of that whole mess was
Sheriff Sid Hatfield, who gunned down several mercenaries from the
Baldwin Felts Detective Agencies. Many strikes did take place in
small communities out in the middle of nowhere, and law

(58:55):
enforcement in those places was much more kind of rooted
in public spirit, these old attitudes of what law enforcement
should be than kind of the new attitudes about law enforcement,
and in those cases, you know, cops who were sort
of like elected or brought up within the community and
felt like a part of it, and the community was
all union law enforcement would regularly side with the strikers
in those situations, or it would at least feel too

(59:16):
frightened of their neighbors to enthusiastically back the mind companies.
And this was enough of a problem. This wasn't everywhere,
but it was enough of a problem that, starting in
the eighteen seventies, capitalists also began using private police as
strike breakers with increasing frequency, and no private police agency
did a better jop of this than the Pinkerton's. You
know about the Pinkerton's. We're talking some Pinkerton's. Now, I

(59:37):
do know about the Pinkers. Yeah, we're talking about some
motherfucking Pinkerton's. She's. Yeah, we're gonna have to do a
whole two partner probably in the Pinkerton's at some point.
But but you can't talk about the history of US
law enforcement talking about some motherfucking Pinkerton's. Yes, yeah, the
cock sucking Pinkerton's to pull pull from fucking deadwood. Yum,
So here it goes Alan Pinkerton was born in Glasgow, Scotland,

(59:58):
in eighteen nineteen. His father was a policeman of the
for profit freelance variety, and he was killed on the job.
So Alan grew up dirt poor, laboring from an early
age to help keep his family fed. He became an
activist in his youth, agitating for democratic reform in Great Britain,
and he was violenced by the state for speaking out
against it. By eighteen forty two, he had been forced
to flee the country with his wife. The pair wound

(01:00:20):
up living in Dundee, Illinois, and Alan set up a
barrel making business. In eighteen forty seven, twenty year old
Allan Pinkerton traveled out to an uninhabited island to look
for wood that he could make into more barrels, because
that was his thing. He found a campsite there, and
the camp site was abandoned but clearly fresh. And because
he was a born and bred cop, this guy was
like kind of in his fucking bones a cop, Alan

(01:00:42):
decided not to mind his own damn business. He returned
to that night and hid nearby until the camp's occupants,
a group of counterfeiters, returned. Alan instantly went to the
sheriff and reported them and the gang was arrested. So
not my kind of dude, but like fundamentally a cop,
like emotionally a cop. So ounterfeitting was a massive problem
for business owners in the early United States, and the

(01:01:03):
local merchants made Pinkerton into a hero for busting this group.
He started getting offers to investigate other crimes, and very
quickly Allan Pinkerton had become the go to man for
busting counterfeit coin operations in Illinois. He was soon deputized
by the sheriff of Kane County, Illinois, and in eighteen
forty nine he became the city of Chicago's first full
time detective. By eighteen fifty, Allen founded Pinkerton's Detective Agency.

(01:01:26):
In less than twenty years, it had expanded to include
branches in New York and Philadelphia. Allen quickly expanded outside
of just detective work. He created Pinkerton's Protective Police Patrol,
a group of uniformed night watchmen that local businesses could
hire to protect their shops. Pinkerton Men, some of whom
were women, also acted as undercover cops, often feeding information

(01:01:47):
on criminal syndicates directly to regular police. The Pinkerton's grew
to become a legendary force in the Old West, helping
to hunt down criminals like Jesse James. And there is
some moral complexity years. This isn't an easy story because
while Alan Pinkerton was absolutely just a total fucking cop,
he was also a really staunch and consistent abolitionist. Part
of what drew him to hunt down Jesse James was

(01:02:08):
the fact that James had been an enthusiastic Confederate soldier. Pinkerton, meanwhile,
had worked for the Underground Railroad and had helped to
guard Abraham Lincoln. But even when Pinkerton targets were clearly
bad people like James, their methods were often still unaccountably brutal.
The Pinkerton Agency actually rated Jesse James's house. It was
basically like a no knock raid that they carried out,

(01:02:28):
and they fucked up and attacked during a time when
James was not present, and instead, during the raid they
blew off his mother's arm and murdered his eight and
a half year old younger brother. Um like, yeah, this, this this,
this is a fucking no knock right. Yeah, So again,
even when they picked the right bad guys. They wound
up murdering an eight year old. She's not great, not great.

