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Dating back to the 1600s, the U.S., then a British colony, used a watchmen system, where citizens of towns and cities would patrol their communities to prevent burglaries, arson and maintain order. As the slave population increased in the U.S., slave patrols were formed in South Carolina and expanded to other Southern states, according to Sally Hadden, a history professor at Western Michigan University who researches slave patrols.

Slave patrols were tasked with hunting down runaways and suppressing rebellions amid fear of enslaved people rising up against their white owners, who were often outnumbered. The patrol was a volunteer force consisting of white men who surveyed and attacked black people and anyone who tried to help them escape. 

“Everything that you can think of that a police officer can do today, they did it,” Hadden says. “The biggest thing is that they were race-focused as opposed to the police today, who should be race-neutral in their enforcement of law.” 

Slave patrols were not designed to protect public safety in the broadest sense but rather to protect white wealth, says Seth Soughton, a law professor at the University of South Carolina School of Law and a former police officer in Tallahassee, Florida, whose research has focused on excessive police force.

After the abolition of slavery in 1865 with the passing of the 13th Amendment toward the end of the Civil War, slave patrols were done away with and modern police departments become more common. 

African Americans, however, were still heavily policed by law enforcement officials, especially in areas that passed black codes, or laws that restricted property ownership, employment and other behaviors.

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