A short primer on policing.
From Much Ado About Nothing to Arsenic & Old Lace to Lobby Hero, civilian police are a staple in theatre. But our common notion of a standing civilian police force is a relatively new concept, and the weapons available to them have evolved even as their duties and position in society have shifted.
It is interesting to reflect that the vast majority of peoples throughout history have conducted the business of regulating an ordered society without establishing a police force of any kind. An accused miscreant would be hauled before a representative officer of the ruling power, and acting in the name of that prince or king, guilt or innocence would be established, and punishment swiftly delivered. The only little drawback to this time-honored system is that the punishment could be arbitrary and cruel, guilt was often assigned without the benefit of evidence, and the people who did the arresting were more likely to administer their own brand of immediate justice, bothersome proof of innocence notwithstanding.
Even in tightly regulated bureaucratic powerhouses such as ancient Rome, an elaborate judicial system might exist without use of a police force per se. A civilian watch was organized that could alert the authorities to a crime. Should an arrest be required, soldiers were used on an ad hoc basis. An order would be given, an arrest made, the prisoner taken to a magistrate, afterwhich the soldier returned to his normal duties.
[A case has been made that ancient Egypt’s marketplace guards were the first established police force, but this might be a case of extrapolating a wider theory than the evidence allows. The Nubian slaves that were posted throughout the market place could more accurately be compared to modern security guards. They could assist vendors in maintaining order and preventing thievery, but did not have true police powers.]
With the fall of Rome and the resulting segmentation of authority in medieval Europe, policing became an almost exclusively village-regulated system. As long as the village memory could identify each member to the ruling lord, laws could be established and order maintained. Punishment was limited, however, as confinement was too costly for most communities to afford. Although compelling restitution and inflicting torture or death are the first things that come to mind, there was also one punishment which to the medieval mind was even more terrifying. That of being declared “outlaw”.
Laws were certainly not uniform throughout a kingdom, and even the few “citizen’s rights” that did exist were only useful so long as there also existed someone with the power to enforce those rights. Straying a mere few miles from a nobleman’s castle or populated township and one was far from anyone’s protection or expectation of recourse to justice. To be declared outlaw would mean that even within the geographic limits of the lord’s power one was stripped of any right or protection. Anyone could take from you, strike you, even kill you, and there would be no crime, for you were now “outside of the law”. To be an outlaw meant that your life and livelihood were forfeit if you remained in the town, so to the un-populated woods you would go. Most perished, but some became even more dangerous, preying on those who traveled between villages. Any stranger entering a town without a letter from his own shire reeve was assumed to be an outlaw.
The reeve was a representative of the king and had two principal duties for which he received occasional payment. First and foremost, he had to collect the taxes due from every household, and second, in time of war had to muster the shire inhabitants for military duty if needed. With these two duties and in the name of the king, the shire reeve could also be called upon to arrest and imprison, but not punish. The term shire reeve over time became shortened to sheriff, and was perhaps the first non-military police officer.
Larger towns could hardly keep an institutional memory of all of its inhabitants, but did at least begin to develop a rudimentary policing system within the confines of the town limits. We get a little flavor of such a system in the opening act of Romeo & Juliet, where a general level of disorder rises to inflame the population enough so that they call for “bills – partisans”. They are calling for the only police they know about, in other words, that fellow citizens should grab the pole weapons used for civil defense and separate and subdue these threats to social peace. Those pole weapons were often warehoused in populated areas as weapons to be used against foreign invasion. Their easy availability for civilian peacekeeping was a secondary benefit. There were no specific individuals assigned to take up such a task – the responsibility was assumed to be that of every hearty male in good standing once the alarum was sounded.
More ordered was the night watch, assembled on a rotating basis among the citizenry to patrol the streets for a full night. The watch was expected to detain suspected criminals, and for that purpose was given a polearm for the night. This was the perfect implement for an untrained guard, for it is very threatening and also keeps the holder at a safe distance from anyone wielding a knife or sword. As the watch received no pay for their service, and were more interested in maintaining a quiet vigil rather than meting out punishment, they tended to do a reasonably good job in keeping order and not succumbing to the bloodthirsty excesses of the daylight mobs.
Smaller villages usually did not require a watch of any kind, as crimes were rare and the miscreants well known. But without any facilities for imprisonment, punishment tended to be harsher than in the townships and was a financial burden to all. A good example are the early Massachusetts colonies, in which even the shackles to hold a prisoner, without a lock and merely riveted closed, had to be manufactured to order by the local blacksmith. Even if the accused during the Salem witch hunts had somehow been found innocent of all charges, they would not have been released until their families had paid for the cost of building and removing the shackles, as well as the cost of feeding the prisoner during his incarceration, and even the fee for the visiting judge to hold the trial.
