AHC/WI : U.S. abolishes small-town police departments and create a Gendarmerie

Neirdak

Banned
From : CBC/Radio-Canada: Don't take much cash to U.S., or police will rob you

Ideally, I think the U.S. should abolish small-town police departments in favor of letting the National Guard perform Gendarmerie duties.* It would relieve small towns of the burden of having to directly pay for law enforcement and would be an excellent way to stop small-town police corruption in its tracks. However, I'm sure that the small towns would start bitching and moaning about "big government" if something like that ever happened.
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*As an aside, someone should try making Gendarmerie-style uniforms for the National Guard. Comeon, you know you want to. :p:D

I find this idea interesting.

Your mission should you decide to accept it, is to abolish the small-town police departments in favor of an United States Gendarmerie/Marshalcy/Constabulary, created from the National Guard or any other organizations. You will get bonus points, if you have differences between Military Police Corps, Gendarmerie, Armed Police and an Unarmed Police. You can also provide uniforms, if you wish.
 
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This might be doable on a state level- the problem is wars- what do you do when the National Guard gets called up?
 
Maybe have the US Marshall's as a RCMP analogue for territories in order to cut down on the Wildness of the Wild West?
 

Driftless

Donor
This might be doable on a state level- the problem is wars- what do you do when the National Guard gets called up?

The militias and later National Guard were called up for all of the foreign wars, and locally for the indian wars. In the 20th Century, the National Guard is often called up locally on very short notice to help in case of natural disaster (floods, hurricanes, wildfires, etc) - or rarely for large scale law enforcement. I don't know if that was true with the militias in the 19th century.

The idea of using a military force as the basis of a regular police force would have been a very difficult thing to get accepted in the 19th century. It was pretty ingrained from colonial days that the British Army was first there to keep the colonists in hand, and then secondarily to protect them from enemies. Post Civil War, the US Army in the South was probably viewed the same way.
 
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National Guard as fulltime police? Not a chance. Guard members aren't trained in law enforcement, and it eliminates the idea of the NG as being a parttime military organization. There might also be posse comitatus issues. Nor does it eliminate the possibility of corruption, since a high percentage of police officers are also members of Guard or Reserve units -- presuming, of course, that all police officers are corrupt, which they are not.

All of this, of course, begs the question of passing such a measure in Congress and then getting state legislatures to go along with it. Would not happen. The pushback would be enormous, from both town and county governments and the general populace.

BTW, is there a link to the CBC piece mentioned in the OP? Aside from a few rotten apples, I wasn't aware that U.S. small-town police forces had a reputation as extortionists, and I've lived in small U.S. towns all my life.

ETA: Never mind. Found it.
 
National Guard as fulltime police? Not a chance. Guard members aren't trained in law enforcement, and it eliminates the idea of the NG as being a parttime military organization. There might also be posse comitatus issues. Nor does it eliminate the possibility of corruption, since a high percentage of police officers are also members of Guard or Reserve units -- presuming, of course, that all police officers are corrupt, which they are not.

All of this, of course, begs the question of passing such a measure in Congress and then getting state legislatures to go along with it. Would not happen. The pushback would be enormous, from both town and county governments and the general populace.

BTW, is there a link to the CBC piece mentioned in the OP? Aside from a few rotten apples, I wasn't aware that U.S. small-town police forces had a reputation as extortionists, and I've lived in small U.S. towns all my life.

ETA: Never mind. Found it.

Yeah, I lived in at least 3 small towns that I can remember, NONE of which were corrupt. Most of the corrupt police forces are big city ones like Detroit and Philadelphia.
 
Yeah, I lived in at least 3 small towns that I can remember, NONE of which were corrupt. Most of the corrupt police forces are big city ones like Detroit and Philadelphia.

generally, yeah, but Butte MT had a horrendously corrupt police dept clear up to the 70's, when the Feds finally came in and cracked down hard. It went clear up to the chief of police, and included such things as brothels that were overlooked, rampant abuse of inmates, and a prison that dated back to the 19th century. I saw the old prison when I was on a tour in Butte, and my first thought was that it wouldn't look out of place as the dungeon for a medieval castle...
 

Driftless

Donor
For real corruption, use the old rule-of-thumb: follow the money.

To be fair, it's the absence of accountability; the lack of checks and balances that allows corruption to fester at any level.

In the old West (remember the OP was talking pre-1900) the US Marshall's mainly provided some semblance of law&order in territories, or across state lines in the vast expanse of the frontier west. There just were not enough of them to cover the immense amount of ground. What was needed was more of the fictional incorruptible Matt Dillon's or Sergeant Preston's, but the reality was that it was such a tough and thankless job that you got Wild Bill Hickock, an effective(?), if morally ambiguous law enforcer.

*edit* to have made this work better in the 1800's of frontier US (or western Canada), you would also need to beef up a court system to match. More Circuit Courts, including competent Public Defenders. That might enhance a sense of trust in the fairness of the system. It didn't happen OTL for several reasons....
 
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The most egregious form I've seen is civil asset forfeiture. Seriously, why do we allow that to happen!?

As for federalizing police, you would have to radically change the way the US views local vs. national government law enforcement. Though it would be trivial to expand the role of the FBI, Federal Marshals, or a similar organization, and may be possible to put all of a given state's policy forces under a unified state command (i.e. everyone is a state patrolman).

As for the wisdom of federalizing law enforcement, please direct all questions to your nearest Veteran's Affairs office.
 

TFSmith121

Banned
Historically, the US Marshals (appointed) served as

Historically, the US Marshals (appointed) and their deputies served as law enforcement initially during the unorganized territory to organized territory to statehood progression of many (not all) of the states created in the Nineteenth Century, both in their federal role (as the law enforcement arm of the federal courts) and in a civil role.

That changed rapidly, however, even in organized territories (New Mexico, Arizona, Washington, Colorado, etc. before statehood) because the territorial governments created their own court and law enforcement structures, from territorial courts down to county courts and (in many cases) elected sheriffs and town marshals, etc.

In some areas, where there was an existing civil government structure (Texas, California) that could be adapted, even the territorial phase was (essentially) skipped over, and the area gained statehood almost immediately, with county sheriffs and district courts largely following the existing pattern.

There have been "Federal" law enforcement agencies in the US from Day One (Customs, for example) but "national" law enforcement, as is to be expected in a federalist system, is been largely limited to a coordinating-type role, and dealing with federal crimes.

That will not change; the US is wedded to local control of law enforcement, at the municipal, county/parish, and state levels. It is worth remembering that the US has (at least) 51 BASIC legal codes, both civil and criminal ... and that doesn't count the District of Columbia, the overseas dependencies of various types, etc.

Best,
 
The most egregious form I've seen is civil asset forfeiture. Seriously, why do we allow that to happen!?

As for federalizing police, you would have to radically change the way the US views local vs. national government law enforcement. Though it would be trivial to expand the role of the FBI, Federal Marshals, or a similar organization, and may be possible to put all of a given state's policy forces under a unified state command (i.e. everyone is a state patrolman).

As for the wisdom of federalizing law enforcement, please direct all questions to your nearest Veteran's Affairs office.

I wouldn't have nearly the problem with it if the assets were "frozen" and neither the government nor the defendant would have use of it until conviction. If the person were convicted of an actual crime then the money would go to the government. If not the government would have to "unfreeze" the money and give you Prime Rate +3% as interest.
 
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