(01:02:50):
So later in life, Alan Pinkerton hit upon the brilliant
idea of writing semi fictionalized accounts of the most famous
detective cases in Pinkerton history, and these books became some
of the very first true crime stories in the history
of literature. But while the agency was famous for tales
of sleuthing and daring do while confronting bandits and bank robbers,
the bulk of the Pinkerton Agency's business came from protecting

(01:03:12):
capital by fighting labor. The first Pinkerton strike breakers were
hired in eighteen sixty six when miners in Illinois went
on strike and the mining company needed protection for their scabs,
which are the people like the company brings in to
work the mines when the workers refuse. Now, over the years,
the Pinkerton's developed a standard set of procedures, with armed
men escorting scabs into factories and mines while Pinkerton guards

(01:03:33):
and towers aimed machine guns at strikers to keep them away.
Alan Pinkerton died in eighteen eighty four, and his son
took over the agency and doubled down on strike breaking.
By eighteen nine two, the Pinkerton's had helped to break
seventy seven strikes. Now, after eighteen ninety two, though the
agency really stopped doing as much over at strike breaking.
They shifted more into industrial espionage and infiltrating labor movements

(01:03:56):
rather than confronting them with guns. And the reason for
this was because of a vicious battle that took place
in the town of Homestead, Pennsylvania. Here we go, Yeah,
the Homestead strike. So Homestead was a steel town built
around and for a huge steel plant owned by the
Carnegie Steel Company. You know, you've all we all here
know the Carnegie Foundation. We hear about him in like

(01:04:18):
PBS and ship. Yeah, this is where that money comes from.
So in eighteen ninety the price of rolled steel products
has started to fall, and the manager of the Homestead plant,
a dude named Henry Frick, decided to cut wages. Neither
his wages nor his boss are Andrew Carnegie's wages were
to be cut, of course, and in fact have maintained
their wages. They had to take the company losses out

(01:04:38):
of their workers pockets, and they decided the best way
to do that was to destroy the Amalgamated Association of
Iron and Steel Workers, which was at the time the
nation's largest craft union. Now here's where it gets interesting,
because Andrew Carnegie was, you know, one of the good
ones if we're talking about millionaires, Like, that's how a
lot of people would have viewed him at the time. Um,
he was vocally pro labor, Like he made public statements

(01:05:00):
in favor of labor and saying that unions had a
reason to exist. And this was in keeping with his
reputation as a philanthropist, you know, a millionaire you could trust.
But of course, the instant his profits were threatened, Carnegie
had no time for the union anymore and resisted, uh
like efforts. Yeah exactly. So like he's he's like, yeah,
unions are fine when the money is good, but when
his money has threatened, union's gotta go. That's Andrew Carnegie. Yeah,

(01:05:24):
it sounds about right, sounds about right. So in the
in the spring of eight two, Carnegie instructed Frick to
push company workers to make as much steel as possible
before the union contract expired that June, because the union
contract expired and then they were gonna have to negotiate
a new one, and the union didn't want to make
less money, but Carnegie wanted to pay them less. So

(01:05:44):
if the union had failed to accept the new terms
that Carnegie and Frick offered, Andrew was just going to
have the plant managers shut the factory down until the
laborers were lented. He wrote to Frick, we approve of
every anything you do. We are with you to the end.
Now Carnegie wasn't physically with Frick. How of course, he
was off at one of his many palaces. This one
was in Scotland, just kind of chilling um. So Frick

