A History of Private Policing in the United States 9781472533364, 9781474204941, 9781472534835

Table of contents :
Cover
Contents
List of Figures
Preface
1 Authority in America: Private Policing and the Diffusion of State Power
The context of private policing
The American state and private policing
Political ideology and private policing
2 Self-defense and the “Armed Citizen”
Development of an American definition of self-defense
“No duty to retreat” and the right to bear arms
Stand your ground
More guns
Armed paramilitary self-defense and protection groups
3 Varieties of Vigilantism
Legitimation of vigilantism
Classic vigilantism
“Whitecappers” or night riders
The first Ku Klux Klan
Lynch mobs
The second Ku Klux Klan
Vigilance and vigilantism during the First World War
The third Klux Klan
4 Security Guards and Patrols
Early private security in the United States
New York’s Central Park police
The ASPCA
Anti-horse Thief Associations
Slave patrols
Guards and patrols today
Private patrols
Citizen patrols
Private guards and patrols in Britain and France
Paramilitary patrols
Public police, private clients
Legal issues of moonlighting
Retail store policing
Shopping mall policing
Guarding the gates
Controlling the streets: Business improvement districts
Bodyguards and bouncers
Trains and planes: Railroad and airport police
Problems and criticisms of private security
5 Private Detectives
Origins of private detectives
Two famous detectives’ careers
Rank and file detectives
Relations with the police and other public officials
Urban anti-vice reformers and private detectives
Public and private red hunters
Private detectives today
Bounty hunters
Private national security
6 Policing Labor
Industrial espionage
Guards for strikebreakers
The public–private connection
“Industrial munitions”: Private arming of the police
The Pennsylvania Coal and Iron Police
Company police
Return of the guards
Goons, sluggers, strikebreakers for rent
7 Prisoners for Profit
Prison industries
Convict lease
Corrections corporations
8 What Should Be the Relation between the State and Private Policing?
Notes
Selected Bibliography
Index

Citation preview

A History of Private Policing in the United States

History of Crime, Deviance and Punishment Series Editor: Anne-Marie Kilday, Professor of Criminal History, Oxford Brookes University, UK Editorial Board: Neil Davie, University of Lyon II, France Johannes Dillinger, University of Mainz, Germany Wilbur R. Miller, State University of New York, USA Marianna Muravyeva, University of Helsinki, Finland David Nash, Oxford Brookes University, UK Judith Rowbotham, Nottingham Trent University, UK Academic interest in the history of crime and punishment has never been greater and the History of Crime, Deviance and Punishment series provides a home for the wealth of new research being produced. Individual volumes within the series cover topics related to the history of crime and punishment, from the later medieval to modern period and in both Europe and North America, and seek to demonstrate the importance of this subject in furthering understanding of the way in which various societies and cultures operate. When taken together, the works in the series will show the evolution of the nature of illegality and attitudes towards its perpetration over time and will offer their readers a rounded and coherent history of crime and punishment through the centuries. The series’ broad chronological and geographical coverage encourages comparative historical analysis of crime history between countries and cultures. Published: Policing the Factory, Barry Godfrey Crime and Poverty in 19th-Century England, Adrian Ager Print Culture, Crime and Justice in Eighteenth-Century London, Richard Ward Rehabilitation and Probation in England and Wales, 1900–1950, Raymond Gard The Policing of Belfast 1870–1914, Mark Radford Crime, Regulation and Control during the Blitz, Peter Adey, David J. Cox and Barry Godfrey Forthcoming: The Italian Prison in the Age of Positivism, 1861–1914, Mary Gibson Deviance, Disorder and Music in Modern Britain and America, Cliff Williamson Fair and Unfair Trials in the British Isles, 1800–1940, eds. David Nash and Anne-Marie Kilday

A History of Private Policing in the United States Wilbur R. Miller

BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC Bloomsbury Publishing Plc 50 Bedford Square, London, WC1B 3DP, UK 1385 Broadway, New York, NY 10018, USA BLOOMSBURY, BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC and the Diana logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published in Great Britain 2019 Copyright © Wilbur R. Miller, 2019 Wilbur R. Miller has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Author of this work. Cover image: Detective Robert Allan Pinkerton arrests famous forger Sheridan. Illustration from Pinkerton’s “Criminal Reminiscences” (© ullstein bild via Getty Images). All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. Bloomsbury Publishing Plc does not have any control over, or responsibility for, any thirdparty websites referred to or in this book. All internet addresses given in this book were correct at the time of going to press. The author and publisher regret any inconvenience caused if addresses have changed or sites have ceased to exist, but can accept no responsibility for any such changes. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. ISBN: HB: ePDF: eBook:

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To Carole Who knows all the reasons why

Contents List of Figures Preface 1

x xi



Authority in America: Private Policing and the Diffusion of State Power The context of private policing The American state and private policing Political ideology and private policing

2

Self-defense and the “Armed Citizen” Development of an American definition of self-defense “No duty to retreat” and the right to bear arms Stand your ground More guns Armed paramilitary self-defense and protection groups

11

3

Varieties of Vigilantism Legitimation of vigilantism Classic vigilantism “Whitecappers” or night riders The first Ku Klux Klan Lynch mobs The second Ku Klux Klan Vigilance and vigilantism during the First World War The third Klux Klan

31

4

Security Guards and Patrols Early private security in the United States New York’s Central Park police The ASPCA Anti-horse Thief Associations Slave patrols

51

1 2 2 7

11 14 18 22 25

31 32 34 35 37 38 41 48

51 53 54 54 55

Contents

viii



Guards and patrols today Private patrols Citizen patrols Private guards and patrols in Britain and France Paramilitary patrols Public police, private clients Legal issues of moonlighting Retail store policing Shopping mall policing Guarding the gates Controlling the streets: Business improvement districts Bodyguards and bouncers Trains and planes: Railroad and airport police Problems and criticisms of private security

56

5

Private Detectives Origins of private detectives Two famous detectives’ careers Rank and file detectives Relations with the police and other public officials Urban anti-vice reformers and private detectives Public and private red hunters Private detectives today Bounty hunters Private national security

83

6

Policing Labor Industrial espionage Guards for strikebreakers The public–private connection “Industrial munitions”: Private arming of the police The Pennsylvania Coal and Iron Police Company police Return of the guards Goons, sluggers, strikebreakers for rent

131

7

Prisoners for Profit Prison industries

161

57 61 64 66 67 69 70 71 72 73 74 76 79

84 88 93 96 102 111 116 124 128

133 142 146 149 151 151 154 155

161

Contents

ix



Convict lease Corrections corporations

8

What Should Be the Relation between the State and Private Policing? 175

Notes Selected Bibliography Index

165 167

180 214 220

List of Figures 1 2

3

4

5

6

Self-defense. Savage Arms Co. advertisement, National Geographic 10 Magazine 25, no. 6 (June 1914) “The lynching of J.L. Compton and Joseph Wilson, April 30, 1870. Helena, Montana. The Hangman’s Tree.” Postcard. Printed 1920–30. Wikimedia Commons, Public Domain 30 Security Guard at Chevy Chase Ice Palace, 1942. Edwin Rosskam photo, Farm Security Administration, War Information office. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, LC-USF34-012857-D (b&w film neg.) 50 A Pinkerton Arrest. Allan Pinkerton, Thirty Years a Detective: A Thorough and Comprehensive Expose of Criminal Practices of All Grades and Classes (New York: G.W. Carleton and Co., 1884), p. 378 82 Strikebreakers Escorted by Pinkertons, Hocking Valley Ohio, 1884. Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper, October 25, 1884, p. 152. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, LC-USZ62-118122 (b&w film copy neg.) 130 “Stripes But No Stars,” Convicts leased to work on railroad, Asheville, N.C., 1892. Note guards in background, one with shotgun. Wikimedia Commons, Public Domain 160

Preface A History of Private Policing in the United States is an overview or synthesis of the history of several forms of private policing, not only security corporations and investigators but also self-defense, vigilantism, and private prisons. Drawing from a wide range of published literature from academic research to newspaper and website accounts, old and new, it seeks to describe private policing and place it in the context of the structure and ideology of the American state. Historians have thoroughly covered some areas (self-defense, vigilantism, private detectives, private prisons), and sociologists, criminologists, political scientists, and lawyers have discussed modern aspects of security services of all types and the relation of private to public policing. However, with a notable exception,1 historians have not brought together the literature in a general overview of the development of private policing in the United States. This book should give readers knowledge of how important private policing has been in American history and a starting point for those wishing to pursue more detailed studies of specific aspects of private policing. As always there are people to thank: first, Beatriz Lopez, Senior Editorial Assistant at Bloomsbury, for her patience with a sometimes inefficient author. Manikandan Kuppan of Integra-PDY was also patient in coordinating proofreading and other aspects of production. Thanks, collectively to the many people who have commented on and questioned my ideas at paper presentations and to people with whom I have conversed about private policing. Both groups have stimulated my thinking and reminded me of types of private policing I have overlooked. Finally, thanks to the anonymous reader for Bloomsbury, whose constructive comments have improved the book.

1

Authority in America: Private Policing and the Diffusion of State Power

Private policing in some form is as old as people with property worth protecting or injuries needing redress. It is certainly older than modern public policing, which began in 1829 with London’s Metropolitan Police.1 In its broadest definition, private policing is control by one group over another, often independently of the state, sometimes against it, but also actively or tacitly allied with it in carrying out the same coercive control. Under this broad definition, one type of private policing is individuals defending themselves or groups organizing to protect neighborhoods or drive away people they deem undesirable. The first type includes self-defense, vigilantism, and neighborhood patrols. These are forms of policing, reacting to crime or deviance, but not police. The second type is more obvious: profit-making companies carrying out police functions of order maintenance, detection and prevention of crime. They include private detectives, ranging from individuals in dingy offices to global corporations, from routine investigators of insurance fraud to highly specialized analysts of information related to national security. In greater numbers than detectives, private companies provide armed and unarmed security guards, who protect property in shopping centers, gated communities, concert and sporting events, theaters, factories and warehouses, and docks. Bouncers in bars and clubs and body guards for individuals who think they are important enough to require personal protection are also types of private security. Bail for people pending trial is dependent on a private industry of bondsmen, who hire bounty hunters to track down people who forfeit their bail money by fleeing. Private prisons, while still a minority of American prisons, are influential in shaping public policy to favor mass incarceration.

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A History of Private Policing in the United States

The context of private policing Private policing is not unique to the United States, either in the past or in the present. Nevertheless, there are aspects of the American state and ideology especially favorable to it. The structure of the state, with power diffused through different levels—central and local, public and private—is a major factor. The development of representative democracy before consolidation of an administrative state influenced the way public policing developed, creating an opening for private police. Political appointment or control led to corruption, which led many reformers to turn to private policing for areas, such as vice, the police were unwilling or unable to control. Most people tolerated arbitrary exercise of police power as long as it was directed against minority groups or marginal individuals, an attitude not greatly different from vigilantism. The dominant American political ideology of individualism influenced a common preference for private action over governmental action—many people see private policing as less threatening to their freedom than public policing and as cheaper and more efficient. Finally, there were specific historical developments such as the late creation of detective forces in American police departments, which gave an opportunity for private detectives, and the fierce class conflict of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries encouraged many employers to rely on private control of labor union organizing and strikes. More recently, the privatization of public services movement of the 1980s and later encouraged entrepreneurial private security and private prison firms to seek government contracts. Many elements, from the nature and structure of the state to more specific or practical aspects, made the United States a favorable national context for private policing.

The American state and private policing Compared to centralized, bureaucratized European states, many people have seen the American central state as weak. A closer look, though, reveals a state with power diffused through many public jurisdictions but also shared with private organizations. One factor commonly seen as weakening the American state is the division of the nation into multiple jurisdictions and the absence of authority in frontier regions. Scholars who analyze the nature of the American state usually focus on the national government, but a great deal of government, including policing, occurs within individual states and localities. The US

Private Policing and Diffusion of State Power

3

Constitution creates a federation, dividing sovereignty among the national government and state governments. Within states, there are counties, urban areas, and other jurisdictions. Although there have been a growing number of federal crimes over the years, state governments define basic crimes like robbery, burglary, and murder and are free to assign punishments for them. Local governments, counties or cities, are responsible for policing. A national police force, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), was not created until 1908 and is primarily a detective force. There is no equivalent to a European gendarmerie, although individual states maintain state police forces for rural areas and highways. States also are responsible for regulating private policing within their boundaries. Legislatures define such powers as citizen arrest, selfdefense, and the circumstances under which private police may exercise powers of arrest and use deadly force. States set licensing and training requirements for guards and detectives. There are no national requirements for private police to meet. Generally, then authority in America over crime and policing is divided among many jurisdictions, which vary considerably, outside of essential crimes like murder and burglary, in defining what is criminal and how public and private police are regulated. Because police forces cannot exercise their authority outside their own jurisdiction, they were limited especially in the nineteenth century when criminals operated throughout a state or even the nation, taking advantage of railroads to evade arrest. Railroads were the first to turn to private policing to protect their own property, but they also enabled private detectives to follow people they were seeking because their power was not limited by any jurisdiction. Private police sometimes had to adjust to requirements and regulations imposed by states and localities; but if they worked for national businesses like railroads or security service corporations, they were not confined by jurisdictional boundaries. Occasionally in the past, they did not hesitate to extradite a person from one state to another by kidnapping. This national scope enabled large detective agencies like the Pinkertons to serve virtually as a national police force, conducting criminal investigations over a wide area. The significance of private detectives suggests another aspect of diffused state power, public–private partnerships. The Federal Government and states have long officially delegated or tacitly ceded authority to private institutions either as contractors or as public–private partnerships like the old Bank of the United States, the construction of the transcontinental railway, or more recently the postal service and Amtrak. The state is not necessarily “weak” but is diffuse and exercises authority at many levels.2

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A History of Private Policing in the United States

Diffusion can demonstrate the ability of the state to penetrate to the local level, not only with its own resources but by enlisting private resources for its purposes. This enlistment combines the public motive of, say, building a transcontinental railroad, with the private motive of profit for the builders (mostly through land donated to the railroads by the government).3 Similarly, private police institutions can be enlisted to fulfill public as well as private purposes as contributors to order maintenance. Such partnerships assume the purposes are not contradictory. As already indicated, public officials often consulted with or hired private investigators instead of the police. In addition, police officials joined or formed private agencies, and private detectives became public officials, as did William Burns when he became head of the FBI. Government alliance with private detective and strikebreaker agencies, overt or tacit, achieved the purpose of controlling labor demands, shared by most government officials at all levels and the employers. Government support of anti-vice and patriotic crusades strengthened the state’s coercive abilities through private means. As William Novack observes, “Rather than monopolize power, property, and policy in the hands of a central public sovereign, the American state less visibly distributed public goods and powers widely through the private sector—enforcing its public capabilities, expanding its jurisdiction, and enhancing its legitimacy in the process.”4 It is only fairly recently that scholars have come to understand the American state as not necessarily weak because it operates through many levels of government and in conjunction with private organizations. Authority in the United States, they suggest, is not only a mix of national and local action but also private activity. As an alternative view of the American state, some historians have argued that it was limited because it developed after political democracy was achieved. In contrast, European nations had established an administrative bureaucracy and central state long before democracy asserted itself in the nineteenth century. In addition, European states effectively disarmed ordinary citizens well before democracy established citizens’ rights. In the United States, individual states achieved universal white male suffrage in the 1820s and 1830s, a time when there was hardly any centralized bureaucratic administrative apparatus and before establishment of modern police forces.5 The democratic insistence on political and social equality, even if only rhetoric, actually influenced American state institutions as they developed. Distrust of a standing army kept the military voluntary until the Civil War. Such distrust had earlier delayed development of a military academy, West Point. Fear of a professionalism extended to other occupations: government service, medicine, and law. Andrew Jackson famously declared that every intelligent citizen could serve in government agencies; experts

Private Policing and Diffusion of State Power

5

or professionals would become self-interested bureaucrats. Many formerly appointive offices became elective. States actually repealed earlier licensing requirements for physicians and lawyers. Medical and law schools developed slowly and did not achieve their modern significance until the early twentieth century. Both professions depended on apprenticeship with practitioners for learning their basics. It is not surprising that this egalitarian anti-bureaucratic, anti-professional attitude shaped development of modern police in the United States and left important openings for private policing. The New York City Police, the first modern force established in 1845, is an illustration of representative democracy’s effect on state institutions. Its creators wanted the police to reflect American democracy. Consequently, police, who had become recognized as necessary to control disorder, should not be above or distant from the citizens. The police were made responsible to elective officials, rather than independent professionals. They were directly appointed by city council members, who were elected annually. Consequently, they were originally expected to live in the same district they patrolled, and at first did not wear uniforms. Reform in 1853 made the police responsible to a commission of elected officials, allowed them to live where they pleased when off duty, and uniformed them. Even under this reform, the police remained tied to politicians and parties. Not until well into the twentieth century did professionalization finally remove this direct political control. These democratic attitudes led to two unanticipated consequences: corrupt political party control of urban police forces and arbitrary, extralegal behavior. Both provided openings for private policing during the nineteenth century. Democratic views led first to political party control of the police as a safeguard against police oppression. In practice, though, political control meant that the police were responsible to politicians and enforced laws according to their interests or needs. This was especially true in the control of vices such as gambling or prostitution, which constituents patronized and which served as lucrative sources of payoffs to the police and the politicians they served by not enforcing laws against them. Many middle- and upper-class citizens protested politicization and corruption of the police. Their concerns led them to form private organizations to suppress vice, and sometimes district attorneys who shared their attitudes hired private detectives to expose vice operations because they could not trust the police. Democracy in the form of political party control of the state apparatus both shaped public policing and fostered the pattern of sharing power with private organizations.6

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A History of Private Policing in the United States

A second opening, or more appropriately blurring the line between public and private policing, was widespread toleration of arbitrary police behavior. Alexis de Tocqueville suggested that ability to elect “magistrates” allowed nineteenthcentury Americans to be comfortable with their authority. They tended to give elected officials broad personal discretion in carrying out their duties, because if dissatisfied they could defeat them or those responsible for their conduct at the next election.7 This could lead to officials’ arbitrary conduct as long as the voters supported them. An Alabama sheriff recently stated this point succinctly: she operates her office “based on what the public wants or likes.” That is, what the voters who elected her expected of her. Civil libertarians are concerned that is “simply license for sheriffs to act as if they are above the law.”8 The sheriff ’s attitude is by no means new. Tocqueville was writing before creation of modern police forces, but his point applies to the new police as well as to judicial and other law enforcement officials. Reflecting this view that voters tolerated wide discretionary power in elected officials, most people tolerated or ignored arbitrary police behavior as long as it was directed against marginal members of society. Police themselves were not elected, but they were directly or indirectly responsible to elected officials as the structure of the New York force indicated. Police often acted out the perceptions or prejudices of a majority of the population when they arrested drunken Irish laborers or African-American street vendors. Profiling is as old as the police themselves. Having made the police a democratic institution, “respectable” Americans could tolerate arbitrary power against “disreputable” Americans. The police themselves, and those who favored control of socially marginal people, were frustrated because judges often let people go when politicians intervened on behalf of supporters.9 This frustration fed the police’s tendency toward “street corner justice,” punishment of suspects when arrested or in the station house. As long as such behavior was confined to “the dangerous classes,” there were few people who spoke up for the rights of arrestees or suspects in the nineteenth century. The police were granted great power and could exercise it with minimal legal or policy constraints. Police arbitrariness or brutality, as long as it reflected the attitudes of influential citizens, is not very much different from vigilantism in uniform. Attitudes toward public police were similar to attitudes toward private policing, as long as they were concentrated against socially marginal groups. Citizens did not hold the public police to a higher standard of conduct or expect them to be impartial law enforcers. The heads of the London police, the model for New York, tried to maintain such standards, although they were not always followed by men on the beat.10

Private Policing and Diffusion of State Power

7

Political ideology and private policing Ideology about the state as well as the state’s structure has created a favorable climate for private policing. However nuanced historians’ view of the American state, a limited national state is part of American ideology. Many Americans believe that a weak state means more personal freedom and that private enterprise is better than government activity. The state should be weak, and many Americans consider assertion of governmental, especially federal, authority in the realm of business or environmental regulation a form of tyranny. “Our political tradition has virtually identified freedom and autonomy with the private sphere, and posed them in opposition to the public sphere of state power.” That the state has no business interfering with individual autonomy “has been central to the American conceptions of freedom and limited government.”11 Jennifer Nedelsky’s point echoes Tocqueville’s famous invention of American “individualism,” a form of selfcenteredness that excluded people outside one’s own small circle of family, friends, or fellow workers, and prevented much sense of the public good as higher than individual or group interests. In the early twentieth century, H.G. Wells described “state blindness,” a similar lack of identification with a public interest, and Hugo Muensterberg argued that Americans were strict about contracts between individuals but had little sense of duty toward the state.12 An expanded American state certainly existed in the early twentieth century, but many people did not make it part of their sense of being American. Ask most Americans today what they mean by “American,” they are very unlikely to include a benevolent and protective state. Some observers view individualism as the loss of community identification and responsibility. Conservative commentator David Brooks places the failure of gun control after several mass shootings (the most recent as of writing in a Texas high school, May 2018) in a context of decline of community and trust, “when narcissistic impulses have been given free rein, … social trust has been devastated.” His liberal counterpart, Paul Krugman, agrees that the price of extreme individualism is “a war on the very concept of community, … a society in which individuals can’t count on the community to provide them with even the most basic guarantees of security—security from crazed gunmen, security from drunken drivers, security from exorbitant medical bills.”13 All these commentators regarded individualism as a trait of American national character, which in a heterogeneous society of conflicting ideals and realities can no longer be useful. Not all Americans are individualists, nor are all

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A History of Private Policing in the United States

individualists American. Nor does individualism necessarily lead to an ideology of a weak state. France, a republic since 1871, is an example of combining individualism with a powerful state. An early twentieth-century commentator observed, “A perfectly free, happy and content individual is placed in a powerful, authoritarian and omnipotent state.”14 The English also have individualistic traditions: the founder of laissez-faire economics, Adam Smith, and the philosopher of social Darwinism, Herbert Spencer, were British. Individualism in Britain, though, was confined by class deference, “knowing one’s place,” throughout the nineteenth century. Working-class Englishmen identified with their class and its collective interests, instead of focusing on social mobility and equality like their American counterparts. Many working-class individualists undoubtedly immigrated to the United States. Despite not being exclusively American, individualism is useful if understood as a dominant political ideology that has shaped the nature of the American state.15

Figure 1  Self-defense. Savage Arms Co. advertisement, National Geographic Magazine 25, no. 6 (June 1914).

