Though history books may say otherwise, policing in the United States has its roots in the slave patrols in the South. The institution of policing, and the larger justice system, must reconcile its past in order to evolve away from its racist roots.
The article is not super thorough, its headline is not nuanced (big surprise), and it’s two and half years old, but there is a definite point there. Policing has a twin heritage in the US. On the one hand, you have the urban police departments founded on the model of departments in London and elsewhere in Britain. This of course traces back through town watches and detached Roman Legionaries and all the other developments we like to imagine as armchair historians.
On the other, you have policing in the more agrarian south that of course has the deeper roots in militias and posses that any rural community will throw together on an ad hoc basis, but began to become a persistent, organized law enforcement entity so as to specifically enforce runaway slave laws and black codes, and expanded their mandate from there.
Both systems evolved beyond their origins, both merged somewhat in their roles in America, and both have a dark legacy of classism and racism, like most institutions in the US. The point is that enforcing laws that immorally target black people are foundational to the American understanding of law enforcement’s role, and that history informs different communities’ relationships with LEOs, and vice versa. I tend to think that understanding can help us work to overcome some of the issues, and rethink what police can and should be to a community, but it absolutely must be addressed head-on, honestly, and particularly with the side that has a monopoly on state-sponsored violence being open to drastic change. Even then, I might still be a little too far on the Captain America optimistic side.