(01:06:04):
was left to figure out how to confront labor on
his own. And I'm going to quote now from a
write up on the strike and PBS is American Experience Series.
With Carnegie's carte blanche support, Frick moved to slash wages.
Plant workers were responded by hanging freaking effigy. The union
fought not just for better wages, but also for a
say in America's new industrial order. Though Carnegie and Frick
had brought unions to heal at their other mills, Homestead

(01:06:27):
remained untamed. Workers believed that because they had worked in
the mill, they had mixed their labor with the property
of the mill, explains historian Paul Krauss. They believed that
in some way the property had become theirs, not that
it wasn't Andrew Carnegie's, not that they were the sole
proprietors of the mill, but that they had an entitlement
to the mill. And I think in a fundamental way,
the conflict at Homestead in two was about these two

(01:06:48):
conflicting ideas of property. Now, on June, Freak announced that
he would no longer negotiate with the union. Now he
would only deal with the workers individually. Leaders had amalgamated.
We're willing to consider eat on almost every level except
the dissolution of their union. On June nine, despite the
union's willingness to negotiate, Frick closed down his Open Heart
and Armor Plate mills, locking out thirty men. So there's

(01:07:12):
a lot that's interesting here. One of them is that
like a lot of these guys, you know, these these
guys aren't super educated, they haven't read you know, their
marks or whatever, but they kind of recognized this idea
of like, oh, you know, not that like worker. They
weren't like workers should own the means of production, but
they were like workers should co own the means of production. Yeahatly,
that's kind of the idea. These guys kind of come

(01:07:32):
to of their own accord. Now, the union men desperately
tried to contact Andrew Carnegie once a Frick closed the plant,
because again they thought he was a good guy, like
he'd said that unions were okay. They thought that he
just didn't understand what was really happening because he was
so distant, and if they if they could let him
know how bad things for the were for them and
how bad Frick was treating them, then he would back them.

(01:07:53):
But of course Andrew Carnegie didn't give a shit about
these people. He was on vacation and he had no
time for them. He did, however, have time for Frick.
He advised Frick that now was their time to destroy
the union, believing that his workers would surely give it
up if it meant keeping their jobs, even it reduced salary.
His workers disagreed. Only seven hundred and fifty homestead men
had belonged to the union before all this happened, but

(01:08:13):
three thousand of the plants thirty eight hundred workers agreed
to strike once Frick closed the doors. Now to combat them.
Frick built a fortress to keep them out, including a
twelve ft high, three mile long fence topped with barbed wire.
Deputy sheriffs were sworn in to man the fence with rifles.
But those sheriffs and their families lived in Homestead, and
when three thousand of their neighbors marched on Fort Frick,

(01:08:35):
as it was known, all these deputy sheriffs were like,
I'm not I'm not gonna kill all these people I
live with. Like, that's that seems like a bad call.
So they laid down their arms and left. Now workers
then occupied the plant and effectively took over the entire
town of Homestead. For the very first time in American history,
laborers had quite literally seized the means of production. Now

(01:08:57):
Andrew Carnegie was not a fan of this. They didn't
take it lie down. Well, he actually probably was lying
down in Scotland, but he hired a bunch of armed
Pinkerton's to not take it lying down for Yeah, So
the Pinkerton's, three hundred and some out of them got
on a bunch a couple of barges and attempted an
aquatic landing at Homestead, essentially a sort of capitalist normandy,

(01:09:17):
or more accurately, Gliboli. The heavily armed Pinkerton's expected this
to be like any of the other dozens of strikes
they broken. You know, they might have to gun down
a few people, but these dirt poor factory serves surely
would not be able to compete with their modern Winchester rifles.
Three D mercenaries with modern guns were sure to be
enough to break Homestead's resistance. And again, Carnegie and Frick
had underestimated the men of Homestead, as one leader recalled,

(01:09:40):
to be confronted with a gang of loafers and cutthroats
from all over the country coming here there as they
thought to take their jobs. Why they naturally wanted to
go down and defend their homes and their property with
their lives, with force if necessary. Course. Yeah, and defend
their lives the men of Homestead did. When the Pinkerton's landed,
they were warned not to step off their barge. When
they ignored that warning, people started fucking shooting at them,