2

Self-defense and the “Armed Citizen”

Self-defense, the ability of an individual to protect him- or herself from attack, even kill an attacker without criminal charges, is the ultimate and oldest form of private policing. Needless to say, societies are concerned to distinguish between self-defense and aggressive attacks. Usually a claim of self-defense has to be tried in court, and the person has to prove that he or she was being attacked and had no other recourse but to respond. English Medieval common law specified that within one’s home, a person could respond violently to anyone entering with criminal intent. This is the doctrine that “a man’s home is his castle.” Outside the home, a claim of self-defense required a “duty to retreat,” even to the point of having one’s “back to the wall” when attacked. This requirement was reasonable in an age of knives and cudgels when an attacker had to close in on the victim, and the victim could escape by running away. Only when the victim was trapped was he or she justified in killing the attacker.1 The American colonies adopted this principle, which with only a few exceptions was unchallenged until the later nineteenth century. Even if an attacker were armed with a single-shot smoothbore flintlock pistol, a victim had a very reasonable chance of retreating because of a misfire or the time required for reloading. Invention and perfection of the revolver (1840s–50s) and later repeating rifle (1850s–70s) made retreat far more difficult, self-protection seeming to demand an immediate response.

Development of an American definition of self-defense During the nineteenth century, judges and juries did not always agree about the duty to retreat but moved toward abandoning the requirement. The 1801 Philadelphia case of Thomas Selfridge illustrated this disagreement. Benjamin Austin, a political opponent, published a charge that Selfridge was a “liar, a

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A History of Private Policing in the United States

coward and a scoundrel.” These are fighting words for a gentleman of the period. In the old South, such a charge would lead to a formal, ritualized duel, but dueling was increasingly unacceptable in the Northeast. Selfridge was a small, weak man and would not be able to physically attack his opponent without a weapon. Austin, meanwhile, delegated his strapping son to give Selfridge a good caning. Hearing this, Selfridge met the challenge, took a pistol and went to look for Charles Austin, the son. In the street, he encountered young Austin. Witnesses disagreed about what happened next. Some said that Selfridge shot Austin only after being struck with the cane; others claimed that Austin was shot before hitting Selfridge. When the case went to trial, the prosecution argued, and the judge instructed the jury that in arming himself and failing to run away, Selfridge was a murderer. The defense invoked gentlemanly honor. As a physically weak man, running away from Charles Austin would have damaged his honor beyond repair, leaving him “nothing to live for.” In short, one could defend his reputation as well as life justifiably. In instructions to the jury, the judge argued that defense of honor was unacceptable in a civilized community. The jurors, though, shared Selfridge’s attorney’s argument and quickly acquitted him. Protection of personal honor is usually associated with the antebellum South, but it was alive in the Philadelphia jurors’ minds.2 Self-defense as part of male honor was the issue in a case in New Castle, Indiana, during the bitterly contested presidential election of 1876. John Runyan and Henry Ray were supporters of Democrat Samuel Tilden against Republican Rutherford B. Hayes. Most of New Castle’s citizens were Republican, so the two men anticipated trouble, and they found it in the insults and threats from men gathered at the polling place. They left the polls after voting but returned later to check the election results, Runyan armed with a borrowed pistol. Insults and threats met them again, and a shoving match between Runyan and Charles Pressnall ended with Pressnall mortally wounded. Some witnesses said that Runyan had reacted only to verbal threats, but others maintained that Runyan shot only after Pressnall had knocked him to the ground. At his trial, Runyan was convicted of manslaughter. He appealed to the Indiana Supreme Court for a retrial, which the Court granted, arguing that the trial judge’s instructions about the duty to retreat were incorrect. It held that “the American mind” rejects any principle that requires a man to retreat when attacked. The law of self-defense was a “law of nature.” When he was retried, Runyan was acquitted.3 Honor as justification of self-defense appears many years later in an 1882–83 Uniontown, Pennsylvania, case. This involved two killings: one in an informal

Self-defense and the “Armed Citizen”

13

duel, the other as revenge for the first. Nicholas Dukes was engaged to Adam Nutt’s daughter, Daisy. Dukes, though, turned against Daisy for unclear reasons, writing a letter to Nutt declaring that she had slept with no less than seven men, including himself. Captain Nutt, like Dukes a prominent citizen, challenged Dukes to a duel in defense of Daisy’s and his family’s honor. Nutt went to “see Dukes and have an interview with him” finding him in a local hotel. The two men got into a fight as soon as they met in Dukes’s room, ending with Dukes shooting Nutt. Some witnesses said that Dukes shot Nutt after friends broke up the fight, but Dukes himself claimed that Nutt attacked him with a cane before he shot. Dukes claimed self-defense, but the majority of the local community, shocked at popular Nutt’s death, considered him a murderer. At his trial, the defense marshaled two arguments—self-defense was “a principle that impels a man to resist all violence and assault.” Additionally, Dukes’s hotel room was his castle, where he had the right to defend himself. After a long trial and seven ballots, the jurors acquitted Dukes. In this case, the “honor” defense seems to have worn thin: Uniontown citizens and most of the outsiders who had been assiduously following the trial considered Dukes a dishonorable man because of the way he impugned a woman’s reputation. Mobs threatened jurors and Dukes with lynching, supported by local and out-of-town newspapers. Dukes fled Uniontown and remained away for ten months. Maintaining his own dignity was important to Dukes, who returned to Uniontown in April 1883. The Nutt family was particularly angered by his reappearance, and Captain Nutt’s son James plotted revenge. As Dukes was walking to the post office for his mail, James Nutt emerged from an empty storefront and shot Dukes five times; three of the bullets wounded him, and Dukes died after James fired a fifth shot into his body. Most people supported Nutt when he went on trial in Pittsburgh in January 1884. Nutt’s attorneys invoked both honor and the still novel plea of “temporary insanity” that James was so unhinged by his father’s death that he could not control himself. In his instructions, though, the judge declared that the law did not protect honor killings and temporary insanity was a dubious concept. After a long trial, followed by crowds in the courthouse and all over the country by newspaper readers, the jury declared Nutt not guilty. Courtroom spectators cheered and ran out to tell others who had not been present, and all over the country, newspapers put the verdict in headlines. As late as the 1880s, honor as justification for self-defense had many supporters, even though it had to be covered by a plea of temporary insanity.4 By the end of the nineteenth century, defense lawyers argued that there should be no duty to retreat because the requirement was unrealistic, and many

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A History of Private Policing in the United States

state courts began to accept their view. The evolving standard was that when a “reasonable man” concluded that his life was threatened by an attacker, he had no obligation to retreat. Texas declared no duty to retreat in its penal code of 1856 (Ch. V, article 571), and that provision remains today. Later on, judges and legal authorities sometimes referred to “no duty to retreat” as “the Texas Rule.”5 The Supreme Court upheld the principle in 1895 and 1921 (Beard vs. U.S., 1895; Brown vs. U.S., 1921).6 Justice Holmes wrote that the principle that a “reasonable man” was bound to retreat was too rigid to apply when an ordinary man under stress was directly threatened.7 These Supreme Court cases made “stand your ground” the standard in federal cases, but individual states followed case law of their own states; several followed the federal standard. New York still requires satisfying the “duty to retreat” as necessary to a plea of self-defense, although one can argue that there was no chance to retreat.8 That is the very argument that got Bernhard Goetz, the so-called “Subway Vigilante,” acquitted of attempted murder in 1987. His attorneys argued that the four African-American teenagers who demanded money from him were sufficiently threatening to justify Goetz’s shooting and wounding the youths, one gravely. Nevertheless, the jury convicted him of illegally carrying a weapon.9

“No duty to retreat” and the right to bear arms The doctrine of “no duty to retreat” is closely connected with the Second Amendment to the Constitution, the “right to keep and bear arms.” The Framers of the Constitution inserted this amendment in response to British efforts to disarm the colonial militia forces at the beginning of the American Revolution. They also rejected a standing professional army, so the new nation relied on citizen soldiers to respond to foreign invasion or domestic disorder. Every male citizen of military age in each state, unless disabled or otherwise exempted, was required to serve in the militia. This involved keeping firearms at home in good condition for immediate service, and “bearing” them for training and actual use if necessary. The militia was a state organization, although the Constitution gives Congress power to call up state militias in emergencies, and to organize, arm, and discipline them, leaving to the states the power to appoint officers and train the forces according to the standards set by Congress.10 Some authorities argued that the militia was a national force; others argued that it was a bulwark that protected the states against possible federal tyranny.11 Certainly that is how Southerners saw their militias in the months leading up to the Civil War.

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The militia declined through the nineteenth century, partly because workingmen resented loss of wages when they had to leave their jobs to muster and drill and later resented being called up to break fellow workers’ strikes on behalf of the bosses. Military authorities doubted the reliability and competence of the militia, and some agitated for a National Guard, a reserve force made up of professionally trained volunteer soldiers based in each state. Created in 1903 and bolstered in 1916, the National Guard is still a state force, but it can be called up by the national government in emergencies. Such was the case when President Eisenhower “federalized” the Arkansas National Guard during protests against school racial integration in Little Rock in 1957 and when National Guard units were on the front lines during the second Iraq War. The decline of the militia paralleled a movement to reinterpret the Second Amendment to allow individual citizens to carry firearms for protection of property and self-defense. The issue came to a head during the Reconstruction period after the Civil War (1866–77). Immediately after defeat, the Southern States passed laws limiting the freedom of emancipated African-Americans, the “Black Codes.” These limits included denial of firearms to African-Americans: all-white militias set about the task of disarming them. Technically, states had the right to regulate firearms and increasingly had done so during the violent first half of the nineteenth century. Was keeping and using firearms an individual right? In the context of the discriminatory Black Codes, many members of the victorious Republican Party argued that indeed it was an individual right. The problem became more acute after Congress passed the Reconstruction Acts, which readmitted Southern States to the union only after they had complied with several requirements including granting voting rights to African-Americans. The Black Codes were repealed, and Republican governors formed militias open to both whites and blacks, but actually almost exclusively black. Vigilante groups like the Ku Klux Klan took up the job of disarming African-Americans who now were militia members. Many legal scholars argued that the Fourteenth Amendment’s protection of black civil rights included their right to bear arms as members of militias, while granting that states could regulate or ban weapons that had no explicit military use. The rights to self-defense did not include an individual right to bear arms separately from militia membership. The Supreme Court’s decision in U.S. vs. Cruikshank in 1875 upheld this view: there was no individual right to bear arms; the matter was up to the states. Neither the Second Amendment nor the Fourteenth required states to uphold an individual right to carry weapons. They limited only the power of the Federal Government to disarm state militias.12

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The Supreme Court continued to limit the right to bear arms to militia service through the twentieth century. In 1934, Congress passed the first national arms control legislation, heavily taxing weapons such as sawed-off shotguns that were used in committing crimes like the bank robberies that plagued the first half of the decade. The Supreme Court weighed in after an Arkansas court quashed the indictment of two petty criminals for carrying a sawed-off shotgun across state lines. The lower court argued that bearing arms was an individual right, against a host of case law and legal scholarship. The government appealed to the Supreme Court, which ruled in 1935 that, as Justice McReynolds said, “We construe the Amendment as having relation to the military service and we are unable to say that a sawed-off shotgun has any relation to the militia.” The Federal Government could regulate individual purchase and possession of certain weapons. Since there were no longer state militias, the Court implied that the right to bear arms applied only to the National Guard, leaving states to regulate individual use or not as they chose.13 The New York state constitutions of 1821 and today do not include a right to bear arms in their bill of rights sections.14 At the other end, the 1845 Texas state constitution’s bill of rights was clear about an individual right to bear arms: “Every citizen shall have the right to keep and bear arms in the lawful defence of himself or the State.” The only regulation of arms referred to bowie knives and daggers. Even if these were used in a homicide without intent to kill, caused by provocation or threat, the offense must be murder rather than the usual manslaughter (Ch. XV, article 610).15 Today’s Constitution, like that of 1876, keeps the same individual language, adding “but the Legislature shall have power, by law, to regulate the wearing of arms, with a view to prevent crime.”16 Courts and most legal scholars upheld the view that the Second Amendment did not guarantee an individual right to keep and bear arms through the twentieth century. However, as the Texas Constitutions indicate, individual rights advocates were dominant in certain states, particularly in the South and West. As one response to the rising crime, riots, and assassinations of the later twentieth century, Congress passed the Gun Control Act of 1968, which strengthened bans on interstate gun sales, increased regulation of gun dealers, and prohibited purchase of firearms by “dangerous persons.” Opponents of gun restriction, led by the National Rifle Association (NRA), crusaded to make individual ownership the national standard to which all states had to conform. The NRA began as an organization dedicated to hunting safety and target shooting but after 1968 became a major lobby group supporting unlimited gun ownership rights. At the same time, more legal scholars, sometimes funded

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by the NRA, began asserting the individual right. By the end of the twentieth century, elected representatives usually went along with the NRA, because they knew the group could organize effective campaigns to defeat them in many, if not most, states. The NRA lobby has prevented any new gun control legislation for years.17 Despite gun advocates’ legislative successes on the national and state levels, courts did not accept the individual right interpretation until 2008. They achieved a somewhat hollow victory in the case of U.S. v. Emerson, where a federal circuit court held that there was an individual right, citing the legal arguments in its favor, but also declined to strike down a gun control law prohibiting firearms to people under domestic violence restraining orders. The court regarded that as a rational limitation of the right to bear arms. In 2008, however, the US Supreme Court upheld the individual right interpretation by declaring that a District of Columbia ban on handguns violated that right. The 5–4 decision in District of Columbia v. Heller did not approve a blanket individual right. Heller was a security guard denied the right to keep his gun at home. He was “not disqualified from exercise of Second Amendment rights” according to Justice Antonin Scalia’s majority report. Often overlooked, he added, “Nothing in our opinion should be taken to cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings, or laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms,” and laws banning “dangerous and unusual weapons.”18 The decision reflected the political cleavage in the Court, with conservative justices following Scalia and liberal justices rejecting the individual right interpretation. Heller did not apply to states, as the District of Columbia is under federal jurisdiction. A more recent Supreme Court case in 2010, McDonald v. City of Chicago, held that the Second Amendment was in fact applicable to the states, but it did not declare all gun regulation unconstitutional. The majority in the 5–4 decision revived the Reconstruction Era argument that the Second Amendment was “incorporated” or included in the Fourteenth Amendment. According to the majority, this incorporation was “selective” because the Second Amendment was “fundamental to the Nation’s scheme of ordered liberty” or “deeply rooted in this Nation’s history and tradition.” It was not an attempt to include the entire bill of rights in the Fourteenth Amendment, which had been rejected by the Slaughter House (1873) and Cruickshank (1875) decisions.19 Like the Heller decision, Mc Donald did not reject all state firearms regulation. The NRA, its lawyers, and various groups like the Second Amendment Foundation will likely be pursuing more lawsuits as cases come up in different states.

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The United States is only one of three nations that have an explicit right to bear arms in their written Constitutions.20 Americans, especially in the West and South, and rural areas of the Northeast, exercise their right: Alaska has the highest percentage of its population owning guns, 61.7 percent, fitting its image as the last frontier. Idaho (56.9 percent), Wyoming (53.8 percent), and Montana (52.3 percent) follow. Delaware (5.2 percent) and Rhode Island (5.8 percent) and New York (10.3 percent) are the lowest. These figures reflect only registered weapons, and probably the great majority of them are hunting rifles of various sorts, not necessarily bought for individual or collective self-defense. Overall, the United States has the highest gun ownership in the world: with only 5 percent of the world’s population, civilians own between 35 and 50 percent of the world’s guns.21 Another way of looking at it is how many people report having a rifle or pistol in the house. About 35 percent say they do in a Pew poll, about evenly divided between men and women. However, Republicans (49 percent), whites (41 percent), people older than 50 (40 percent), and rural dwellers (51 percent) are more likely to have arms at home than Democrats (22 percent), blacks (19 percent) and Hispanics (20 percent), people under 50 (29 percent), and urban and suburban residents (29 percent).22 Not surprisingly high gun ownership states are the most likely to have “stand your ground” laws and the least amount of gun control generally.

