Δαφνη Ευτυχια Αρθουρος

From Why Won't Democratic Mayors Crack Down on the Cops?" by Daniel Moattar, Mother Jones, 2020-10-05:

Look, this is the heart of the cop thing. John Jay liked to say that those who own the country ought to govern it; for most of history, they did. In early states, "a plunderer could become in effect the chief of police as soon as he regularized his 'take,'" the historian Frederic Lane writes. That didn't go out of style with chain mail. On the American frontier, Montana Territory sheriff Henry Plummer moonlighted as chief of the Innocents, a crew of killer highwaymen. Plummer began his career as a plain criminal, switching to vigilantism after police let him kill an escaped prisoner-and eventually took it professional. His successors just keep popping up.

England's typical early sheriff, in the words of one history, was "a regional dictator with true executive authority," whose office-a key forebear of modern police-was professionalized during the "consolidation of the gentry's grip on local government." From 700 to 1700, says Lane, "the most weighty single factor in most periods of growth, if any one factor has been most important, has been a reduction in the proportion of resources devoted to war and police."

So we made a devil's bargain: To get the rich to quit financing bandits, militias, and private armies-maybe even abide by some laws-early states had to subsidize property defense, big-time. Modern policing was born. The veneer of equal protection ain't deep.