(01:10:01):
and a huge gun battle began. And yeah, yeah, yeah,
where's that movie? I know there might be a movie
about it. They probably there should be. More so, the
Pinkerton's used their steel barges as floating bunkers, firing out
at a crowd of homestead citizenry. The homesteaders had shipped
for guns, mostly a handful of hunting rifles and old muskets,
but they had a lot of those, and they also

(01:10:22):
had a twenty pound cannon that they got from somewhere.
They had dynamite, which they tossed like grenades. A local
hardware merchant donated all of the ammunition in his store
to the crowd, and for twelve hours the gun battle
raged on. By six am the next day, more than
five thousand spectators from Pittsburgh had shown up to watch
from the river banks. At eight am, Yes, like a

(01:10:43):
live movie. Yeah, we're gonna go see the war. There's
a war going on next all. Yeah, I guess I'll
take a look. Yeah. By eight am, the Pinkerton's had
tried to land again. Workers fired their cannon and attempted
to scuttle the barges by ramming them with both a
burning raft and a burning railroad car. None of this
quite worked. Yeah, they were. They were really giving it

(01:11:03):
a shot. They committed just like look, look you hold Yeah,
we can't shoot through these barges. But we can throw
giant flaming things at the barges and that'll probably funk
them up a bit. Now, none of this sunk the barges,
but the sheer rate of fire from the crowd was

(01:11:25):
terrifying to the Pinkerton's, who cowered inside. One recalled the
noise that they made on the shore was awful, and
it made us shake in our boots. We were pinned
in like rats, and we went at the fighting like
desperate wild men. All of the men were under the
beds and bunks, crying and trembling. Another Pinkertons were called.
It was a place of torment when men were lying
around wounded and bleeding and piteously begging someone to give

(01:11:46):
them a drink of water, but no one dared to
get a drop, although water was all around us. It
was a wonder we did not all go crazy or
commit suicide. The Pinkerton's tried to surrender four times, and
each white flag they rose up was shot down by
a sniper on the like, we're not done shooting it,
you guys yet, Friendship. Yeah. Eventually, though the crowd did

(01:12:08):
except the Pinkerton's surrender, The mercenary cops were led onto
the shore, beaten and clubbed and pelted with stones as
they were taken to the local jail and eventually sent
out of town by train. Three to eight Pinkerton's were killed,
along with a similar number of strikers, and dozens and
dozens of people were wounded. It was a victory for
the laboring folks of Homestead, but sadly, not one that lasted.
Frick next asked the governor to send in the militia,

(01:12:31):
and since the state government basically existed to serve the
desires of wealthy mine owners and the like, the government
said yes. The strikers knew better than to try to
do battle with the militia who had machine guns, and
so they surrendered. Yeah. Yeah, Homestead was put under martial law.
Carnegie was able to move in his scab workers, and
of course this is where things get morally complex again
because the scab workers Carnegie picks were a lot of

(01:12:53):
them were black, UM and in fact, these were like
the very first black steel workers in the state UM.
And this led to a horrible race riot, as two
thousand white union men assaulted fifty black families and a
number of people were badly injured in the resulting gun battle.
And this is a regular story throughout the labor movement,
is like, our workers are on strike, black people, we
can bring them in, we can pay them less um

(01:13:15):
and like it'll, it'll. Like they don't like there's not
a solidarity between these poor black and these poor white people.
Um for obvious reasons, because poor white people real shitty
to poor black people. But like it provided an opportunity
for people at Carnegie. Yeah, yeah, who desperately needed work.
And yeah, yep, yep, not great. It's complicated, complicated history here.