Stand your ground At the same time the individual right interpretation of the Second Amendment was gaining ground in courts, several states passed explicit statutes rejecting the duty to retreat as essential to a claim of self-defense in a killing. These laws extend the common law doctrine that “a man’s home is his castle,” which he has the right to protect from unwanted intruders. Some states enacted specific laws, with varying conditions, asserting that there was no duty to retreat while resisting attack in one’s own home. As of 2010, thirty-one states had laws enacting some form of “Castle Doctrine,” exempting the home from a duty to retreat. Additionally, others have extended that principle to public places as well. Florida, “the Gunshine State,” led the way in 2005, passing a statute backed by the NRA. Twenty states followed by 2015. The Florida law reacted to a situation in which an elderly white man shot and killed a white construction worker whom he thought was lurking about his property. He did not stay in his home but went out to confront the

Self-defense and the “Armed Citizen”

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apparent prowler, whose reason for being there has not been discovered. For a long period, the district attorney’s office delayed action on whether to indict James Workman, the shooter. Many people believed that he should have been exonerated of any charges because he had shot the intruder immediately outside his home, fearing a break-in. They expressed their frustration with the district attorney and sympathy with Workman, who had to endure a wait before charges were dropped. The State Legislature passed its “stand your ground” law soon afterward.23 Florida’s law incited a national controversy in 2012 when George Zimmerman, an armed self-appointed neighborhood watchman in a gated community, killed Trayvon Martin, a young black man he suspected was a criminal. Although the police had told Zimmerman to avoid confrontation, he followed Martin and challenged him. The two got into a fight, and Zimmerman was knocked to the ground, according to his defense attorneys. At that point, he fired his gun, killing Martin. The police did not arrest him, apparently believing that the “stand your ground” law allowed the shooting. They eventually did arrest him on a charge of third-degree murder, but the jury acquitted Zimmerman on grounds of selfdefense. The Federal Justice Department began an investigation into whether the shooting was a hate crime but decided it could not prove Zimmerman was acting from racist motives.24 In the aftermath of the shooting, the Florida state legislator who wrote the “stand your ground” bill said that it did not authorize following or confronting somebody, but critics argued that it left an opening for Zimmerman’s actions.25 Recently Florida moved to correct any ambiguity in its “stand your ground” law. The state Supreme Court in 2015 held that a person claiming self-defense under the law had to prove in a pretrial hearing that he or she believed their life was threatened. That is, the person claiming self-defense had the burden of proof. A measure passed in June 2017 reversed the burden of proof, requiring prosecutors to prove that a person’s life was not threatened beyond a reasonable doubt. This law makes it easier for defendants to argue that they “thought,” apparently whether reasonably or not, that they were about to be attacked. Marissa Alexander, an African-American woman imprisoned for aggravated assault when she fired a warning shot at her abusive husband, became a supporter of this law.26 Kansas and Kentucky place the burden of proof on the prosecution, but require only “probable cause” that use of force was not justifiable, in contrast to Florida’s “reasonable doubt” standard. Supporters of “stand your ground” laws argue that they protect public safety, but legal research has demonstrated increased homicides, limitation of victims’ rights, and, not surprisingly,

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“heightened racial injustice in enforcement.” An expert has estimated that since the original “stand your ground” law, the number of homicides ruled justifiable increased by 70 percent in Florida.27 This new law seems likely to increase that even more. Such easing of requirements for self-defense only adds to criticisms of the original “stand your ground” law. The Tampa Bay Times newspaper study of about 200 cases revealed that almost seven out of ten people who made the “stand your ground” defense were not charged at all, even though in 157 of the killings, the victim was unarmed, or defendants initiated the fights or pursued the victim. The law allowed drug dealers to claim self-defense in fights. It was also invoked in barroom brawls, neighborhood quarrels, and violent arguments. Not surprisingly, there is a racial dimension: 73 percent of killers of black people successfully used a “stand your ground” defense, while 59 percent of those who killed a white person (their own race not specified) were successful. Inter-racial killings were relatively rare (only one-fourth of the fatal cases studied), so the racial aspect is strongly suggested but not fully proven by this disparity. Verdicts, though, tell a different story: the chances are 281 percent greater that a white person who kills a black person will successfully plead self-defense than if a black person kills a white person.28 Another group that has seen little help from Florida’s “stand your ground” law is women who defend themselves against abusive, murderous husbands or boyfriends. The NRA promotes women arming themselves, but the focus is on stranger intruders. Far more women are victims of domestic abuse than rape, mugging, or burglary. Even as marriages became more egalitarian, and feminists in the 1970s won greater legal protection of domestic violence victims, the home “castle” in law seems to mean the man’s castle. A reasonable woman’s concern about a domestic threat to her life does not usually get her acquitted if she kills the abuser. Although defense lawyers have created the “Battered Woman Syndrome,” a variation of temporary insanity, jurors are usually unconvinced by the plea, thinking that the woman should have left the abuser long before the last confrontation.29 This attitude may be changing. Marissa Alexander, referred to earlier, was originally a prime example of discrimination against women as well as African-Americans who pled self-defense. She was convicted and imprisoned for firing a warning shot at her abusive husband despite her plea of innocent under the “stand your ground” law of Florida. Her subsequent release reflects expansion of the definition of self-defense.30 The first successful self-defense plea against an abuser was in 1972, the case of Yvonne Wanrow, a Native American living in Washington State. She fatally shot William Wesler, a

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child abuser who was not her spouse or other relative. When a drunk Wesler appeared about to attack Wanrow’s son, she killed him. At the original trial, she was convicted of second-degree murder and sentenced to twenty years in prison. However, the state Supreme Court called for a retrial that considered Wanrow’s circumstances more carefully. She finally pled guilty to manslaughter and assault but was put on probation.31 Both these cases represented successes of the effort to take domestic crime seriously, but it is still difficult for abused women to win verdicts of justifiable homicide. Recently, the public police, who already have legal protection against prosecution for shootings they can show were reasonable or necessary, have been invoking the Florida’s “stand your ground” law. Essentially they are applying a more lenient standard to themselves than their original protection, especially in light of the possible law that they do not have to prove they had reasonable fear. Proponents argue that the law’s provision that “any person” who claims reasonable fear in defending him- or herself applies to police officers as well as civilians. The “stand your ground” law’s original sponsor had not anticipated police invocation of it as a defense. Critics argue that it will shield more unjustified shootings and that judges in pretrial hearings of police officers will be reluctant to decide against them. Some police selfdefense pleas have been successful, others not. Florida is the only “stand your ground” state where police have used the law to justify shootings or other use of force.32 After a January 2016 mass shooting at Fort Lauderdale airport, Florida legislators remained committed to what the New York Times called a “delusional” belief that armed “good” people will outshoot, or at least deter, “bad” armed individuals. Florida is considering allowing carrying openly with a permit and concealed weapons without a permit in airports and public university campuses,33 following precedents set by Idaho and Texas. The sheriff of Fort Lauderdale county warned that more guns means more violence, not less.34 After a mass shooter killed seventeen teenagers at a Florida high school in February 2018, the legislature actually defied NRA demands and raised the age limit for buying firearms from eighteen to twenty-one, required a three-day waiting period for purchase of guns, banned “bump stocks” that allow conversion of semiautomatic into automatic weapons, and increased the power of police to commit to mental institution inmates who they believe to be a threat to public safety. It did not ban military-grade automatic assault weapons and allowed local law enforcement to authorize librarians and coaches to carry arms. The NRA wants all teachers to be armed against mass shooters.35

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More guns Today most states (42) require a permit to carry a concealed weapon; the others declare that the state “may issue” a permit, which allows public officials to decide case by case whether they should require a permit. New York has some of the nation’s strictest gun control laws. They began with the Sullivan Law, passed in 1911 through the efforts of “Big Tim” Sullivan, a former boxer who became state legislator. The law prohibited carrying of concealed weapons, restricted possession of firearms in homes or business, and required licensing of all firearms. The state passed an even stronger gun regulation law in 1980 and still stronger regulations after the Sandy Hook School massacre of 2012. Gun control and issuing of permits is strict in New York City but much more lenient in rural areas. Less stringently, officials in sixteen states “shall issue” permits, allowing them to deny permits only if the applicant has a criminal record or other disqualifying factors (Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Missouri, and Virginia in the South; Colorado, Montana, North Dakota, Oregon, South Dakota, and Utah in the West; Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Minnesota, and Pennsylvania in the Midwest; and only New Hampshire in the East). No Eastern state declares that “shall issue” requires permits for all applicants, but sixteen in the South and Midwest give issuing authorities no discretionary power: Florida, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, the Carolinas, Oklahoma, Tennessee, and Texas in the South; Michigan, Ohio, Wisconsin, and Nebraska in the Midwest; and Nevada New Mexico and Washington in the West. Finally, most states that do not require any sort of permit are in the West (Alaska, Arizona, Idaho, and Wyoming). Kansas in the Midwest and Maine and Vermont in the East make up the remainder.36 Missouri is the latest state to allow people to carry guns without a permit, background check, or firearms training. The police no longer can prevent domestic abusers or people with criminal records from carrying concealed firearms. The law also includes a “stand your ground” provision. Big city mayors and police chiefs opposed the measure. The Republican-controlled state legislature overrode the Democratic governor’s veto of the law. Missouri joined ten other states in dropping permit requirements for concealed weapons.37 The NRA’s latest legislative push is for “concealed carry reciprocity” that people carrying a concealed weapon with a permit from their state should be able to carry it in all the states, regardless of their regulations. The US House of Representatives recently passed such a bill.38 Because of the mass reaction to the Florida high school shooting of February 2018, the proposal has been stalled.

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Probably reflecting the belief that concealed weapons are often associated with criminals, only a few states ban “open carry” (i.e., visible) of firearms: California, Texas, Illinois, South Carolina Florida, New York, and District of Columbia. Ten require a permit for open carry, and twenty-nine in the South, Midwest, and West allow open carry without any sort of permit.39 The great majority of states that have relatively lenient permit rules for both concealed and open carrying of firearms and those that do not require permits are Southern, Midwestern, and Western.40 Southern and Western states retain traditions of maintaining male honor and standing one’s ground. They usually have been the most violent through history. Midwestern states, with the exception of Kansas, which was born amid violence and continued bloody through the Civil War, do not have such strong traditions but are predominantly rural, or rural interests dominate state legislatures. American farmers have typically lived in relatively isolated farmsteads, and even today many feel strongly about the need to protect one’s self and home from criminals where the police are spread thin. The three lenient Eastern states are less easy to explain, but they are also mainly rural with strong hunting traditions. Urban areas even in anti–gun control states are usually more cosmopolitan with less attachment to guns. In a majority of states, then, a visitor may encounter people carrying guns in holsters openly. While unsettling to people unaccustomed to the sight, by far most residents do not carry guns openly, and one can at least know that person is armed. However, as one gun control advocate pointed out, people are more afraid of open carry, as a danger they know, than of concealed carry, a danger they do not know.41 Gun-rights advocates argue that armed citizens can prevent or limit such disasters as mass shootings, which while occurring in other countries are an American plague. Texans point to the role of a man with an automatic rifle after the recent church mass shooting, which left twenty-six people dead. He grabbed his weapon and exchanged shots with the killer while he was escaping. Eventually, the shooter crashed his truck while fleeing, flipping over. He was found dead with a gunshot wound that may have been the work of the armed citizen. The armed neighbor could not have prevented the shooting, but he did respond in a way that reassured Texans, some of whom advocated carrying guns to church.42 Recently a former high school administrator in Mississippi, who carried an unloaded pistol in his truck, described how in 1997 he was able to load, pursue, and capture a school shooter. He held the man at gunpoint until the police arrived. Nevertheless, he cautioned emphatically that arming teachers— and idea pushed by the NRA and the American President—was not a good idea.

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He believes that there “should be common sense” in the issue of gun control and that “blasting away” by untrained people would make matters worse. He advocates placing trained people with arms, equivalent to bank security guards, in schools but not arming teachers.43 Can citizens carrying firearms openly or concealed act as if they were police? On paper, yes: “Citizen’s arrest” is legal in the United States, Canada, and Britain, but in practice it is heavily restricted and risky. Generally a citizen may arrest only if he or she witnesses a felony or detains a person within a “reasonable” amount of time after the crime has been committed. The citizen is not expected to march the suspect to the station house but should immediately call the police to the scene. Deadly force must not be used unless the arresting person is in real danger of his or her life. A young Alaskan armed citizen named Matthew Wilhite successfully subdued Yan Bangout, who was fleeing a store in a shopping mall after stealing $1,200 worth of goods and wrestling with unarmed security guards. Wilhite came upon the scene and moved to help the guards, who saw that the suspect was about to draw a gun. Wilhite, well trained and experienced with firearms, drew his automatic pistol and was able to point it at the suspect without endangering anybody else in the busy mall. Bangout surrendered and police arrested him. Wilhite owed his success to his own weapons skill and the security guard’s initial capture and that many shoppers had already fled the mall. Wilhite himself cautioned that while he carried a gun to be ready for such situations, it could easily go wrong if he had been more impulsive and less skilled. He said that anyone who draws a gun in similar circumstances could be themselves arrested by the police and face possible criminal charges or civil suits. “You have to be ready to be thrown in cuffs and your gun taken away for two, three years.”44 A former Alaskan prosecutor pointed out that while resisting a peace officer’s arrest is a crime, the law says nothing about resisting citizen’s arrest. “If an arresting ‘citizen’ decides to go vigilante, I won’t hesitate to defend myself against unjustifiable force, and I’m almost always carrying.” Either one has to have overwhelming force, which the other person recognizes, or the citizen has to be able to talk a suspect into waiting peacefully for the police. Attorneys in Britain and Canada joined in declaring citizen’s arrest to be risky and advised doing so only if absolutely necessary: the best thing is to avoid making a citizen’s arrest.45 The specter of armed amateur cops collaring people is not a serious danger, but many states that have made a plea of self-defense much easier in confrontations have enabled many “armed citizens.”

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Armed paramilitary self-defense and protection groups Paramilitary groups, such as white militias and the Black Panther Party, blend with vigilantes as self-declared community defenders.46 The targets of paramilitary groups, though, are usually federal or other government officials collectively and sometimes individually. They also see themselves as protectors of people resisting government (or as with Southern black groups, both local government and vigilante) threats or actions. Some of these groups combine characteristics of vigilantes and paramilitary groups. An example is an organization that has evolved over time, the Ku Klux Klan. The Reconstruction Era Klan (1866–77) was more like a white supremacist militia in that it resisted Federal Government intervention in the South and anybody, white or black, who supported it. The second (1910s–30s) manifestation of the Klan did not attack government officials but like vigilantes targeted undesirable groups deemed threatening to community values—African-Americans, immigrants, especially Catholics, and moral “deviants” such as people practicing illicit sex or alcohol sellers during Prohibition. The third Klan of the 1950s to the present combined aspects of the first and second: to uphold Jim Crow, it attacked supporters of integration, white and black, though not federal enforcers themselves. They had state authorities, from governor down to the local policeman, on their side. More recently the Klan is simply one of many white supremacist groups like the militias who see the threat to their values coming from the Federal Government and liberal organizations and individuals. They have had confrontations with law enforcement and have threatened people whose politics or morality they dislike. White supremacist or other militias and black self-defense groups do have two things in common: both see government agents as threats, and both are thoroughly committed to the right to bear arms. They both are armed citizens in defense of their communities and values. Paramilitary right-wing groups, calling themselves militias, are similar to the third Klan and probably have overlapping membership. Most common in the Rocky Mountains West, followed by the South, they are found throughout the country in about forty states. Like the first Klan, their main enemy is the Federal Government itself, so they are actually rebels more than vigilantes. Like vigilantes, though, they support a higher law, the Constitution, which they believe federal officials are subverting. Montana Militia members described an international conspiracy, with United Nations troops supporting a Federal Government invasion of the Western states featuring mysterious black helicopters and movement of military equipment. A variation is that the government will take

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away everybody’s guns and throw all “Patriots” in prison. Militia members are survivalists, who train for living off the land and guerrilla warfare. The militias have long had connections to “Patriot Groups,” propaganda organizations that hold similar conspiratorial views. Some militia groups endorse an extreme form of local self-control: that the county is the only legitimate form of sovereignty, and the only legitimate official is the sheriff.47 Confrontation has followed ideology. A Texas man who fled to Louisiana to evade paying child support, a federal crime, won militia support when US Marshals came to arrest him in 1996. He refused to acknowledge federal authority and barricaded himself in his mother’s home with a shotgun. Militia members came from many places to defend him. Seeking to avoid a dangerous confrontation, the FBI kept only four agents at the scene. Militia members from elsewhere who had jobs and families began to leave, and eventually Lynn T. Crawford surrendered. Militias claimed that their support of Crawford was a warning that federal agents were being watched. A year later, a New England couple, the Sweeneys, who refused to pay back a Federal Deposit Insurance loan, issued a web appeal for militia members to hold off the federal marshals who arrived to evict them. The marshals handled the situation skillfully, threatening to arrest anybody who came on the property to support the Sweeneys. At a time when Rheta Sweeney and her supporters were away, they were able to arrest John Sweeney in the house. These two are examples of often unpublicized but numerous nonviolent confrontations between government agents and militias. These incidents were typical of most, although the 2016 armed seizure of a wildlife refuge office in Oregon against rancher exclusion from federal public lands, which included militia leaders, left one of the protestors dead.48 Recently a federal judge dismissed charges against the leaders, members of the Bundy family, because prosecutors had withheld evidence improperly.49 Another threat from militias is domestic terrorism. Although the 1996 bombing of the Federal Building in Oklahoma City was not linked to militia groups, a plot was developed soon after that. Ray Lampley, his wife, and two followers planned to bomb Oklahoma City’s Southern Poverty Law Center, the Anti-Defamation League, abortion clinics, public buildings, and gay bars. They sent out invitations to militia leaders for support, one of whom informed the FBI. The group was eventually convicted, but militia anger was not directed at the Lampleys but the informer, John Parsons. Arrests and convictions for terrorism followed in several other states in the West and South. At the end of 1999, two San Francisco militia plotters were arrested for a scheme to bomb a storage depot for propane tanks. They fantasized that the Federal Government

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would declare martial law, forcing the American people to recognize the threat to their liberties and revolt. Simultaneously a local militia leader in St. Petersburg, Florida, plotted to bomb utilities, including a nuclear power plant. Both these acts of terrorism were connected to militia fantasies involving the breakdown of computers in Y2K, 2000.50 An immediate ancestor of the militias was the “Posse Comitatus” movement in the Northwest and Great Plains states, founded in 1970. During the farm crisis of the 1980s, the Posse was able to win recruits and convince people of its conspiratorial view of the Federal Government. True to their name, they believed that only legitimate government official was the county sheriff, in whose name they claimed to be acting as a posse (sheriffs were not actually involved). The leaders of the group followed a “religious” group called Christian Identity, which espoused anti-Semitism and white supremacy. One of the Posse’s activists, William P. Gale, formed the “Committee of the States,” with an enforcement arm he called the “Unorganized Militia,” which clearly had a right to bear all sorts of arms under the Constitution’s Second Amendment.51 Militias expanded during the 1990s in response to two episodes of federal agents’ attacks on individuals and groups. One was the FBI’s 1992 shoot-out with Randy Weaver, a white supremacist who kept an illegal arsenal of guns in the Idaho Mountains. In the battle, Weaver’s wife and young son were killed, along with a US Marshal. The other episode was the 1993 battle against the Branch Davidian cult near Waco, Texas, which also had collected a large illegal arsenal. Their compound was burned and several people died. Much criticized even in mainstream publications, conspiracy-minded people saw it not merely as government overkill but part of the plot to impose federal tyranny. Bo Gritz, a former Green Beret, who arrived at Ruby Ridge and persuaded Weaver to surrender, developed a program called SPIKE, Specially Prepared Individuals for Key Events, a military training and survival program. Gritz promotes his training as essential for militia and other “Patriotic” group members. In 1998, Gritz ran as vice president with David Duke, the Klan leader, although later he denied any connection with Duke. The Branch Davidian confrontation led to creation of the Militia of Montana, with its right-wing populist credo: “The time has come to renew our commitment to high moral values and wrench the control of the government from the hands of the secular humanists and the self-indulging special interest groups including private corporations.”52 It will be interesting to see what happens to the militias during the current Trump administration, which endorses some of their ideology in less extreme forms. It seems that right-wingers generally are less afraid of the Federal Government

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now, as suggested by declining gun sales. However, recent presidential support of modest gun regulation sent stocks of some arms companies soaring, apparently because people have begun stocking arms before any regulations go into effect.53 Militias themselves dropped 40 percent between 2015 and 2016 but grew from 165 to 273 in 2017. This growth is likely less fear of the Federal Government than mobilization against liberal or left protest groups.54 Like many Trump voters, militia members are mostly working- and lower middle-class white men and some women whom globalization has left behind. They are especially “angry white men with guns” and military experience who believe, like the Klan and nationalist white supremacist groups, that their entire economic, political, and cultural way of life is under siege from sinister forces. Black self-defense organizations in the South formed to counteract white violence. There was black resistance to white supremacy during Reconstruction, but more effective were groups that date back to the 1950s whose mission was protection of civil rights activists, people attempting to register to vote, and anybody who was a target of white supremacist threats or violence. In the late 1950s, Robert Williams fooled the NRA by obtaining a charter establishing an affiliated rifle club. The NRA had no idea it was supporting a black group, which it never would have done. The group called itself, though not to the NRA, the “Black Armed Guards.” They guarded anybody under police or vigilante threat. A later group was the Deacons of Defense and Justice of Claiborne County, Louisiana, founded in 1964 to protect Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) activists working to register voters. Taking advantage of open carry laws not meant to include them, the Deacons guarded CORE activities carrying rifles and wearing white shirts, overalls, and black hats as a distinctive uniform. The right to bear arms is a right they value as much as any white militia member.55 The Black Panther Party, inspired by armed self-defense and protective groups in the South, was founded in Oakland, California, in 1966. It was similar to the white militias in that Panthers were opposed to the white-dominated government, especially the police whom they saw as neighborhood invaders. Their mission was to protect the black community against these invaders and combat white oppression generally. In California, they openly and proudly carried rifles until the state repealed its open carry law. They did not simply stride about proclaiming revolution but also provided breakfasts for children and health services. Although the white militias confronted government officials, sometimes violently, the Federal Government never launched an all-out offensive against them as they themselves predict. However, under FBI leadership, federal and state authorities launched a campaign to destroy the Panthers. Under the

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Counter Intelligence Program (COINTEL), established originally to combat Communism, Panther groups were infiltrated, leaders killed and imprisoned. By the 1970s, because of internal disagreements and government suppression, the Panthers were no longer a viable group.56 A large number of Americans, mostly older rural white Southern and Western Republicans, possess weapons designed to kill either animals or people, but capable of killing both. Aside from hunting, the main rationale for them is self-defense, individually or collectively. Originally self-defense was meant to be the last desperate act by a person fleeing an attacker, the duty to retreat. Over the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, courts and legal scholars abandoned the duty to retreat in favor of “stand your own ground.” One did not have to prove he or she retreated, only that an attacker threatened them. In the twenty-first century, a few states so far have gone beyond that, declaring that prosecutors had to prove that a person was not threatened, instead of the defense proving that the person was threatened. Self-defense seems to cover assault or murder because a person was afraid of another, whether an attack was occurring or not. This view of self-defense practically gives individuals the power of the police, life or death. Armed militias are extreme forms of collective self-defense, not against criminals but against the government itself, usually the Federal Government. They are hardly police, more like vigilantes who do not merely “take the law into their own hands” but declare what the law is and what their rights are, seeking to prevent governmental intrusion on their notions of their rights.