The last segment of “proto-police” civilian control was not civilian at all but a standing military force used in a peace keeping function. From the 16th to the 19th centuries, it was common for European countries to keep small contingents of specialized warriors employed in extra-bellum service. To the extent that they could afford it, nations found it prudent to keep the nucleus of the harder to train units intact, thus simultaneously keeping them battle ready, providing a useful function as guards and patrol, and keeping them from being hired by potential enemies. We have many examples in theatre of such soldiers. The Cardinal’s Guards as well as the title characters in The Three Musketeers are obvious examples, but don’t forget the Hussars that shoot Bill Sykes in Oliver! and even Inspector Javert in Les Miserables, a man with exclusively police functions but paid by the military, not civilian, authorities. [We still use the French term gendarme to designate police forces that have grown from a military force.]
As military control gradually shifted to civilian oversight throughout Europe, police duties were officially reserved to newly created purely constabulary forces. In England, the first professional constables were known as “Peelers” or “Bobbies”, from the name of the founder, Sir Robert Peel. Their uniform was designed to make them obviously distinct from the military – no helmets and no firearms. Instead, each constable was supplied with a pair of handcuffs, a wooden rattle (later replaced by a whistle in 1888) and a nightstick. The uniform itself was a variation of common civilian formal dress, and included a top hat and longcoat, although the tail of the coat did have a long pocket in which to carry the nightstick.
Last to join this trend was the United States, and when American cities developed police departments they armed them as did their European counterparts – with two foot nightsticks. Only after confronting large scale riots at the turn of the century did municipal officers begin to carry firearms, almost always the Colt New Service 32 caliber revolver, later replaced by the Smith & Wesson 38 revolver (long barrel for patrolmen, snub-nose for plainclothes). Most images we have of the beat cop strolling through a city street comes from this tradition, and is certainly the kind most often found in American theatre.
The increased demands of city policing came at the same time as the development of steel handcuffs. Their use allowed officers to quickly restrain prisoners for the difficult walk back to the local precinct. Unlike older iron manacles, steel handcuffs were easily portable and one size could fit almost any sized wrist. One set could even be used to restrain two prisoners by cuffing each of their right hands together, preventing them from easily using a weapon or even running away in the same direction.
During the mid 1960’s, largely in response to the increase in firepower used by drug runners, most police departments added the pump-action shotgun to the patrol car, followed by the replacement of the revolver to the semi-automatic pistol – usually the Colt 45 caliber during the 1980’s. That gun is now being replaced by the Glock semi-auto 9mm – matching the shift made by US armed forces, but as all three guns have their own peculiarities and drawbacks, it is not unusual to see uniformed members of the same large city police force wearing different guns. At the same time, the beat cop all but disappears as most officers find themselves in patrol cars rather than scuffing shoe leather.
All patrol officers wear their sidearm rather high on their strong side, as opposed to the lower “high thigh” placement of the Western gunslinger. Having the gun at the higher hip level keeps the weapon from banging about when the officer is foot pursuit. Crossdraw (having the holster on the opposite of the body so that the gun hand must reach over to get the gun) is not allowed for any uniformed officer. The crossdraw takes longer to bring the weapon out than the strongside draw, and leads to inaccurate aiming as the gun swings around to find the target.
Plainclothes officers are usually allowed great discretion on what kind of gun they carry and where to wear them. Most will choose a small than standard gun frame and a holster without the full rigging of the Sam Browne belt. Shoulder holsters are always crossdraw, of course, but are very discreet when worn under a suit coat. Small holsters worn at waist level on regular pants’ belts can be worn on either hip or even on the small of the back, and some undercover police wearing them at the ankle. Concealment is not the only consideration: air marshals and vehicle drivers will often wear their guns on the crossdraw left hip side, thereby avoiding the difficulties of entanglement with the seat belt and the but of the gun pressing against the seat when worn strongside.
The latest additions to the police armory are in the use of protective gear and the introduction of so-called non-lethal devices such as the taser and pepper spray, and no police department uses the old style truncheon. Instead, the side-bar nightstick, allowing a wide range of offensive and defensive actions and take-down restraint moves, is now standard issue throughout the US.
The first decade of the 21st century sees a proliferation in the use of AK-47 type submachine guns throughout urban and suburban high crime areas. After adjusting for inflation, they have become as easy to purchase as were the semi-auto pistols during the 1970’s. City police departments are quickly adding M-16 and M-4 type semiautomatic assault rifles in direct response to this domestic arms race.
It is important for American productions of British plays to remember that even to this day the average British police officer or detective does not wear a sidearm. Although all Bobbies are given firearm training during their initial instruction, only specially licensed members are allowed to carry a firearm. Even then, since it is not part of the uniform, they are issued a gun but not a holster. It has been so since 1829.