(01:13:37):
So by November of eighteen nine two, the Amalgamated Union
was finished. Strike leaders were charged with murder and a
hundred and sixty union men were charged with lesser crimes. Now,
local juries did refuse to convict them, because again the
juries were made up of the people who had taken
part in this uprising. But this was the end of
unionization in Homestead for a while. Once victory was well
and truly achieved, Carnegie cabled Frick Life worth Living again,

(01:13:59):
first happy morning since July. To celebrate, he immediately cut wages,
expanded the work day of twelve hours, and fired five people,
good stuff, good stuff. But after Homestead, the Pinkerton's were
never quite the same, and it would be fair to
say that the whole experience made the agency a lot
less willing to go engage in physical aggression. But the

(01:14:20):
agency still exists to this day and still works as
a private police force for the rich and powerful. In
two thousand and eighteen, when workers for Frontier Communications went
on strike in West Virginia and Normal Virginia, the company
hired the Pinkerton Agency, now part of Securitas, a massive
Swedish corporation. Pinkerton basically acts as a rentable FBI for
mega corporations dealing with labor disputes. I'm gonna quote now

(01:14:42):
from a write up in The New Republic. Okay, wait
before you quote this, Yeah, yeah, yeah, did you say
West Virginia regular Virginia? I sure did that? Is I
say this as a statement of act. I attribute no value,

(01:15:02):
good or bad to this statement. But West Virginia is
a time warp. I'm like, West Virginia is currently a
hundred years ago. Yeah, it's not regular Virginia. Yes, that's
so when you said that, and it's something that you know,
I'm in a group text with a bunch of different

(01:15:23):
touring artists, like we're all just homies, but we all
talked about like yo, I feel like West Virginia is
back to the future, Like it's the Internet hasn't been
invented in West Virginia, Like we don't what why is
this state forty years ago? Yeah? Yeah, it's a trip
to me anyway, So West Virginia and regular Virginia. Just

(01:15:44):
I I almost feel vindicated that I'm not I'm not
the only person me and my eight friends and the
only people that feel like, yeah, I understand what's happening
in West Virginia right now. Like I feel like everyone
who has driven from regular Virginia to West Virginia immediately
had the realist Asian like, oh, I'm not in regular
Virginia any this is in Virginia anymore. I don't even
know why it's both called. Yeah, should change on name

(01:16:07):
because this is this is not the same North Carolina
South Carolina. A few differences Carolinas, but you're Carolinas Virginia,
West Virginia. That's a different planet. I mean, I'll say
there's a big South Dakota North Dakota split. But also
why the two there's like nine people in both spaces.
Come Poppy Seeds is nine people poppy seeds in Dakotas. Yes,

(01:16:31):
all right, we've anyway, I just read the quote. I
just had to acknowledge regular Virginia. That's how I feel.
That's how I feel. Yeah. So in the modern day,
the Pinkerton Agency, basically and it's just called Pinkerton, now
acts as a rentable FBI for megacorporations fucking over their workers.
And I'm gonna quote now from a write up in

(01:16:52):
the New Republic. Pinkerton is hardly the only firm to
advertise such services, but its history sets it apart, and
the company embraces its legacy. With one to Pinkerton, you
gain access to our global networker resources, providing boots on
the ground when and where you need them. It promises
a securitis aid for the firm, lists labor demonstrations as
among the risks it can monitor. Trouble can happen anytime anywhere.

(01:17:15):
A narrator in tones tones tone is just was so
treating like a physical response to that, Like God, Yeah,
the Pinkerton promise is attractive to some Silicon Valley firms.
The Guardian reported on March sixteenth that Facebook and Google
have both retained Pinkerton to monitor staff for leaks. Among
other services, Pinkerton offers to send investigators to coffee shops

(01:17:37):
or restaurants near a company's campus to eavesdrop on employee conversations.
Olivia Salon reported, Pinkerton's still out there, still fucking with labor. Yeah,
just just rich boy hall monitors. Yeah. What if they relaxed, bro? Yeah,
you know how you know how little accountability the FBI
has currently? What if it just had none? Okay, guys,