Figure 2  “The lynching of J.L. Compton and Joseph Wilson, April 30, 1870. Helena, Montana. The Hangman’s Tree.” Postcard. Printed 1920–30. Wikimedia Commons, Public Domain.

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Private policing by citizens’ groups, vigilantism, is essentially organized selfdefense for a limited period of time. Vigilantes were like a posse without a sheriff in charge, extralegally acting as police, court, and executioner. When vigilantes felt the need to justify themselves, they most often argued some variety of “the public safety is the supreme law,” sometimes dignified into Latin as Salus Populi Suprema Lex. They asserted that the legal process was stifled by elaborate procedures and technicalities that thwarted the retributive justice vigilantes advocated. Smart lawyers could take advantage of technicalities, even misspellings in warrants or indictments, to appeal verdicts or get their clients released. Politics and corruption played too great a part in the criminal justice system. Judges could be bought or be politically indebted to a local machine; juries drawn from local communities could be sympathetic to outlaws or afraid of them. Vigilantes regarded procedural complexity as favoring injustice rather than constitutional rights of suspects and defendants. Civil libertarians, who worried about Fourth Amendment protections, were rare in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Many judges and prosecuting attorneys, and virtually all police officials, favored a model emphasizing crime control over due process protections.1

Legitimation of vigilantism Alexis de Tocqueville noticed that where public agents to control crime were lacking, citizens were “interested in furnishing evidence of the crime, and in seizing the delinquent.” He contrasted Americans’ “spontaneous formation of committees” to pursue and capture a criminal to Europeans’ indifference to assisting police because that was the business of the state, and they were “merely a spectator of the conflict.” A later French visitor observed that “the public safety concerns

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everyone” in contrast to French indifference to crime, because it is the duty of state officials, not their personal problem. Americans, he said, felt that the honor of their community was compromised by “perpetration of a crime in their midst.”2 A judge legitimated this view of citizen participation in crime control after Philadelphia’s bloody Kensington Riots of 1840. He charged a jury that in case of uncontrollable riots “citizens may, of their own authority, lawfully endeavor to suppress the riot, and for that purpose, may even arm themselves and whatever is honestly done in the execution of that object will be supported and justified by the common law.” Richard Wharton, a distinguished legal commentator, echoed this view, almost justifying vigilantism in vigilantes’ own language: “Citizens have the right, in extreme cases, when the municipal government is insufficient, to establish a preventive police, and if it be necessary, take life in order to prevent crime.” According to Richard M. Brown, vigilantism was only an extreme end of the crime control model, a view shared by most Americans then and by large numbers today.3

Classic vigilantism We usually associate vigilantes with frontier areas where law enforcement officials are either weak or unwilling to maintain order and pursue criminals. There were not only many vigilante movements of that sort but also ones that had tacit or overt support of public officials. Such officials were often personally connected to the elites who usually led vigilante groups, or shared their emphasis on crime control over due process, or believed that a lynching saved the public treasury a good deal of money. Since judges, district attorneys, sheriffs, and police chiefs (in some places) were popularly elected, they were unlikely to interfere in a movement that had wide community support. Direct collusion ranged from sheriffs who put up token, if any, resistance when vigilantes seized prisoners from jail, to sheriffs or other officials being part of the vigilante movement themselves. In Nebraska in 1867, a sheriff and his deputy held down a justice of the peace who tried to prevent a lynching, detaining him long enough for the execution to continue. Texas vigilantes who pursued cattle rustlers in the early 1880s included a county sheriff. The famous New Orleans lynching of Italians accused of murdering the police chief in 1890 proceeded without any interference from the mayor, sheriff, or police. At the end of the nineteenth century, states began passing laws punishing officials who tolerated or participated in lynchings, but the laws were ineffective.4

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Vigilante movements came in sizes ranging from a few people to thousands, as in San Francisco in 1856. Some were carefully planned and organized responses to ongoing problems of crime or disorder; others were spontaneous outbursts against a single criminal or small group. Most were organized by local elites, with middle-class farmers, ranchers, or shopkeepers making up the rank and file. Most targeted outlaws or gangs, or attacked blacks, Mexicans, or Chinese. Vigilantes also targeted loose-living people generally. Some reflected economic conflicts, such as those between homesteaders and ranchers in Texas. Punishments ranged from lynching or shooting (most common in the West) to flogging or running out of town (more common earlier and in the East). Most of the movements occurred between 1861 and 1890. The great majority, not surprisingly, were made up of men. An exception was local women’s reaction to an Ohio man throwing his wife out of the house and installing “a dashing widow” from out of town to take her place. One night no fewer than 300 women stormed his house and dragged the man and woman out. He was chased and pelted with rotten eggs; she was “pounded and pummeled until the police rescued her.” Both were put in the town jail for their own safety, while the neighbors ransacked their house. The police escorted the woman to the train station “with great difficulty” and put her on a train for Trenton, New Jersey, her home. Women often took upon themselves the task of tarring and feathering a woman “known to be immoral.” They carried out a duty to keep “the moral atmosphere of the neighborhood healthy.”5 Richard M. Brown classifies the 326 movements he found information on, from the South Carolina Regulators of 1767–69 to the Texas Trinity County Law and Order League of ca. 1904, as “socially constructive” and “socially destructive.” The socially constructive type enforced majority values against outlaws or other people considered immoral or undesirable. Once they achieved their aim, they usually disbanded. The two manifestations of the San Francisco Vigilantes, 1851, aimed against outlaws, and 1856, directed against political corruption, are examples of such movements. “Constructive” was strictly from the viewpoint of the vigilantes and their supporters: killing or beating people, or evicting them from their homes is not especially constructive but restored order as the vigilantes defined it. The constructive type often operated parallel to functioning law enforcement institutions and in many cases received official sanction. The destructive movements were essentially ones that aroused opposition and were not strong enough to overcome it. Leaders of each side began to sacrifice goals of order and respectability for dominance, leading the movements to

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degenerate into prolonged political faction fights, feuds, or “range wars” that flared up, went down, and flamed again. Both sides recruited outlaws such as Billy the Kid or John Wesley Hardin. Killing opponents became a goal in itself. Tom Horn, former Indian scout and Pinkerton man, was hired by large ranchers to execute rustlers. He went about his business systematically, lying in ambush and killing his victims with a single shot. He was finally captured and executed in 1903, after he attempted to escape.6 The endemic violence of central Texas was a good example of prolonged conflict or series of conflicts. The Texas Rangers were sometimes able to put it down, but local elites were too enmeshed in the battles. This was not about policing or restoring order but a cycle of reprisals to defend one’s personal or group honor.7 Vigilantes can also be classified as reactive or preventive, and sometimes both. Classic Western vigilantes, the Ku Klux Klan, and lynch mobs are reactive in that they respond to situations or individuals they believe should be controlled. Some groups, again including the Klan, but also various neighborhood patrols or the Guardian Angels, are preventive. By their presence, or show of force, they aim to prevent the behavior they condemn.

“Whitecappers” or night riders The whitecaps of the 1890s and early twentieth century were active in the Midwest as well as the South. Whitecappers focused on a variety of local grievances. In the Midwest, night riders whipped or beat deviants of various sorts, drunkards, brothel inmates, petty criminals, and people accused of general immoral activity. Some also acted out of economic motives. In the mountain South, whitecaps defended moonshiners, attacking US Revenue agents and informers. In cottongrowing areas of Mississippi, whitecaps protested the crop-lien mortgage system, which kept farmers in perpetual debt; in Georgia, they threatened to destroy the cotton gins of merchants who insisted on processing farmers’ cotton before a price increase went into effect.8 The New Mexico whitecaps, Las Gorras Blancas, protested fencing in of the vast Las Vegas land grant, which herdsmen had been accustomed to using as a common. White squatters put up fences and speculators claimed wide areas of the land, sometimes fraudulently. Ethnic conflict was complicated by the fact that the political offices in the region were held by Latinos who supported commercialization of the region sparked by arrival of the railroad. Beginning in 1889, the Herrera family, whose land had been lost to speculators, organized

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men to destroy fences and reopen the land to herders. Riding at night wearing white caps, they cut miles of fences, burned the homes of hostile officials, and in 1890 attacked the timber-cutting operation that supplied railroad ties as well as destroying railroad facilities. With overwhelming support of local people, leading Gorras Blancas entered politics, where they briefly held office without enacting the reforms they advocated. Although the whitecaps threatened their opponents with death, there were only two shootings. The brother of the Latino sheriff, who was a constant target of fence cutting and threats, killed one of the whitecap leaders, and unknown people fired into the office of a leading railroad supporter, wounding a Latino territorial assemblyman. The movement, however much local support it had, led to territory-wide reaction with formation of the United Protective Association in 1891.9 This was the potentially destructive situation of a vigilante movement generating its opposition movement, although in New Mexico the conflict did not degenerate into perpetual warfare.

The first Ku Klux Klan The best-known white supremacist vigilante group, the Ku Klux Klan, appeared as an organization three different times in American history. Its original manifestation was part of the Southern “second rebellion” against post–Civil War Reconstruction (1866–76), which attempted to reshape the South in a new image based on racial political equality. The foundation of Reconstruction was three constitutional amendments: the Thirteenth, abolishing slavery nationwide; the Fourteenth, declaring for the first time that African-Americans were citizens of the United States and that no state could deprive them of equal protection of the laws; and the Fifteenth explicitly prohibited states from denying anybody (male) the right to vote based on “race, color or previous condition of servitude.” Enforcement was through a series of Reconstruction Acts providing for military supervision of elections to ratify the amendments and establish new state governments. Once states were readmitted into the Union, as they all were by 1870, the state governments based on black suffrage were expected to maintain themselves. They were in a fragile position without enough popular support to survive without federal assistance. Federal aid was provided by the district attorney, courts, and marshals in each state but enforcement was sporadic at best. Sometimes, though increasingly rarely, US Army troops stationed in the South were called in to quell riots at elections or other violence.

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Most white Southerners were determined to resist this Northern Republican vision of their society. They largely succeeded economically without interference, replacing slavery with a form of debt peonage, sharecropping. The majority of rural African-Americans became bound to the owner’s land, though no longer to the owners themselves. Politically Southern whites refused to accept the legitimacy of the new Reconstruction state governments and were determined to restore white supremacy or “home rule.” Once states were readmitted into the union, their task became easier than when Reconstruction was administered by the US Army under the Reconstruction Acts. Their task was to overthrow the state governments by as much force, fraud, and persuasion as necessary. The most effective method was to scare the white and black supporters of Reconstruction by threats or beatings from seeking office or going to the polls to vote. Those who were not intimidated were shot or lynched. Vigilante movements sprang up all over the South, especially in areas with a large black voting population. The Ku Klux Klan was the best known, but there were many others. The Knights of the White Camellia may have been larger, and local groups with names like “bulldozers” or “nigger killers” attacked Reconstruction officials and their supporters. The Klan, founded by Confederate veterans in Tennessee in 1866, at first had a central organization with an elaborate hierarchy.10 Two years later, it seemed to be degenerating into a “socially destructive” movement because criminals joined to steal and murder under the Klan’s name. General Nathan Bedford Forrest, its leader, declared the Klan abolished in 1869, not because of excessive violence in itself but because it was losing its focus on white supremacy. Local and regional Klans continued, however, and violence reached a high point in South Carolina in 1870, when Congress passed the “Force Acts” of 1870–71 allowing the President to declare martial law and use the army to suppress the vigilantes. This last enforcement effort succeeded in breaking the Klan form of vigilantism, but white supremacists continued their harassment under names like “rifle clubs” in Mississippi and “Red Shirts” in South Carolina. Vigilantes obeyed the law by ceasing to ride at night in disguise; instead they marched fully armed by day and continued their killing and intimidation. Southerners succeeded in restoring white supremacy in the three remaining Reconstruction states—South Carolina, Louisiana, and Florida—under the “bargain of 1877” in which Republicans agreed to cease federal enforcement in exchange for the presidency after the disputed election of 1876, which had hinged on the electoral votes of the three states.

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Lynch mobs Vigilantism continued in the South, although full political disenfranchisement of African-Americans and social segregation did not harden until the 1890s. Even without a formal Klan or other regional groups, “instant vigilantism” led to lynchings of blacks throughout the 1880s, a period of relative fluidity in Southern race relations. An incident in Comanche County, Texas, in 1886 illustrates some ambiguity surrounding a lynching. Tom McNeel, a black man who worked for Sally Stephens, murdered her after she harshly reprimanded him. He was lynched two days later over the protest of a deputy sheriff. The leader of the mob, Green Saunders, demanded that all the local African-Americans, forty to fifty people, be run out of town. White residents were divided, some defending the blacks and opposing the expulsion. Whites threatened each other and a couple even fought. The blacks were forced out.11 The episode reveals divided white opinion, which would have been unlikely ten years later. Annual lynchings of African-Americans never fell below forty-nine between 1882 and 1889. Not all of these were in the South, but by far the majority were. Even the lowest figure of forty-nine represents four lynchings a month, compared to the period between 1936 and 1970 when the figure never rose above ten per year.12 The 1890s, most of which were a period of economic depression, witnessed white supremacy campaigns and the formalization of disenfranchisement and segregation. These campaigns were originally a “revolt of the rednecks,” small farmers angered at the way large landowners used the votes of their sharecroppers to control local elections. The appeal was to let whites fight out the political issues without the black votes influencing results. The original class protest evolved into a focus on racism in itself, preventing blacks from ever leaving their “place” as an inferior menial servant.13 By 1900, the system of full segregation and disenfranchisement was in place, surviving into the 1960s. With whites having gained their supremacy through the state, one might think they could be more secure. Actually the 1890s and early 1900s were the peak period of lynchings, with 1892, the beginning of the nationwide depression, as the highest year with 161 or over three lynchings per week.14 Most of these were secret nighttime events, but others were elaborate public affairs with huge crowds and several people lynched on wooden gallows built for the occasion. Lynching became particularly savage with cruel tortures or mutilations of the victims. Whites justifying lynching argued that blacks were eager to rape white women, and they were doing the naturally honorable thing to punish savage rapists. Actually, most people

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lynched were charged with other offenses, ranging from refusing to step aside for a white man to competing economically with a white rival. Most of the victims were young men, often not known to the white and black community, a “strange negro.” Such young men, even those locally known, represented a new type who had never experienced slavery and lacked a proper deferential attitude. Most lynchings were in sparsely populated rural areas witnessing rapid black population increase, new unknown people apparently without any roots.15 The state had its own means of controlling African-Americans: police, prisons, and chain gangs, but many people considered state procedures too slow for a crime requiring instant execution. Nevertheless lynchers were acting as an auxiliary to the state, carrying out its policy of white supremacy while saving its money. Although a few local sheriffs resisted lynch mobs in the name of due process of law, most were absent or stood aside when crowds broke into jails to seize black prisoners. Some Southern States, including Alabama and South Carolina, passed laws punishing officials who aided lynch mobs, but they were not effective.16

The second Ku Klux Klan The Ku Klux Klan made its second appearance as a formal organization in 1915. Founded by a Georgia minister, George Simmons, it experienced its greatest expansion under Texas dentist Hiram Evans in the 1920s. Although it was inspired by a 1905 novel, The Klansman, and the 1915 film Birth of a Nation, which glorified the first Klan, it was neither exclusively Southern nor focused only on African-Americans. The second Klan emphasized local issues, targeting anybody or any behavior that was out of line with majority opinion and values: “the Negro, the Jew, the Roman Catholic … the alien, …, dope, bootlegging, graft, nightclubs and road houses, unfair business dealings, sex, marital ‘goings-on’ and scandalous behavior.” Left-wing radicals and labor organizers, where they were active, were also prime targets. Klan organizers were instructed to ask local people what bothered them the most, and those concerns became the Klan’s concerns. Most victims of Klan intimidation were “immoral” Protestants, especially violators of Prohibition in the 1920s, though their rhetoric most often condemned Catholics and immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe and where there were large numbers, African-Americans.17

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The second Klan was organized from top down with a hierarchy reaching from the Grand Wizard at the top to the ordinary men, and many women, members. Like the first Klan whose uniforms were a heterogeneous collection of homemade ghost or demon outfits, the second Klan’s uniform of the familiar white robe and hood was both an identifier and a disguise. Masses of hooded men signified strength; the robes also protected members from arrest or retaliation. The Klan stressed secrecy, although many of its activities were very public and local people usually knew who the Klansmen were. The second Klan was more than a vigilante movement. It combined political and cultural protest during the conflicts of the 1920s and formed a fellowship or community for people who resented a rapidly changing society. For many members, it was social club where they were free to vent their nativist and racist ideas while enjoying a chicken dinner. However, it terrorized people who were its targets, and some members relished the violence.18 It could be found in every state, with 4 million members at its peak in 1924, most of whom were solid middle-class citizens. It reached its greatest political influence in Midwestern and Mountain Western states, where it sometimes elected governors and members of state legislatures. It was powerful enough in the early 1920s to stage mass marches in Washington, DC. In 1926, the Klan’s powerful Indiana leader D.C. Stephenson was convicted of abduction, rape, and murder of a young woman. His hypocrisy cost the Klan thousands of members and ended the nationwide power of the second Klan. Membership was only 30,000 by 1930. After being sentenced to life imprisonment, Stephenson revealed the names of Indiana politicians, including the governor, who were either members or were bribed by the Klan to support its agenda. The second Klan was intimately involved with cooperative public officials throughout its realm. At its peak in 1924, the Klan boasted that it controlled half of the nation’s state legislatures and had helped elect sixteen US senators and many representatives.19 The Federal Government, as it had done with the American Protective League (APL) during the First World War, urged citizens to cooperate in enforcing Prohibition in the early 1920s. The Klan and its allies, the Anti-Saloon League and Women’s Christian Temperance Union, took on the task with enthusiasm. National leaders cautioned against vigilante excesses but local groups acted with uninhibited zeal in raiding moonshiners, bootleggers, and illegal saloons— especially if they were associated with Catholics, Jews, Eastern and Southern Europeans, and African-Americans. Klansmen and their allies saw themselves as aiding local police and federal officials or doing the job when they were unable or unwilling. Cooperative justices of the peace gave the vigilantes blank arrest

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warrants; police chiefs and sheriffs deputized them. They themselves joined the Klan in large numbers, sometimes bringing the entire department with them. The police appreciated the assistance of the Klan when they raided bootleggers; the Klansmen enjoyed the legitimation of working with public officers.20 In one California town, the police force patrolled in full Klan regalia. In Indiana, the Klan resurrected the nineteenth-century Anti-horse Thief Associations (AHTA), which were legitimated by a law authorizing citizens to form bands to detecting not only horse thieves but “felons” generally.21 In so far as it achieved its form of social order, the Protestant Prohibition order, the Klan was of the “constructive” type of vigilante movement. However, the Klan did arouse opposition not only among the growing, though still small, number of civil libertarians during the 1920s but also among ordinary people who in some areas responded violently, stoning or shooting at Klan meetings and parades.22 Members of the groups it targeted as immoral also responded defensively or aggressively. In Williamson County, southern Illinois, class, ethnic, and religious conflict simmered beneath a labor struggle between coal miners and the company, which was determined to break their union in 1921. There were some killings of both sides, but workers carried out the worst, shooting down or torturing captured guards, strikebreakers, and plant managers. After the “Herrin massacre,” respectable citizens organized a Law Enforcement League, which soon allied with the Klan in an effort to clear out the county’s vice districts. The vigilantes went to see the head of the US Prohibition Bureau, who agreed to provide agents to supervise raids and prosecute offenders if the vigilantes could produce evidence of violations. They hired a “noted sleuth” from Kansas, Seth Young, who found the proof they needed. Under federal agents’ command, the vigilantes targeted local Italians and did capture a leading bootlegger, but they also raided ordinary people’s homes. The people appealed to the Italian Consul in Springfield, who uncovered a “reign of terror: rough treatment, theft, and planted evidence.” Raids continued, prompting Ora Thomas, a miner, and the local sheriff to form a counter-organization, the “Knights of the Flaming Circle,” which engaged in shoot-outs with vigilantes, including one inside a hospital. The Kansas sleuth took over Herrin’s government, jailing the mayor and sheriff. Illinois’ governor brought in the National Guard to restore order, and the Federal Prohibition Bureau withdrew support for the vigilantes. Violence continued with Ora Thomas and Seth Young killing each other in a gun fight. Though the Klan’s power rapidly declined in 1925, it had shut down illegal saloons and bootleggers and driven over 3,000 immigrants from Herrin.23

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Old animosities did not die: into the 1940s, locals knew who the “kluckers” and “anti-kluckers” were.24 An offshoot of the second Klan was a Midwestern paramilitary group, the Black Legion. Founded by a group of Ohio men in the mid-1920s, it spread to adjoining states and may have reached 100,000 members. They wore black robes and hoods with a skull and crossbones, were organized in a military chain of command, and were even more violent than the Klan. The Legion concentrated on anti-union activities and was especially strong in the heavy industrial areas of the Midwest. Under an able former Klan leader, it was effective in recruiting members of the police and local politicians during the 1930s. In Detroit, Michigan, there were 100 police members of the Legion, possibly including the police chief; in Pontiac, the chief and thirteen officers, along with the county prosecutor and his entire staff. Other recruits were supervisors in industrial plants, especially automobile factories. The Legion cooperated with company police and detective agencies who provided labor spies. Legionnaires killed or beat union organizers, and blew up the United Auto Workers headquarters minutes after the union secretary left for home. Police never investigated the murder of union organizers, but the Black Legion collapsed in 1937 after no fewer than fifty members were convicted of murder and beatings. The murder victim was a Catholic auto worker whom Legionnaires accused of abusing his Protestant wife. Since he was not a union organizer, the police took the case seriously and arrested a “trigger man” named Dayton Dean. Dean then implicated the members who were tried and convicted, and he and twelve others received life sentences for murder. The remainder were sentenced for up to twenty years in prison. Anti-labor violence did not end with the Legion, but many Americans now were more sympathetic to union organizing.25

Vigilance and vigilantism during the First World War George Simmons, founder of the second Klan, had been partly inspired by his membership in an Atlanta group connected with the American Protective League (APL), an organization of volunteers dedicated to attacking leftists, individuals who avoided the draft, and anyone they thought endangered the war effort by behavior or speech. He originally hoped to follow the APL’s pattern of alliance with the Department of Justice during the First World War. Simmons’s emphasis on Klan secrecy derived from not only the first Klan but also the APL. The new Klan had an official in each chapter, the Nighthawk, whose job

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was to investigate new members and individuals the Klan thought were acting illegally or immorally. Texas Klan chapters had a well-developed undercover and surveillance system, including wiretapping, interception of telegrams, and spies in local post offices, all tactics used by the APL.26 The First World War marked the Federal Government’s commitment to political policing, control of groups or individuals deemed threatening to the state itself. This meant left-wing radicals, pacifists, draft evaders, aliens, and citizens who were or had been subjects of the German and Austro-Hungarian Empires, anybody who criticized the war and its conduct in any form or was suspected of disloyalty.27 However, the government did not develop this political policing by rapidly expanding the number of its own agents in either the Treasury Department’s Secret Service or the Department of Justice’s Bureau of Investigation (BI). Instead, it supported a group of 250,000 citizen volunteers, the APL, which combined both investigation of violators and enforcement of wartime laws. Unlike European governments with their own secret police, the Federal Government continued an American tradition of embracing not only local but private policing. Albert M. Briggs, a Chicago businessman, conceived of an organization of civilian volunteers to help the government fight the menace of German spies and saboteurs who seemed to threaten the nation even before entry into the war. Briggs visited the Chicago superintendent of the BI, who suggested that he and his friends provide a fleet of cars for his understaffed office. During the buildup to the declaration of war in April 1917, Briggs proposed a nationwide organization of volunteers to work under BI supervision. Director A. Bruce Bielaski accepted the idea as it became clear that the United States would enter the war. The APL was definitely a businessman’s organization with top leaders of the highest social status down to more ordinary citizens, preferably workers with proven loyalty to their employers, as investigators in the field. Some members advocated including women, especially their wives, but the national leaders refused. Women did perform useful roles such as driving cars to carry people to jail whom the men rounded up. Although individual members were sworn to secrecy, organizers reported to federal agents and local police chiefs. Their duty was to “report any disloyalty, industrial disturbance, or other matter ‘likely to injure or embarrass’ the Government of the United States.”28 Although the BI accepted the APL as an auxiliary, other agencies pressed for their own role in domestic policing. The secretary of the Treasury wanted to expand his secret service into a central intelligence agency, and Military Intelligence (MI) sought to monopolize domestic spying for itself. Other

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citizens’ groups, like the American Defense Society (ADS), supported by Theodore Roosevelt, also were rivals of the APL. After a period of bureaucratic conflicts and public debate, the APL finally won the role of domestic spy for itself, absorbing other groups including the ADS as branches or auxiliaries by the summer of 1918. Similarly, MI began using APL members for undercover detective work. The attorney general and the BI director discovered that they had acquired a sleuth hound that was constantly straining, and sometimes breaking, the governmental leash. The APL immediately issued badges with the words “secret service,” which the Treasury secretary protested. Eventually they carried cards stating that they worked with approval and under the direction of the attorney general. Local leaders of the APL eagerly sought full powers of arrest. The government was reluctant to do that, but they did receive ambiguous directions that APL members could “hold and detain” people they charged with subversion. Although the attorney general and national leaders tried to make it clear that the APL did not have arrest powers, local leaders and members took the meaning of “hold and detain” to be virtually power of arrest. National leaders found it hard to restrain the excesses of local units, similar to the problem of the first Ku Klux Klan. Government officials were not very vigilant in restraining the APL despite occasional sharply worded letters. They shared the group’s views of threats to national security. Originally the APL was supposed to expose German spies and saboteurs, but it actually never found any—nor did the government itself, trying only one man for espionage who was sentenced to death but died in prison. Many Americans saw strikes in crucial war industries as equivalent to sabotage, which was a problem eagerly taken up by the businessmen of the APL. Employers, especially in the lumbering and mining industries of the West, had long hoped to destroy the radical socialist labor organization, the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW). The “Wobblies” fought back, and the conflict had been going on for years before the war allowed employers to brand them with disloyalty and aiding the enemy. In Washington state, the Minute Men, a vigilante group that was later part of the APL, led the attack against the IWW, raiding headquarters, breaking up meetings, and arresting members on dubious charges. Vigilantes lynched Frank Little, an anti-war IWW organizer. Jails became overcrowded with Wobblies. In Chicago, the APL joined BI agents in massive raids on the IWW national headquarters and headquarters of the Socialist Party in September 1917, confiscating everything they thought suspicious and destroying the rest. They invaded IWW leaders’ homes, looking for evidence linking them with the Germans. Similar raids were carried out across the country. By the end of the

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war, with their prominent leaders in prison, the IWW was an exhausted remnant of its once-robust self. Attacks on labor were aided by wide-ranging national and state sedition and espionage laws, which defined both so broadly that they could be used to punish any attempt to improve workers’ conditions in war-related industries as well as virtually any criticism of the war effort. When the United States entered the war, the army developed plans for nationwide conscription instead of relying on volunteers. Under the Selective Service Act, boards made up of local citizens administered registering and classifying the men called up. After some controversy, the APL won the responsibility of enforcement of the draft, finding evaders, “slackers” who either did not register or did not turn up for their military physical exam. APL members stopped young men in the street, demanding to see their draft cards, though after complaints, the government limited that activity. They investigated young men’s lives and in cities participated in huge “slacker raids,” rounding up thousands of people who could not prove their draft status and crowding them in to jails or any space that could hold them. Most were eventually discharged, and the APL had to deal with vocal criticism for the first time.29 The Federal Government delegated the APL to deal with problems of saloons and brothels located near military camps, creating a federal vice squad of volunteers. A half-mile dry zone and a five-mile off-limits to prostitutes surrounded all army and navy installations and training camps. The Selective Service Act gave the military power to protect soldiers from alcohol and prostitution. The major concern was venereal disease, a serious problem revealed in the troops sent into Mexico in 1916. The APL had power to watch “every soldier in uniform and every saloon” and brothel that served them. The APL enthusiastically worked with state officials to combat bootleggers and moonshiners and close down red-light districts. It also aided enforcement of a new policy requiring incarceration until cured of all women found to have venereal disease. Attacking alcohol and vice were traditional vigilante activities, but from the army’s point of view, they were entirely constructive, reducing American soldiers’ and sailors’ venereal disease rate to between 3 and 4 percent, compared to Allied forces’ 30 percent. Unlike the slacker raids, progressive reformers did not worry about the APL’s power over the “sex and drinking customs of Americans.”30 They had, after all, been active in anti-vice campaigns themselves, as in the case of New York City’s Committee of Fourteen, which had been investigating prostitution in hotels, bars, and restaurants since 1905. The Committee joined the APL in suppressing prostitution around military installations.31

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Another domestic spying group that reported to the government, though it was not officially given auxiliary status like the APL, was the National Civic Federation (NCF). Founded in 1900, the NCF included businessmen, conservative labor leaders, and progressive reformers concerned with reducing the labor conflict that marked the early twentieth century. It opposed both the intransigent employers of the National Association of Manufactures and leftwing radical groups like the IWW that preached labor militancy. The NCF’s founder, Ralph Easley, was mostly concerned about anarchists and the IWW, which became apparent after 1914. Soon after the war in Europe began, explosions shook St. Patrick’s Cathedral and Bronx courthouse, and a judge who had sentenced anarchists narrowly escaped death. In the first seven months of 1915, ten bombs went off on ships in New York Harbor; blasts racked three Dupont munitions plants, a railroad freight depot, and grain elevator. The worst was on July 30, 1916, when a giant explosion heard for miles occurred at the Black Tom, New Jersey, munitions depot. Surely German saboteurs were at work in this neutral nation, which shipped war materiel to the British and French. The New York Police’s new Anarchist and Bomb Squad rounded up German, Austro-Hungarian, and Italian immigrants suspected of planting the bombs, but many people were afraid the Federal Government was not able to prevent sabotage. Ralph Easley joined many citizens and government officials who suspected that Germans had recruited resident anarchists, before the war seen as America’s most ruthless enemy, to carry out the bombings. Easley hoped that, as the APL had become an arm of the BI, the NCF could be officially connected to the Department of War to expose anarchist plots. The department refused but secretly accepted NCF reports throughout the war and later. The NCF established a secret service bureau to investigate German saboteurs, anarchists, and members of the IWW. Two of its investigators, suspiciously echoing contemporary fiction, described American anarchists as tightly governed by three leaders, the triangle. They uncovered networks of anarchist cells, including one led by an Italian priest who plotted to blow up Dupont’s giant Hercules powder plant during the work day. The anarchists argued among themselves about the diabolical plan, finally referring it to the triangle, who vetoed it as taking too many innocent workers’ lives. Anarchists were certainly against the war, but it is difficult to believe they were working with German agents as the NCF maintained. Easley duly submitted reports to MI, apparently trying to convince authorities that their investigations were so important they were essential to the war effort.32 The NCF’s joint labor-corporate character

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ended in the 1920s, and Easley became a fervid anti-Communist and later anti-New Dealer. Easley lost credibility when he was twice duped by con men who got him to pay their expenses while hunting down nonexistent or forged documents that outlined a vast Soviet conspiracy. The organization folded in 1950.33 The First World War era, however short, fostered many spontaneous and organized domestic security groups besides the APL and the NCF. They ranged from elite groups like the National Security League, ADS, and Committee for Protective Work for Girls (women who patrolled around military camps) to rougher groups like the Sedition Slammers, Terrible Threateners, Ku Klux Klan, or Arizona’s anti-labor union Citizen’s Protective League and Workmen’s Loyalty League. The Boy Spies gave boys a chance to serve the war effort like their fathers and mothers. The proliferation of wartime groups reflected a blending of vigilance and vigilantism. During the war, the Federal Government called on all citizens to be vigilant against internal threats to national security, but citizens often interpreted that as taking the law into their own hands or punishing people who were not criminals by any definition—vigilantism. Although President Wilson eloquently denounced “mob rule” in 1918, and usually Federal and state governments frowned on unduly violent activities, they did not exert any force to quell them.34 The year 1919 was an annus horribilis. As the year began, many people were still dying from the great Spanish Flu epidemic, which killed more Americans than all the US casualties of the Great War. The year saw a wave of hundreds of strikes throughout the nation. Workers lost the Seattle general strike, the Boston police strike, and the great steel strike but strikes made middle-class Americans nervous. The economy was experiencing a postwar depression. Sudden demobilization of war industries made it hard for returning veterans to find jobs, and many who had good jobs lost them. Chicago and Washington, DC, went through several days of race riots in which blacks dared to fight back against white attacks. Beginning with an explosion in the spring, the “great red scare” of 1919–20 made life perilous for leftists of all types. Finally, to add insult to injury, the Chicago White Sox threw the World Series in a deal with gamblers, earning the name “black sox.” Where were the nation and the world going? Despite many people’s desire for the APL to carry on after the war, its founders disbanded the group in 1919. The Russian Revolution of 1917 and Russian peace with the Germans produced a new enemy, Bolsheviks or Communists. Most members were content with having served their country and cherished their “honorable discharges,” but many former members took up with renewed zeal

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the old cause of suppressing leftists and labor organizers and “cleaning out” their community of violators of conventional morality and racial subordination. Racial subordination took on new urgency following the race riots of East St. Louis in 1917 and Chicago of 1919, both of which had been set off by whites. Blacks’ self-defense made many whites worry about the “uppity” attitudes and behavior of returning Black veterans who had experienced more equal treatment in France. In 1919, seventy-six African-Americans were lynched.35 It was common to attribute black “restlessness” to Bolshevik or IWW propaganda. Military Intelligence began a program of spying on African-American leaders in 1917 to trace red influence based partly on reports from the National Civil Federation.36 Many former APL members joined the Ku Klux Klan. Although as civilians APL members were not eligible, they could work with the new American Legion veterans organization, which functioned as a vigilante group against leftists. Following the April 1919 explosion of a bomb sent to a Georgia senator’s home and revelation of thirty-six other packages addressed to the President and other government officials, the “red scare” officially began, continuing into 1920. Legionnaires and former APL members broke up socialists’ 1919 May Day march in Cleveland, Ohio, and other cities. In June, the new Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer’s house was bombed. The government and vigilantes declared war on the same enemy. Palmer enlisted young J. Edgar Hoover to coordinate massive raids on groups affiliated with the young American Communist Party. They outdid the slacker raids in arbitrary arrests and harsh tactics. Once again APL members came to the front; MI resumed recruiting of former APL veterans to spy on radicals. While the government had to focus on alien Communists for its program of deportation, vigilantes were less restricted—they again concentrated on anybody whose ideas smelled of socialism, including union organizers of the wave of strikes that swept the nation in 1919. In Centralia, Washington, Legionnaires and other vigilantes attacking the IWW headquarters met with gunfire. Although five of their ranks were killed, they prevailed, capturing the IWW leader whom they castrated and killed, dragging his body through the streets wrapped in the American flag.37 In 1919, the American Civil Liberties Union reported fifty episodes of Legionnaire violence.38 The Legion continued its anti-unionism through the 1930s as valuable muscle against strikers and its anti-left mission through the Cold War years, though less violently. Although the Federal Government would no longer delegate domestic spying to private groups, they became vital pillars of anti-Communism as providers of information to legislators and law enforcement officials.