(01:18:01):
stay with me here, FBI that we could pay to
do whatever we want. Yeah. Yeah, Like you know how
that FBI agent who was doing a backflip at a
club and accidentally shot that guy when his gun fell out,
You know, he got in trouble. What if there was
even less accountability than that. I almost I almost forgot

(01:18:22):
that happened. Yeah, that happened. Yes, good lord. Wow. So
prop we're at the end of another episode, another chapter
in police history. UM, I haven't as of yet finished
writing the third episode, but we're going to talk some
about the KKK, We're gonna talk some about lynchings. We're
gonna talk some about how the police departments stopped lynchings

(01:18:45):
by just deciding to torture black people instead. It's not
gonna be It's not pretty good. Yeah, talking about l
APD recruiting Southern people from post gym. Yeah, we're gonna
have to talk about that something. Yeah, we have a
lot more to talk about, but yeah, for now, what
we should talk about is your plug doubles. Yes, uh

(01:19:07):
prop hip hop dot com. Uh, that's all the poetry
in the in the music and the art and the
uh the coffee paraphernalia and the podcasts um hood politics
and the red couch pod couches me and my wife
hood politics exactly what it sounds like. I'm basically taking

(01:19:28):
all that you know about politics and just explaining them
in street terms, um as to a lot of ways.
I just I really just want people to like realize
your politicians aren't smarter than you. You just you You
think you're you think you don't belong at the table.
But what I'm trying to tell you is what this

(01:19:48):
whole episode in series has proven. They just people and
they just gang banging. They're just gang bang it. So
if you understand, if you accept that your politicians are
gang bang years in all, this is just gang life.
You can understand politics. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah yeah that's
the thing. I like that Nobody Speak video that like

(01:20:09):
it did real well. It's like, you know, this is
like all these people, these are just different gangs, and
we decide this gang gets all the respect. This's just
basically it. You know, when when okay, so when we
all know, I mean, I like, really, name a Republican
politician that actually likes Donald Trump. Like y'all don't like him,

(01:20:30):
but I get it. He's from your hood. So since
he's from your hood, you keep your mouth shut in public.
That's just that's why nobody's that's why he told the
lines like from my hood. I can't. I mean, he's
from my hood. I get it. Yeah, don't you don't
you sell a shirt that says, uh, yes, you have
a shirt that politics is just gang banging or something

(01:20:51):
like that. Yeah, politics is gangbanging in nice suits. Yeah
that's the T shirt. And I actually I'm gonna help
your plug. I ordered a worst Year Ever T shirt.
It's not here yet store they'll get it. Look at
that synergy. I like the one he has a shirt
that store, that says a Republican democrat, I'll wake. I

(01:21:13):
was like, okay, I need that. I need that immediately.
I do want to while we're talking about gangs and
what they are in reality, I wanted to, have you
ever heard of Smedley Butler? Prop I want to talk
about Smedley Butler for just a second. Before he put
down put Smedley Butler was a major general. He's one
of the highest decorated soldiers in US history. Home did

(01:21:34):
one two Medals of honor Um for gallantry under fire,
and became a hardcore anti capitalist in in his his
later days. I want to quote from like two different
speeches of his. I spent thirty three years and four
months in active military service as a member of this
country's most agile military force, the Marine Corps. I served
in all commissioned ranks from second lieutenant to major general,

(01:21:55):
and during that period I spent most of my time
being a high class muscle man for big business, for
Wall Street and for the bankers. In short, I was
a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. She's yeah, She's yeah,
Smedley Butler. Smiley Butler, you said you said that, you
said the quiet thing out loud. Yeah, and it's and
it's like and it's the obvious man. Yeah day, all right,

(01:22:20):
all right, dude, we got some Smedley in here. We'll
get back to cops on part three. Have a great one, everybody,
Thank you again, prop and thank you. See you all
next week with more of the Police. Not the Band,
Not the Band Behind the Police is a production of
i Heeart Radio. For more podcasts for my heart Radio,

(01:22:40):
visit the i Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you get your podcasts.

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Crime Junkie

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}How The First Police Went From Gangsters, To An Army For The Rich