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The third Klux Klan Decimated by the Stephenson and other scandals enveloping local leaders who engaged in financial peculations or violated the Klan’s moral standards, and repeal of Prohibition, the Second Klan carried on, mostly in the South, through the 1930s. In most places, it disappeared or was only a lingering remnant, but in parts of the South, it continued to wield political influence and flog undesirables. In areas where the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) tried to organize Southern workers, Klansmen gladly joined other vigilantes, company police, sheriffs, and others in threatening, beating, or killing union organizers. Local businessmen heartily endorsed this role for the Klan. Central Florida was a stronghold, where night riders attacked African-Americans and the usual suspects of immoral behavior. Sometimes violence got out of hand and aroused national protests, but in some areas, the Klan enforced silence. A bit too much closeness to the German-American Bund (Nazis) weakened the Klan in some localities, but in the end, it, like some gangsters, succumbed to the Bureau of Internal Revenue. The Klan was held liable for taxes it had not paid in the 1920s and was forced to disband in 1944.39 It was not dormant for very long: as the civil rights movement spread in the 1950s, it reappeared in its third and present incarnation devoted to its original mission of white supremacy. The third Klan was a collection of local organizations of varying strength, mainly in the deep South. It usually abandoned ritualized lynching in favor of simply murdering its victims. Alabama and Mississippi witnessed the worst Klan violence with murders of civil rights activists and bombing of homes and churches. The Klan was responsible for at least sixteen deaths in those two states between 1951 and 1967. In Alabama, it was allied with Governor George Wallace and Birmingham’s police chief, Bull Connor. When Freedom Riders, activists traveling throughout the South to register AfricanAmerican voters in 1961, reached Birmingham, Connor allowed Klansmen fifteen minutes to attack them before moving in with official police beatings. Many police officers throughout the South were Klan members. The Klan was essentially a fighting arm of the segregationist regime in the South, acting with tacit and open support of public officials. After passage of civil rights laws in the 1960s, the Federal Government, at first reluctantly, began to crackdown on Klan terrorism and secured several murder convictions. As under Reconstruction, the Klan retreated, but it has continued to engage in violence over the years, not all of which has been punished. The Klan was no longer an arm of public authority in various states, but one of the

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racist hate groups that has grown since achievement of civil rights for AfricanAmericans. Klansmen joined protests against bussing students to enforce school integration in the early 1970s in both the North and South, destroying ten busses by bombs in Pontiac, Michigan, in 1971. The worst violence was in Greensboro, North Carolina, in 1979. Klan members and Nazis killed five Communist Worker Party members and wounded ten others, who were participating in an anti-Klan protest demonstration. All-white jurors at both the state and federal levels voted for acquittal of murder charges, stating that they could not be sure the racists inaugurated the violence.40 In 1980, Chattanooga, Tennessee, Klansmen shot into a group of African-Americans, injuring four elderly women. They were acquitted of attempted murder, but the women won a civil judgment against them the next year.41 In Alabama, in 1981, Klan members lynched eighteen-yearold Michael Donald, an African-American whom they simply kidnapped off the street as a demonstration of “Klan Strength in Alabama.” After FBI investigation, two men were convicted of murder. One was sentenced to death, the first white man executed for murdering an African-American since 1913. An all-white jury also granted civil damages to Donald’s mother, which financially destroyed the Klan group involved.42 Violence is proving costly. Today there is no unified national Klan: various, sometimes competing, groups are part of a growing network of white supremacist organizations who are continuing the cultural battles of the 1920s against sexual liberation, immigration, African-Americans, and urban crime. Klan groups saw an increase from 72 to 190 in 2014–16 but dropped to 72 in 2017. The earlier rise was partly animated by controversies over display of the Confederate battle flag. The decline is unclear, but there are many other choices for white supremacists these days.43 The members of these groups believe they are left behind in a changing society and they seek to restore their version of a past white America. Whether on horseback or in cars, whether organized or fragmented, whether given authority or claiming it, whether compensating for lack of law enforcement or delegated by it, vigilantes have been a fixture of American life since its earliest days. While vigilantism is not unique to the United States, there have been many more distinctive movements, in greater variety, than in other Western nations.

Figure 3  Security Guard at Chevy Chase Ice Palace, 1942. Edwin Rosskam photo, Farm Security Administration, War Information office. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, LC-USF34-012857-D (b&w film neg.).

4

Security Guards and Patrols

Private security in some form is as old as people having property worth protection or injuries needing redress. It is a form of self-defense or protection by individuals or groups, conducted for clients by profit-making companies. In the Western world, modern public day and night patrol police under central command was not invented until 1829, with London’s Metropolitan Police. In Britain before 1829, and afterward in areas that did not yet have “New Police,” private prosecution associations pooled contributions of well-to-do members to pay for prosecutions they themselves initiated (usually for theft). A persistent example was the Worsted Committee’s Inspectorate, a specialized private police and prosecution organization in the wool-making cities of Yorkshire. This force was mainly concerned with violations within the factories, especially theft of material for workers’ own use and failure to complete the contracted number of woolen goods. The committee was a prosecution society; the Inspectorate, a detective police with power of arrest. Remarkably, this force was able to operate parallel to public police forces and lasted until after the Second World War.1

Early private security in the United States The United States followed a similar policing pattern as Britain. “Anti-horse thief associations,” made up of private citizens who served as both police and prosecutors, informally as vigilantes or formally by bringing cases to court, could be found in rural areas early in the nineteenth century. An urban version appeared in Boston in 1821, when businessmen hired private guards following a rash of burglaries. As in England, American towns and cities relied on civilian constables, detectives attached to courts, and night watchmen before creation of modern public forces. Two former officers of St. Louis’s night watch established an “independent police” of guards in 1846, several years before the city established

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its modern force.2 Similarly, before Chicago developed its modern police, Edward Barney proposed to the city council in 1851 an “independent” police for the whole city. Their pay would come from fines they collected and fees levied on crime victims to pay for investigations. Essentially both perpetrators of minor crimes and victims of more serious ones would finance this private police. The council rejected the proposal, not because of any particular objection to private policing but because Barney was not a resident of Chicago.3 G.T. Moore and Allan Pinkerton established their forces of guards in Chicago in 1857–58. These guards protected private property, looking for unlocked doors and windows, evidence of breaking and entering, anything suspicious on the property whose owners paid for the service. Moore emphasized that his men walked small beats, so they could check locks and windows four times in an hour. Pinkerton’s Protective Police Patrol could arrest people on such property but not outside of it. Pinkerton patrols detained fifty-three people for larceny and disorderly conduct in 1858. They also guarded outdoor events that attracted a large audience. They wore uniforms before the later public police did. In his inaugural address, Mayor Wentworth complained about Chicago’s public police but noted that “a highly respectable private police is doing a lucrative business. Our citizens have ceased to look to the public police for protection, for the detection of culprits or the recovery of stolen property.” In 1858, he contracted with Pinkerton to have his patrolmen watch for pickpockets at outdoor events.4 By the 1890s, both a high Pinkerton official and the Chicago Chief of Police testified that the two forces got along well. The police, who did not have manpower to check locks and investigate buildings, were glad that the patrols performed those functions.5 The jobs of these patrolmen were considerably less dramatic than the Pinkerton detectives unless they served to protect property of employers during labor disputes by making sure a path was clear for strikebreakers to enter a factory. The descendants of these guards are the Pinkerton Guards of today, although the firm is no longer in the family. The New York Times reported that in 1905 there were 4,000 private police patrolling the streets of Manhattan and Brooklyn. This was equal to the regular city police force walking their beats at night. One company employed 1,000 private guards to patrol an area marked by the Produce Exchange (lower Manhattan) and 95th Street going uptown, and crosstown between Madison Ave. and Riverside Drive. The latest innovation among wealthy New Yorkers was to have a uniformed private policeman stationed inside their house at night instead of only outside. This inside man answered all telephone calls and the door. Generally his responsibility was to make sure the house was completely

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secure. They had arrest powers. Less wealthy people grouped together to pay for private night patrols. Police complained that the private officers gave them dubious information that suggested they were spies. The private officers denied this and pointed out in their turn that too many police were given “special details,” guarding public property like hospitals but also private property like Grand Central Station at night, reducing their effectiveness as night patrols. New Yorkers had to pay private police to fill the gap.6

New York’s Central Park police New York City’s Central Park police were a unique nineteenth-century form of private policing. When the park opened in 1858, it was operated by a stateappointed board of commissioners, independent of the city government. The commissioners created their own police force for the park instead of relying on the city police, even though at the time they were also under state supervision. Headquartered in the former State Arsenal, the twenty-four gray-uniformed men of the park police patrolled the paths and meadows less to deal with actual crime than to enforce a long list of park rules. The commissioners thought of them as teachers of people who were used to plucking wildflowers, running over fields, collecting wood for their fires, swimming or fishing in the ponds, or driving carriages too fast. The Times was impressed with their “military order and appearance,” looking much better than the city police. They even arrested a judge for walking on the grass. At first, he was outraged but soon was glad to have “at last found policemen who do their duty.” The park police had full arrest powers, and in 1859, their first year, they arrested 220 people out of 2 million visitors. Perhaps the people inclined to walk on the grass or swim in the ponds learned their lesson, for the 1859 figure was more than eight times the arrests for the entire following decade. City police officers called them “sparrow cops” for both their gray uniforms and easy work of chasing sparrows. They were abolished in 1898 but reappeared in 1932 without arms, arrest powers, or uniforms.7 Central Park is now a regular city police precinct (not such a cushy job in the 1970s and 1980s) supplemented by Parks Department Enforcement Patrol officers and civilian volunteers who make up the Mounted Auxiliary Unit, founded in 1996. They answer visitors’ questions and participate in crowd control at major events in the park.8 The Parks Enforcement Patrol was established in 1981 after decades of efforts going back to 1919 when the Bronx Parks Commissioner established volunteer “inspectors” to prevent vandalism.

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The officers wear distinctive uniforms and can issue summonses and make arrests but are not armed. The Patrol, as its title indicates, is under a city agency responsible for all large parks but includes the volunteers of the mounted unit.9

The ASPCA Henry Bergh, a New York gentleman who was dismayed by teamsters’ poor treatment of their horses, founded the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA) in 1866. After rescuing a girl from parental abuse in 1873, Bergh and a friend founded the Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Children. By 1900, there were 354 anti-cruelty societies; most were “humane societies” that included children as well as animals; others focused on one or the other. Bergh was first to seek a state law against cruelty to animals and then obtained the state’s permission to enforce it. The ASPCA and groups that followed in other places became private policing agencies. In most states, individual society agents applied for police powers to local officials, who had the power to grant or deny them. Most of the societies’ work was acting on cases of cruelty that people brought to them rather than patrolling streets, looking out for incidents. Nevertheless, ASPCA officers in an 1893 photo are hardly distinguishable from police officers, wearing dark (likely blue) uniforms, badges, and police-style helmets. They could, if necessary, use force and make arrests. Generally, though, the societies sought to prevent cruelty by their active presence and reserve power rather than arrest people for committing it. Most cases did not lead to arrest and trial; the societies hoped to educate people.10

Anti-horse Thief Associations In rural areas, horses were valuable for transportation and agricultural work. Horse thieves, who often worked across state borders to avoid arrest, inflicted serious loss on their victims. Clark County, Missouri, on the border of Iowa and Illinois, had a wave of horse thefts in 1853 when Major David McKee formed the first AHTA. Missouri was divided between Union and Confederate sympathizers, and the brutal guerilla warfare in the state fostered crime, including stealing horses. When McKee returned home from the service because of a disability in 1863, he reformed the association, which eventually covered sixteen Midwestern and Western states, and in 1916 claimed a membership

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of 50,000. Often seen as vigilantes, the association was more like an organized private police force or private prosecution society because it turned captured crooks over to law enforcement for prosecution and trial. Members provided evidence and testimony. The group had an efficient method of tracing and capturing thieves. When a member, or nonmember who had to pay a fee, reported a stolen horse (or other livestock as well), the president of the local branch contacted authorities and then assigned the horse’s owner and two other members to pursue the thief. Presumably these men were armed. When they caught the thief, they turned him over to a six-person vigilance committee, which determined whether there was enough evidence to prosecute. If so, they conducted the prosecution themselves. If the thief crossed state lines, the locals coordinated to have a group waiting for him in the bordering state. The group was so committed to upholding the law that it did not worry if the cost of pursuit and prosecution was greater than the value of the stolen animal. In Indiana, the AHTA was legitimated by a law authorizing citizens to form bands to detect not only horse thieves but “felons” generally. By the 1920s, as automobiles and tractors began to appear in rural areas, the value of horses dropped, and states changed horse theft from a felony to a misdemeanor. The AHTA declined in membership, though it remains today as a social organization in some small towns. In 1996, Debi Metcalfe revived the group as Stolen Horse, International, after her own horse was stolen. She was able to use the Internet and other modern resources to recover the horse, and today the organization is proud of a 51 percent rate of recovery of horses whose loss is reported on the first day of the theft.11

Slave patrols Slavery gave rise to a very early form of private policing, the slave patrols. Local white men composed them, who sometimes were required to serve on these patrols. In some states patrolling was the major duty of the state militia. They rode at night, looking for African-Americans, slave or free, who were out without a pass from their master, violating curfew laws, gathering in illegal assemblies, or otherwise stepping out of their place. Dating back to the early eighteenth century, the patrols were often made up of both slaveholders and nonslaveholders. They were allowed to punish slaves who violated the restrictions, usually by flogging. Since slaves had monetary value and value as able-bodied workers to masters, there were some limits on the injury the patrollers could do.12

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Except for slave patrols, private policing in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries suggests later patterns: patrols of limited areas, patrols employed by individuals or firms, private or volunteer police as supplements to the regular force.

Guards and patrols today Private security guards are ubiquitous today. They protect banks, hotels and resorts, corporate office buildings, large and small retailers, shopping malls, factories, stadiums and auditoriums, and gated communities, only part of their many assignments. Armed guards protect money and valuables in transit. Railroad police guard railroad property. Campus police patrol college campuses and sometimes surrounding areas as does the University of Chicago campus force responsible for 15,000 students and 50,000 nearby residents.13 Many private police work in offices, monitoring home burglar alarm systems or security cameras. Bodyguards protect anybody who thinks him- or herself important enough to hire protectors of their life and privacy. Bouncers reject or eject undesirable customers in bars and clubs. Some private police are visible in uniforms, others blend into crowds in civilian dress. As of 2007, there were almost 1 million security guards who worked for firms that contracted with clients. There were nearly another million working directly for corporations and other organizations. Security guards of various sorts outnumber the more interesting private investigators. As of 1974, private firms devoted about 60–80 percent of their services to providing security, only the remainder to detective work.14 Private police amounted to more than twice the number of public police, 700,000.15 The US Department of Labor gives the number of security guards in May 2015 as 1,097,660. Presumably this is only those who work for security firms, not in-house security. Wages are not high: annual salaries ranged from $18,350 to $45,010. California (151,000), New York (113,000), and Texas (88,450) were the leaders in security guard employment.16 Training varies widely from state to state: forty-one states and District of Columbia require licenses for security guards, but twenty-two states have no training for unarmed guards, and fifteen of these have no training for armed guards. Alaska is among the strictest, requiring forty-eight hours training for unarmed guards and fifteen additional hours for armed guards. South Carolina, in contrast, requires only four hours of training for unarmed guards and four more for armed guards. Twenty-seven states did not bother to check armed guard

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applicants against the federal list of individuals banned from carrying guns, and nine did not even conduct a general criminal background check. Many security guards, whose job leads to twice as many injuries as other workers, have been quick-thinking heroes, but incidents of trigger-happy or corrupt guards have led to pressures for tighter regulation. Efforts in several state legislatures in 2015 were unsuccessful, blocked by anti-regulatory ideology and small security firms’ lobbying against increased training they said they could not afford. Some large firms supported regulation, but others did not want to see their profits reduced by increased training costs. Despite the danger of terrorist attacks, regulation and training of security guards, who often are first responders before the public police, seems to be a low priority.17

Private patrols Most security guards do not have police powers of arrest but have the ability to make a citizen’s arrest like anybody else. They have the right to order a person off the property they are protecting and detain and question him or her but must call the police to make sure the individual is arrested. In recent years, there has been a private security “mission creep,” the acquisition of police powers and ability to patrol outside the property of their employer. Most privatization of police functions is in areas of work that do not involve the “core” duties of investigation, arrest, search, and seizure. Dispatching officers to crime scenes, processing paperwork, and other office duties are assigned to civilians. Transporting of prisoners from police stations to county jails to hold them for trial is sometimes conducted by private security companies. This sort of work is uncontroversial, but assumption of traditional public police functions raises questions about the division between state and private authority. Public police work for a government; private police work for an employer or client. Should they have equal power? Courts have addressed this issue but not developed a general definition of what distinguishes public and private police authority.18 In some small towns, the government contracted with private firms to provide basic police functions. The first of these was Kalamazoo, Michigan, in the 1950s. The city contracted a private firm to patrol the streets and, having been deputized as sheriffs, arrest violators of traffic laws. The practice ended because of a technicality involving the extent of their arrest powers, along with a judge’s condemnation of the very idea of private policing. A private firm offered

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A History of Private Policing in the United States

Oro Valley, Arizona, full public safety services—fire and ambulance as well as police—in 1975. Town officials and the county sheriff had full power to manage these services, but the state agency responsible for licensing and training private police refused to support them, and the state attorney general ruled that the town could not commission the private officers as regular police. Remindersville Ohio and its unincorporated neighbor, Twinsburg, had been contracting for public police provided by the county. In 1981, a private firm offered to police the entire area for less money than the county charged. The villages were given full authority to hire, fire, and discipline the private officers. The arrangement was working well for two years, but adverse publicity in Newsweek magazine and other sources ended the private policing in 1983. Some towns in West Virginia, Florida, and Illinois contracted out full police services in the 1980s.19 Small jurisdictions continue to contract out police services. One of the latest is Sharpstown, a planned community that is a neighborhood of Houston, Texas. The Civic Association, a group of business people, did not renew its contract with the county sheriff for supplemental patrols in addition to the Houston police. Instead, the group granted a contract to SEAL Security Solutions. The company claimed it reduced crime by 61 percent within twenty months with more officers on patrol and at lower cost than formerly. However, according to Texas Monthly, Sharpstown still had the most total crime of any Houston neighborhood in 2013, the first year of SEAL patrols. Nevertheless, according to the head of the Civic Association, crime did drop from 304 burglary incidents in 2013 to 177 in 2014. In 2017, burglaries were up to 317. From a crime density map, Sharpstown appears to be an area that is mostly safe itself but surrounded by high-crime neighborhoods. The Civic Association leader said that the SEAL patrols made their contribution, but alert citizens and the Houston police had their share as well. The company essentially agrees: “We all work together, it’s not that we’re in here to replace law enforcement, that’s not what we do,” and that “the main difference between his firm and local police is his officers run proactive patrols rather than reacting to crime.”20 As of 2015, SEAL Security still provided patrols.21 Conflicting views about the success and nature of SEAL Security in Sharpstown reflect conservative endorsement of privatization and liberal skepticism about it. More common than contracting out basic police services for an entire area is private police that serve specific high-crime areas of cities. The Campus Police of Wayne State University, in Detroit, Michigan, patrol a four-mile radius around the campus as well as inside it. They are commissioned police officers with full arrest powers. Shopkeepers in the revived Midtown neighborhood near

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the campus welcome these privately employed officers, who actively work with the public police. Many business owners testify that the campus force has been essential to their security, due to the fact that it made 61 percent of the city’s arrests in 2015. Even though there are only sixty officers, the understaffed city police welcome them as valuable allies. The campus police have adopted the latest police technologies, including CompStat, a computerized system of locating high-crime areas and concentrating policing in them. This system, used by the city police, was vital in New York City’s drastic drop in crime since the 1990s. Another technology the campus police use is a sophisticated video surveillance system on and off the campus, which makes students and neighbors feel safer. The impact can be measured by Midtown’s 52 percent decrease in overall crime between 2008 and 2015.22 The Detroit city police are financially constrained by the diminishing tax base of a city losing population and businesses. In 2004, the Minneapolis, Minnesota, police developed a downtown “safe zone” that is patrolled by both public and private police, who outnumber the city officers by thirteen to one in the area. The police department has trained 600 security guards in making arrests, filing police reports, and testifying in court. Businesses in the safety zone paid for a video surveillance system shared with the police department, who in their turn share a police radio frequency with private security firms.23 The oldest public–private mix is San Francisco’s Patrol Specials, created by the city’s first police chief in 1847 as a supplement to the regular force. They wear blue uniforms with some modifications, carry arms but do not have arrest powers. They are monitored by San Francisco’s Police Commission but are paid by private corporations. They are not really patrols, mostly working as guards for various businesses and entertainment facilities. This sounds like a typical public–private arrangement, except that the police department and city council are both hostile to the patrols. This hostility may date back to 1975, when over 90 percent of the regular police went on strike. The patrols took over the police beats and are proud of their role today, However, no union worker, like the San Francisco police officers, likes a scab. By the later 1970s, there were over 400 Patrol Specials. A more recent source of tension is the SFPD’s 10B “rent a cop program,” which allows off-duty officers to work for organizers of large events and at construction sites, paid by the employers. The Patrol Specials charge that this program, established in 1982, was intended to be direct competition to them. The police noticed that the patrols had contracts with many businesses that squeezed out police officers hoping to raise their income. Under the program, officers are paid overtime rates ($100 per hour) by employers, so their overall salaries

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increase and consequently the base for their pension. In 1994, the department escalated its opposition to the patrols, revoking their arrest powers and changing their uniforms to a lighter blue than the regular police and a blue stripe down their pants leg, although to ordinary people they still looked like police. The patrols, though, said that they looked like “gussied up security guards.” In 2013, there were only twenty-six Patrol Specials officers remaining, and in 2014, only ten. The force seemed to be on the road to abolition by attrition.24 Members of the Patrol Specials sued the city and police department for various elements of the harassment, and a US District Court upheld their claim of contract violation but dismissed their complaints against specific city and police officials.25 They survive but only as a shadow of the once 400-strong private police. San Francisco is distinctive in rejecting privatization, resisting a nationwide trend. In the state of Virginia, an individual can petition a court to become a Special Conservator of the Peace, or SCOP, with the ability to carry a gun and make arrests. There is very little regulation of their behavior and adjudication of complaints against them. The state does not keep records of their arrests and citations. A recent law recently raised required training hours from 40 to 130 hours. The “Manassas Junction Police Department’s” founder is also its sole officer. Michael Youlen provides police services for nine apartment and townhouse complexes. Other SCOPs patrol corporate campuses and other facilities not routinely covered by the public police. The manager of several of the complexes Youlen patrols appreciates his services, crediting him with reducing disorder. He deals mainly with nuisances such as loitering, noise, minor drug offenses, and traffic violations. Anything serious he turns over to the police. Although the local district attorney has had no trouble with Youlen, he is dubious about SCOPs because people assume they are public police, and sometimes their sloppy evidence has undermined criminal cases. Juries do not perceive them as qualified, and some have dubious pasts. Some SCOPs in Virginia and other states have indeed been guilty of harassment, improper traffic stops, and other offenses. Virginia increased training hours, and as of 2015 was considering prohibiting SCOPs from calling themselves “police” without court approval. Youlen, in anticipation, changed his name to “Manassas Junction LLC.”26 Private companies and businesses, and even the Federal Government itself, employed private security companies in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, which devastated New Orleans in 2005. The rationale for their use was prevention of looting and other crimes. The city police force had virtually collapsed, but Army and National Guard personnel were present. Several private firms arrived in New Orleans, including Wackenhut, American Security, Intercon, and even

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an Israeli company called ISI (Instinctive Shooters International). The number of private security firms registered in Louisiana rose from 185 to 235. One of these companies, providing 150 men, was Blackwater, which was working under a federal contract. This was the same outfit that had obtained a notorious reputation when its men killed numerous Iraqi civilians while carrying out its assignment of protecting Americans. Its men dressed as if they were still in Iraq, in full combat gear with pistols strapped to their legs and assault rifles. At first, the private companies had little work, but later some of their men got involved in a shoot-out. A British-based firm, ArmorGroup, supplied fifty men who were “mostly Americans” who were formerly in law enforcement. They wore a uniform of blue Polo shirts with khaki pants and carried pistols. The head of the company described them as “licensed, mature people.” One of the Blackwater men told a reporter, “This is a Trend. You are going to see a lot more guys like us in these situations.” He meant the use of mercenaries like himself in domestic crises such as crippling natural disasters. A critic, though, declared, “This vigilantism demonstrates the utter breakdown of the government. These private security forces have behaved brutally, with impunity, in Iraq. To have them now on the streets of New Orleans is frightening and possibly illegal.”27 The Blackwater man’s trend began under President Clinton and was rapidly accelerating under President George W. Bush, almost a “reflex”—contracting out a wide variety of Federal Government activities.28

Citizen patrols Ghetto riots and fear of rising crime during the 1960s led to formation of neighborhood patrol or watch groups. Members believed that crime had gotten out of control, and the police were not able to help them in emergencies. They were not against the police, seeing themselves as supplements to regular law enforcement. One thinks of these groups as whites who feared African-American criminals, but several were formed by blacks themselves as defense against urban crime in their own neighborhoods. Black organizations in the urban Northeast focused on neighborhood drug dealing and other crime in the 1960s. Reverend Oberia D. Dempsey founded Operation Interruption, an “armed police militia,” to drive crime and drug addiction out of Harlem’s 125th Street. They also escorted people through dangerous areas and were willing to serve as informers for law enforcement agencies. The group of 2,600, with an armed core body of 200, cooperated with

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the police. The officers of the local precinct worked closely with Dempsey’s African-American group. Dempsey, although he also operated a half-way house for addicts, believed in cracking down on drug suppliers and dealers at all levels. He represented “the Black silent majority” who supported harsh drug laws described in Michael Fortner’s controversial 2015 book.29 A unique urban patrol group, the Guardian Angels, appeared in New York City’s subways in 1979. The group was founded by Curtis Sliwa and made up mostly of African-American and Latino young men and some women who had rejected gang membership and responded to community frustration with growing crime in the subways and lack of police ability to respond. Trained in making citizens’ arrests and martial arts, and wearing red berets and leather jackets, blowing whistles to signal each other, they were an imposing presence in the graffiti-smeared subway cars and stations. Although Mayor Koch and the police condemned the Angels as vigilantes or paramilitaries, many riders, instead of being frightened, were relieved to see the Angels moving from one car to another in response to the whistles. Reaching a total membership of 500, they began patrolling city streets. They also established chapters in other cities. In 1981, a group of Angels got into a fight with an undercover police officer, and eleven of them were jailed. Most New Yorkers were not alienated because they still welcomed a group that cared about subway safety. New York Post journalist Jimmy Breslin summed up the familiar vigilante rationale of the Angels as “the only idea at this time in this city that can stir, cause hope and allow people to see that if their government cannot function, then the responsibility is the people’s.” Curtis Sliwa organized a petition among subway riders, asking for their support, which turned out to be very strong. The mayor changed his mind, and the police provided training for some members who got identification cards and free subway passes.30 Guardian Angel patrols of the subways continued through the 1980s and early 1990s, becoming a familiar fixture of the subway system. Unfortunately, in order to gain support, Curtis Sliwa had arranged fake muggings and kidnappings during the early days of the Angels, and the group stopped its patrols after Rudolph Giuliani was elected mayor in 1994. One New Yorker spotted them on the street in 2013, older men using an iPhone as a walkie-talkie. Following a number of slashings in subway stations, the Angels returned there in 2016, now often husky middle-aged men. Police Commissioner Bratton said that they were there to report problems; they had no police powers. He also announced increased police presence in the subways and stations. The Guardian Angels are actively recruiting new members.31 Curtis Sliwa is now a radio commentator on New York politics and life.

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One of the most conspicuous white groups, in a sense guarding the gates of an ungated neighborhood, sought to protect local people from crime and fend off a feared incursion of blacks from neighboring areas. This was Newark, N.J.’s North Ward Citizen’s Committee founded in 1967 as a response to the Newark riots of that year. Its leader, Anthony Imperiale, attracted considerable publicity for his group, which was often accused of vigilantism and racism. He declared that his group was not out to lynch anybody but “to see that our families come home … in peace.” He warned, though, “If they [Negroes from the Central Ward] come to burn our homes this summer, we will shoot to kill.” Sounding very much like a vigilante, he declared that Newark was “just like a Western town held at bay by the bad guys until the decent guys like us do something about it.” The “Big T” to Italian-American youths and a hero for many fearful adults, he led young men uniformed with green hard hats with the initials N.W.C.C. in white. They patrolled the neighborhood in radio-equipped cars but were unarmed. In its first year, there were not serious incidents, but several times the police searched the N.W.C.C.’s cars for weapons. Imperiale was elected to the Newark City Council in 1968, followed by terms in the state senate and assembly, and failed bids for other offices.32 An earlier urban group was the Maccabees, founded by an orthodox Jewish Rabbi in 1964. Made up of Hasidic Jews, this group patrolled the Crown Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn at night in radio-equipped cars. The patrols reported crime or suspicious persons to the police. The formation of the Maccabees reflected fears of black teenagers who came from adjoining areas to commit muggings and thefts. By early 1966, crime had fallen in Crown Heights, and the Maccabees leader was appointed to the Youth Board of New York City. The Maccabees evolved into today’s two rival groups, the Shomrim (guards) and Shmira (to watch or protect), volunteers without arrest power, who patrol Crown Heights, Borough Park, and Williamsburg. They usually have the support of the New York police, who see them as a vital link to an insular community. The police even have an annual baseball game with the Shomrim. They perform many functions, using radios and patrol cars, “to chase down burglars, guard against vandals, find missing Alzheimer’s patients and control crowds at Torah processions and other large events.” They also have stepped outside these roles to confront African-Americans with hostility. A Shmira officer fled to Israel to escape trial for bludgeoning a black man to death with his nightstick. Earlier two Shomrim were convicted of attacking an African-American with their radios. A Shomrim recruitment video shows scenes of Borough Park residents, “shopping, a young boy learning Torah—that are intercut with the image of a black man

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walking through the neighborhood and eventually stealing a woman’s purse.” Critics have charged that the groups are usurping the police role and that the police defer too much to Shomrim who protect Hasids accused of crimes such as domestic abuse, child molestation, or theft. If these indigenous criminals are tried at all, it is in the Rabbinical courts, not the regular courts. People have charged the Shomrim and Shmira with being vigilantes, but they are more like guardians of the neighborhood against penetration by outsiders, especially African-Americans.33 Citizen patrols of the 1960s and 1970s arose out of local fear and were organized by locals. Increasingly since then “crime control entrepreneurs” have emerged to organize groups for citizens, groups have received funding from agencies associated with the Federal Government, and the police have increasingly sponsored their own groups. The line between private and state is thinning. It is by no means clear that citizen patrols have been uniformly effective in preventing the crimes most people fear—street crime (robbery, drug dealing) and home invasion (burglary). Some organizers of patrols justify them by exaggerated pictures of neighborhood crime. Some patrols may raise the level of fear and suspicion. Many patrols are short-lived, the most successful being neighborhood watch and auxiliary programs that are directly sponsored by the police, and follow police guidelines. Probably their most important function is to give people a greater sense of security that they are doing something about the problem, regardless of how effective they are. In some areas, patrol groups have improved police–community relations.34

Private guards and patrols in Britain and France Private policing in its various forms is not unique to the United States, but among Western nations, it has the largest number of armed guards. Of the “developed” nations, only the United States, Canada, and South Africa, and possibly the UK have more private than public police.35 European nations have been expanding private policing rapidly since the 1970s. Worldwide, the United Nations found that private security personnel outnumber public police by about two to one, but they are less likely to be armed than public police.36 Britain has a similar local government tradition as the United States, but democracy arrived well after establishment of an administrative bureaucracy. British Conservatism used to be quite different from American: Tories mistrusted both democracy and entrepreneurial capitalism. British Conservatives have

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come to resemble their American fellows, now emphasizing shrinking the role of government—private is better than public. Like the United States, Britain experienced a wave of privatization during the 1980s, when the Conservative Thatcher government weakened the post–Second World War welfare state with strong labor unions and returned nationalized industries to private ownership. British Conservatives adopted privatization as their creed. A Conservative think tank, the Adam Smith Institute, with American financial backing and influence in the government cited American success with neighborhood patrols to advocate their adoption in the UK. Residents of areas with high crime should organize their own security patrols and install surveillance devices to make their streets safer and give understaffed police forces the chance to concentrate on the most serious crimes.37 Local residents or companies have established private security patrols in several areas, and global security firms provide guard and other services. These came a few years later than in the United States, the first one in 1999.38 The latest, “My Local Bobby,” patrols wealthy London neighborhoods. None of these have police powers, and so far equipping security guards with firearms is illegal.39 As in the United States, private security has supporters and critics. Some people point to the insufficiency of the public police to prevent crime and see patrols as a necessity. The police themselves, and especially their unions, object to people paying for private security, but it is clearly well established.40 In contrast to the United States, though, Britain does not have a lenient interpretation of self-defense, lacks a significant vigilante tradition, did not have the public police—private investigator connection of the United States, and industrial spies, guards, and strikebreakers did not become big business operations. Nor does the UK have paramilitary patrols like the Minute Men. France has a long tradition of an administrative, bureaucratic state that dominates policing activity, making it significantly different than both the UK and the United States. Even after the democratizing French Revolution, the state retained, even perfected this role. France long had private detectives who specialized in divorce and missing persons cases, over 200 as early as 1819. One of its own, Eugene Vidocq, is considered the first private detective. Nevertheless, the French state did not tolerate private intrusion on its prerogatives, even arresting detectives who seemed to be treading on state turf. The French had a centralized police long before the Americans and English, so private investigators did not fill a void in policing. The state had already perfected surveillance methods.41 A law of 1983 established a legal basis for private policing, and in the 2000s, areas considered legitimate for their activity have expanded, supervised by a national regulatory agency. The growth of private security is related to a recent

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general decentralization process, with more emphasis on a role of municipalities and regions in policing. Nevertheless, the French do not have a tradition of community involvement in policing as in the United States and the UK. Neighborhood patrols with police powers are not significant in France: most private security is concerned with controlling disorderly behavior in private spaces used by the public (shopping malls and railroad stations, which are privately operated) as well as protecting property. The increase in terrorism has led to new emphasis on this need for control, including government proposals to arm private police.42 Terrorism has led to expansion of private security in Germany as well, but permission to employ armed guards is rarely granted by the government.43 French policing is becoming “plural” with the private sector performing certain types of order maintenance and prevention and the public sector concentrating on serious crime.44 This trend is similar to the United States and the UK, but in France, it is a more significant change because of the traditional state monopoly of policing.

Paramilitary patrols A distinctly American patrol group is the Minute Men, named after the iconic Revolutionary War militia, who could be armed and ready for combat in one minute. This group sees itself as a supplement to the US Border Patrol with the goal of keeping undocumented Mexican immigrants from crossing the border or seeking to prevent drug gang members from entering the United States. There are actually several of these border patrols, some calling themselves Minute Men, others adopting different names. Some groups are content to sit in lawn chairs near the border and call in to the Border Patrol when they see immigrants attempting to cross. Others are more militant, carrying guns and night-vision gear while on active patrol. Jim Gilcrist, a cofounder of the Minute Men Project in 2005, advised members: “You do not put a hand on anyone, you do not talk to anyone, you do not confront anyone. You report to Border Patrol.” Needless to say, the groups have attracted extremists and shady characters as well as those who see their role as support of the understaffed Border Patrol. One of these instructed his members: “You see an illegal, you point your gun right dead at them, right between the eyes, and say, ‘Get back across the border, or you will be shot.’” Over the years, the original Minute Man Project, which still retains the name, unraveled due to quarrels among factions, bad publicity arising from murder

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convictions of a couple of leaders, charges of defamation and fraud, child molestation, and even a 2013 denunciation by usually sympathetic Arizona County Sheriff Joe Arpaio (after a member aimed his gun at one of his deputies). Sometimes the patrols are conspicuous and other times seem to have given up. In 2014, Mother Jones magazine reported the Minute Men’s “meltdown,” describing these issues in detail, but at the same time, similar border patrol groups gathered along the Texas–Mexico border, joining the Texas national guard troops the governor had mobilized earlier against an influx of Central American women and children. The Minute Men, who still have a website encouraging volunteers, joined with groups called Oath Keepers, Three Percenters’ Club, and Patriots.45 The latest form of border vigilantes, the Arizona Border Recon, was founded in 2010 by Tim Foley, a military veteran who lost his job as a construction worker. Proud of not having fired a shot, the group prefers being called a nongovernmental organization. Like its founder, most of the group’s members are military or law enforcement veterans. It cooperates with the Border Patrol, which appreciates its round-the-clock activities from their base in a town right on the border with Mexico. The group deemphasizes confrontation in favor of “obtaining intelligence through reconnaissance operations.” Arizona Border Recon declares that it is “not to overthrow any government or take the law into our own hands” but to augment the understaffed Border Patrol.46 The Border Patrol has been ambivalent about the activities of these groups. It welcomes “concerned citizens who act as our eyes and ears” but warns that trying to stop undocumented immigrants and drug dealers is dangerous and should be handled by trained law enforcement officers.47

Public police, private clients An important, often unpublicized, form of public–private connection in the United States is not the result of underfunding or crime that is out of control. This is “moonlighting” by public police officers who work for private employers when off duty. Often they wear their uniforms and carry their guns when providing security for a wide variety of employers, organizers of festivals, nightclubs, construction companies, and the full range of employers who hire ordinary security guards. There is actually competition between off-duty police employees and security companies whose guards do not usually have full police powers. Employers prefer uniformed and armed off-duty police to gray-clad security guards because the uniform itself is an effective deterrent to

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would-be trespassers, thieves, or disrupters. People naturally think that public police are present and do not think to distinguish between on- and off-duty officers. Moonlighting is little noticed and not commonly discussed among scholars. Police, who are often underpaid, value the supplemental income, often at a higher hourly rate than their salary. According to Seth Stoughton, some 80 percent of 160 police departments that responded to his survey allowed moonlighting, the remaining 20 percent prohibiting it. Thirty states and DC have no specific regulation of moonlighting (though it may fall under regulations about outside employment of government officials); others allow moonlighting with restrictions, and a small group prohibits it altogether. Generally, even with regulations, police departments themselves develop their own policies.48 Some American cities, Miami and St. Petersburg in Florida, and in 1998 New York City, have actually formally provided off-duty police to private individuals or organizations. In New York, the “Paid Detail Program” provides off-duty officers for $27.00 per hour “plus handling charges.” The city assumes all liability for injuries to the officer and injuries inflicted by him. The rationale for this program is the same as for all privatization schemes: it saved the city money. An executive of the police union replied that it was merely an excuse not to raise officers’ salaries. The police department argues that the program is an alternative to moonlighting, which they point out correctly could lead to officer fatigue and divided loyalties. This seems to be simply solving a problem by legitimating it. The department says that it carefully looks into the records of prospective renters, rotates officers so they will not become loyal to a single employer, and will not allow officers with poor records to participate. Most police welcomed the change for more money, though some were uncomfortable with wearing their uniforms in the service of private employers.49 The program still exists with banks as the main customers. Some banks have replaced private security guards with off-duty uniformed police.50 Moonlighting, sometimes called “Rent-aCop” or “Secondary Policing,” persists with 83 percent of departments explicitly authorizing it. In New York City, half of the police force is enrolled in the Paid Detail Program.51 Critics on the left have charged that Paid Detail officers were involved in the harsh breakup of the Occupy Wall Street 2011 encampment in a privately owned square.52 In the fall of 2016, the NYPD lost its contract with several employers, including Madison Square Garden, Yankee Stadium, Rockefeller Center, and banks and large retail stores, to provide Paid Detail officers for security. Previously the city had assumed liability for accidents to the officers or injuries inflicted by them, but in the new contract, the city wanted employers to be responsible.53

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Going beyond off-duty police serving individual employers is a force established in New Orleans as the city was struggling to recover from Hurricane Katrina’s damage. Crime, robbery, burglary, and muggings remain a problem in the city. In March of 2015, Sidney Torres, an entrepreneur who made a fortune cleaning up rubbish after Katrina, created the French Quarter Task Force (FQTF), which employed off-duty city police patrolling the small but wealthy neighborhood in black Polaris Rangers resembling “militarized golf carts” equipped with sophisticated location-tracking equipment. Torres interviews and hires the men himself, paying them $50.00 per hour, well above the standard moonlighting rate. Torres created his police force after Mitch Landrieu—New Orleans’ mayor since 2010, under attack for failing to control crime—challenged him to go ahead if he thought it so easy. He did, and both he and the regular police see the FQTF as complementary, not competitive. Indeed Torres’s dispatcher works out of an anteroom of the French Quarter police station. Since his men are city police officers, they wear regular uniforms and have full police powers of arrest and carrying guns. Torres is controversial because of his “hunger for credit, his disregard of regulations; his habit of leaking sensitive information that could make it harder to prosecute suspects.” The new force also raised objections that it was essentially protecting the French Quarter against the rest of New Orleans— poorer and mostly African-American. Both the mayor and police chief were uneasy about such discriminatory protection. Losing his “vigilante enthusiasm” after a few months, Torres turned funding of the force over to the Convention and Visitor Bureau, which agreed to support it for five years. The arrangement included Bureau funding of forty-five state troopers, whom Mayor Landrieu had brought in to police the French Quarter before Torres came on the scene. Control and funding of police in the French Quarter became mostly private by a group representing New Orleans’s business people who wanted tourists to keep coming. If they stayed in the French Quarter, they were well protected by the FQTF and State Troopers, but just outside its boundaries, crime still persists. Although homicide rates are declining, overall New Orleans is second only to Detroit in murders and other crimes.54

Legal issues of moonlighting Who is liable for injuries inflicted on or by private guards is one of the major issues surrounding police moonlighting. Most state regulations of moonlighting

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are concerned with liability issues. Does working extra hours fatigue the officers, making them less fit for regular duty? A larger issue is, to whom are off-duty police officers responsible? Off-duty police in civilian clothes on their own time are still police, retaining their arms, badge, and powers of arrest. Many times they have intervened when crimes were in progress. However, when they are hired and paid privately, even in uniform, are they still responsible to the public or to their employer? Should taxpayers, who essentially paid for training of public police, see that training benefiting private employers? To what extent do court-imposed limits of public police authority apply to private police? For example, did the exclusionary rule of evidence obtained outside of search warrant specifications (Weeks v. United States, 1914) extend to private police? The US Supreme Court held in Boyd v. United States (1921) held that the exclusionary rule applied only if public authorities were involved in obtaining of normally excluded evidence from private police. If the private police acted on their own, the exclusionary rule did not apply. On the other hand, the California Supreme Court in People v. Zelinski (1979) excluded evidence incidentally acquired by private police, holding that private police in enforcing the law were carrying out a state function and such evidence is excluded when public police obtain it. Such lack of clarity becomes more important as private police increasingly exercise police powers of arrest and search. In general, court decisions have leaned toward the Boyd decision, reasoning that the Constitution does not specify whether law enforcement must be provided by public officials, excluding private individuals or groups. Courts have not followed the California argument that private police with the same powers as public police are agents of the state, subject to the same limitations as the public police. In short, constitutional protections do not apply to private police.55

Retail store policing Many private police work in large retail stores, watching out for shoplifters. Each store has a security or “loss prevention” office equipped since the 1970s with cameras that could follow an individual from the time they parked their car, their pathways through the store, back to the car. If the officers see suspicious activity through the cameras, they notify colleagues walking the floor to detain the suspected shoplifters for interrogation. Under “merchants’ privilege” laws, the store police can make arrests when they have seen a crime committed. The Supreme Court, in the 1921 Burdeau v. McDowell decision, held that private

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employees were exempt from Fourth Amendment restrictions of methods of interrogation or obtaining of evidence. They also operate under a different system of justice than the public police. It is a form of compensatory justice, civil recovery, which allows the store owners to recover the value of goods stolen by shoplifters plus a certain amount for costs, and punitive damages that vary from state to state. The store police apprehend and detain shoplifters but are not required to turn them over to the police. Civil recovery laws first appeared in the 1980s, and now every state has them. The store managers benefit from the reduced costs of civil recovery compared to a court appearance; the police benefit by avoiding having to arrest scores of very minor offenders and saving overcrowded courts from even more crowding. Some of the shoplifters benefit by not having a trial and not acquiring a court record. Not all shoplifters benefit because only those who can pay the civil recovery costs—or their parents can pay them—realize these benefits. Those who cannot pay are turned over to the police. “Store police skim the affluent for civil recovery and ship the less affluent to the public justice system.”56 To test employees’ honesty, retailers can hire “mystery shoppers” provided by private security companies. Their role goes beyond detecting dishonesty to include how well bank employees are soliciting new accounts and how well waitresses smile. Companies that supply mystery shoppers, such as Wackenhut, have their own trade association to promote uniform training and qualifications for these in-house spies on employees.57

Shopping mall policing Shopping malls are a distinctive form of property in which the public has open access but the property is still private. “Mass private property” has become a general term to describe malls and plazas open to the street in corporate office buildings. “Mall cops” who patrol the walkways of shopping malls are unarmed uniformed guards who sometimes capture shoplifters, deal with muggings or sexual harassment, and rarely encounter mass shooters. Usually the most they have to do is confront rowdy teenagers who hang out at shopping malls. Back when there were main streets and downtowns, public police had to deal with disorderly conduct, but shopping malls hire their own security forces. Although some people are attracted by the promise of excitement, even with low pay and little training, most duties of mall cops are routine. In the safe Danbury Mall, in Connecticut, guards understand that they are there to give shoppers

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the impression of security rather than reacting to disorder or threats, “a sort of uniformed public relations agency.” This impression calms most shoppers, but disorderly teenagers have other things on their mind than security. They know the mall cops are unarmed and have power to require them to leave the mall, detain them but not arrest them. Ever since the 2009 movie Paul Bart, Mall Cop, they have had to combat an image of “a lovable … doofus” who does not deserve their respect. The Mall of America, the nation’s largest, instituted a program of using parental authority to boost the authority of the security guards. Called “Mighty Moms” and “Mighty Dads,” these civilians accompany the guards when they have to confront groups of kids, sometimes as large as fifty, who blocked entrances or walkways. The courteous but firm authority of parents seems to have been successful. In other malls, kids do more than cluster: gang fights and thefts are a problem in urban malls in poorer neighborhoods, and guards have plenty of work.58

Guarding the gates In an era of insecurity, many Americans seek security within “gated communities,” where private guards control who may enter. These communities have become increasingly popular among white middle- and upper-class people afraid of street crime and burglary. Since the gated communities are usually located in wealthier areas, there is actually very little to fear. Residents, like mall shoppers, value the feeling of security. One guard told a reporter that only about one percent of their time was concerned with actual security problems. Instead, the guards keep out salesmen, let people know when friends or relatives are arriving, or occasionally keep out an undesirable ex-spouse. The company they work for requires guards to remain in the gate house at all times: if a crime did occur, their job is to call the police. This does not mean the guards took their work casually. One young black graduate student discovered that the guard of a community he was investigating was quite aggressive in ordering him out. He found the gate ajar and decided to take a stroll through the empty streets to see what the community felt like. When he returned to the gate, the guard was there, and she yelled at him to get out and never return; if he did, she would call the police. The guards hardly need to patrol because the communities are so homogeneous that members obey their civic association’s detailed rules about color of houses, what people may or may not have in their front yards, and a whole host of objects or activities that would suggest the wrong sort of neighbors. Critics worry that gated

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communities encourage the very attitudes that the residents themselves favor: self-containment, homogeneity, and commitment to only their community instead of the larger world. They are the ultimate privatization.59

Controlling the streets: Business improvement districts Business improvement districts, or BIDs, are associations of neighborhood businesses to provide for amenities such as benches, plantings, maintenance of buildings and street lights, and sanitation and private security to supplement the city’s services. Harlem’s 125th Street BID provides a weekly pedestrian “footfall” count for businesses.60 The members pay extra property tax, which is then refunded by the municipality to support the BID’s activity. New York City BIDs range in size and importance from the Grand Central Partnership to small local groups in poor neighborhoods. They operate in a realm that is both private and public since thousands of people may walk the sidewalks that need cleaning or dark places needing patrols. In New York City, they are visible mostly in the uniformed street cleaners. The first city to create a BID was New Orleans, in 1974; now there are 1,200 all over the country.61 In New York City, a major issue for BIDs was the presence of homeless people in doorways, ATM vestibules, or wherever they could sleep. They were an aspect of urban life that did not encourage shopping or tourism. In the 1990s, BID security forces ordered homeless people out of their sleeping places, just as did the public police under the aggressive policing of social order under Mayor Rudolph Giuliani. The Grand Central Partnership’s methods went beyond the usual, however. In 1989, the BID created a “homeless outreach program,” which sounds benign but was actually hiring homeless people to roust other homeless from ATM vestibules. The “outreach” workers were paid $1.16 per hour, well below the minimum wage at the time. No one paid much attention to this activity until 1995 when some former “outreach” workers reported that one supervisor hired tough homeless men with criminal records, “goon squads,” who received food, clothing, and cash in exchange for beating up other homeless. Sometimes after administering a beating, they called the police to claim that the homeless person had attacked them. They also chased homeless from locations with which the Partnership had not actually contracted. Their success encouraged new contracts. The Partnership denied these claims, but city agencies began to delve into its activities, discovering not only violence but dubious financial transactions. After Giuliani was reelected in 1998, he at

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first brushed aside criticisms but later took them more seriously after another BID made a deal with the police commissioner to provide extra men for its area. He vetoed it and soon the city government was more strictly regulating BIDs, sometimes threatening to eliminate them altogether. The administration argued that BIDs had become obsolete competing centers of power and that under Giuliani the city was successfully reducing crime and disorder with the public police. BIDs have not disappeared but are much less aggressive than in the 1980s and early 1990s.62

Bodyguards and bouncers Bodyguards and bouncers are specialized forms of security guards, one for individuals and the other for places where strangers are entertained, including bars, nightclubs, and brothels. Bodyguards rarely die while protecting their employer and do not often have physical confrontations. Mostly they are responsible for planning routes, inspecting destinations, and standing watch while their employers are at a party. They also accompany clients’ children to school. Private security companies supply most guards, “personal protectors,” or “close protectors.” Many are former police or military. One New York City company that provides bodyguards advertised that not only were its two founders a former NYPD detective and sergeant but that all its employees were from law enforcement, the fire department, or military.63 Bodyguards’ pay in the United States averages about $64,000 per year. By far the majority are men, but in both the UK and the United States, some women have become bodyguards. Athena Academy is an American security company that specializes in training and placing female bodyguards. They even provide nannies with security guard training.64 Usually bodyguards have training equivalent to that of a security guard, and some areas require them to have a license. Military and police skills are the minimum requirements; they must also learn to plan routes, assess risks, learn the specialized tactics of executive protection, and deal with people without using excessive force. They are armed in the United States but by law unarmed in the UK. Most states require bodyguards to be licensed and trained in the same way as armed security guards, with several hours of introductory and legal training, on-the-job training, and firearms training. Amounts of each vary by state, and most limit licenses to two years with additional training to renew them.65 Popular culture stars hire guards to protect them from being swamped by well-meaning fans and fend off paparazzi or stalkers. Rich business executives

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hire guards to shield them from angry people who want to vent frustration about their company’s policies. More vitally, bodyguards protect them and their children from kidnapping. Some people hire bodyguards as reassurance against a perceived, rather than actual, threat. The image of a bodyguard is a hulking fellow in dark glasses and dark suit close behind the client, but many guards make a point of being inconspicuous, blending in with crowds. Unlike bodyguards who sometimes travel the world with their employers, bouncers stay in one place, the bar, club, or other entertainment venue that employs them. They have a long history of controlling or ousting rowdy or otherwise undesirable customers from saloons, brothels, and other places of public entertainment. Brothels that hired bouncers were clearly catering to the “gentlemanly” trade, as opposed to disorderly houses at the bottom of the hierarchy. One researcher has dated the term “bounce” used in this way to an 1872 Horatio Alger novel in which a waiter is ordered to eject a boy who could not pay for his dinner. The proprietor demanded, “bounce him!” Undoubtedly Alger, chronicler of New York’s poor who made good, was recording a phrase that had been in use for a while.66 The typical image of a bouncer today is of a large, intimidating man ready to grab and remove unruly or uncooperative customers. Unfortunately, too many bouncers are poorly trained and aspire to the image of a tough guy. People have been injured, even killed, by bouncers’ improper use of wrestling holds or beatings. A very cynical young man who worked as a bouncer cited the advantages of his job as making money by extortion of customers who broke minor club rules, impressing women customers and easily having sex with them, keeping fit so he could enjoy the “adrenaline rush” from intimidating other men, breaking up fights, or fighting himself. “Those muscles you use to carry knuckleheads out the club are also well-employed by tossing women around in bed.” Disadvantages ranged from hearing awful music over and over again to being attacked by revengeful customers he had ejected.67 One should hope that he is not typical. The most frequent expense of bars is lawsuits over excessive use of force. Ideally, “the best bouncers don’t bounce anybody” but are conflict managers who should have to resort to violence only in self-defense.68 In the UK, one of nine bouncers is women, and in India they are extremely popular because women customers fear assault by male bouncers. Women are still rare in the United States: one, Shoshana Fisher, was proud of her ability to both get a sexual harasser arrested and successfully create a “teaching moment” to persuade a customer that “nigger” was not a proper word. She thought that “being a woman

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has really helped me identify who should and shouldn’t come inside a venue in order to create a safe space and environment that’s fun for everyone.”69 Bouncers are licensed in the UK but not often individually in the United States. California, in 2011, was the first state to require a license for “proprietary security officers,” otherwise bouncers. The first company to provide training for the license included “Conflict Resolution and Force, Powers to Arrest and Citizen’s Detention, Alcohol Rules and Regulations, Alcohol Liabilities, Recognition of Fake and Borrowed Identification, Recognition of Club Drugs and Narcotics and Terrorism and Disaster Awareness.”70 Pennsylvania, California, Connecticut, and the city of New York require bouncers to have licenses, but requirements vary. Apparently one can obtain a Connecticut license in a day, according to a training school. Most states do not require licenses.71

Trains and planes: Railroad and airport police Railroad police in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries have appeared as enemies in the lore of hoboes who ride the rails: in their “big rock candy mountain” heaven, “the railroad bulls are blind.” They also appear as heroes in battles with Western train robbers. They were the enemies of union organizers and strikers, and of kids collecting fallen lumps of coal for the family stove. They were friends and protectors of passengers, especially women traveling alone, who wanted a sense of security. During the mid-nineteenth century when railroads were becoming “America’s first big business,” companies formed their own police or contracted with independent agencies to protect their increasingly vast property, valuable cargoes, and swelling numbers of passengers. Benjamin Latrobe, chief engineer of the Baltimore and Ohio (B&O) Railroad, created the first railroad police in 1849. Their target was union organizers and strikers, a duty that would become more significant as the nineteenth century continued. By 1853, the B&O had a force of about sixty men. As property losses mounted, railroads became concerned about organized criminals and embezzling employees. They required detectives to track down these thieves, a skill the union busting guards did not possess. Three lines, the Rock Island, the Galena and Chicago Union, and Illinois Central, contracted with a new detective agency in the mid-1850s, the Northwestern Police and Detective Agency, recently formed by Allan Pinkerton. His first major investigation was for the Adams Express Company, which had lost $10,000 from a train traveling through Alabama and Georgia. Pinkerton suspected an

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Adams Express employee, the manager of the firm’s Montgomery, Alabama, office. The company did not listen to Pinkerton and experienced another robbery before he was able to investigate and have the manager arrested. Pinkerton’s agency also provided men and women as “spotters” checking for dishonest conductors who pocketed passengers’ fares instead of turning the money over to the company. The Pennsylvania legislature, following Nevada Territory’s in 1861, authorized railroad police in 1865, giving them full arrest powers on railroad property. The officers were selected by railroads and corporations using railroads and commissioned by the governor. Unless working undercover, they were required to wear a “metallic shield” identifying them as railroad police and their employer. This force was soon expanded into the Pennsylvania Coal and Iron Police the next year, which included all mining corporations and became a regular patrol force. Two years later, Ohio enacted virtually the same railroad police law, and other states followed. The first “classic” train robbery occurred in 1866, when the Reno Brothers gang overcame the mail car guard and pushed two safes containing $45,000 out of the moving train. The Pinkerton agency suspected the Reno gang and tricked two of its members into having their photograph taken while drinking in a bar, served by a Pinkerton man. The Pinkertons would go on to make their reputation tracking down Western train robbers and other outlaws, and it also would hark back to railroad police’s origins by making another reputation as providers of armed guards and detectives to destroy labor unions and break strikes. As train robberies increased during the 1870s, railroads hired their own men to ride the trains and confront bandits. These guards were “big, strong aggressive men who could defend themselves” against notorious bandits like the James Brothers, the Youngers, and the Wild Bunch. Eastern rail lines usually employed uniformed men to prevent crime; Western lines usually used detectives or investigators, who worked with local law enforcement, to capture bandits after the robberies. Rail lines also hired yard watchmen, who became the bane of hoboes who wandered the yards looking for empty box cars they could sleep and travel in. These watchmen were not professionals: they were untrained and “handed a gun, badge and a club and told to go out and protect the railroad property and employees.” Sometimes trainmen themselves acted as police, including one who hid in a cage to capture thieves who were stealing hogs from a train when it stopped at a certain station. According to a Pennsylvania law of 1913, conductors without official police powers were authorized to arrest and turn over to the nearest police criminals or disorderly passengers.

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There are many fewer railroad police today than in the mid-twentieth century, the height of railroad shipment and travel. Between 1950 and the 2000s, their numbers dropped from 9,000 to 1,200 in the United States. They perform many of their original duties, including chasing off trespassers from rail yards.72 Arrests for trespassing have led to charges of racial profiling and brutality by railroad police. In Overeton, Florida, one officer was responsible for numerous arrests of black residents taking a shortcut over rarely used tracks. This policeman made about 90 percent of all the arrests since 2009; judges threw out around 87 percent of the charges. Other railroad employees have complained of abusive treatment by railroad police. They are not regulated by any independent agency, and railroad companies do not release statistics of internal disciplinary cases. Only two states, Minnesota and Wyoming, deny arrest powers to railroad police.73 Like many private police forces, railroad police are necessary, and most perform their duties fairly, but there is little public accountability. After the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, Americans took a hard look at the security of airports. Investigators discovered that the private companies that had provided the service since 1973 employed uneducated, untrained people who had not had background checks. The employees’ low pay matched their lack of qualifications. In 2000–01, the largest private company, Argenbright, violated Federal Aviation Administration security rules at thirteen airports and earlier had been fined for its lapses at Philadelphia’s airport. The company had also failed to train its screeners under federal guidelines established before 9/11.74 A former manager of security at Cleveland’s airport argued, “The weakest link in the airport security chain was a contracted position that paid minimum wage, and the typical pre-board screener was entirely indifferent to doing a good job— to detect weapons or explosives out of a mess of other shapes and images.” He also feared that it would be easier for terrorists to infiltrate the private screener force.75 Responding to these concerns, Congress passed a law on November 19, 2001, creating a new government agency, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), to supply trained security screeners at all the airports. All the screeners would eventually be federal employees, though the process would be phased in and allow current screeners to retain their jobs. They then would have to take tests and job training if they wished to continue. The federal employees made over twice as much as the private workers. Unfortunately for advocates of government employees doing the government’s work, the TSA soon became the most hated bureaucracy in America. Long lines and long delays, intrusive searches, absurd restrictions of what passengers could carry aboard (knives, of course, but nail files?) not only irritated passengers but

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did not prevent security lapses. Tests revealed that 95 percent of fake bombs got through the TSA security screenings. The TSA had defenders who emphasized that it was constantly improving, but Congress steadily cut its budget and reduced the number of screeners.76 Not many people listened: supporters of privatization demanded its return. The TSA could accept individual airports’ requests to continue private security, but only sixteen did so before the agency stopped granting the requests in 2011. A “new law” of 2012 made it easier for airports to hire private security firms. Following a House committee report that detailed cost overruns and inefficiencies of the TSA, the legislation made it easier for airports to make the change. If they want to leave the federal program, they have to prove that the private employees would be cheaper and assure that they could effectively maintain security and would not be detrimental to security. The TSA supervises, set guidelines for the private screeners, and pay them federal employee’s rates. The agency will not train the private employees; their firms and the airlines are responsible. The private workers do only “up front” tasks, such as managing lines, instructing people to take off their shoes, and put laptops on the belt. Although some airports, including San Francisco, have chosen the private alternative, New York and Washington, DC, have continued with the TSA. In what matters most to passengers, waiting times, it remains unclear whether government or private security screening is better. The United States is actually unusual in employing government workers for airport security. Canada and most European countries use private contractors.77

Problems and criticisms of private security By the 1980s, the private security industry had experienced a decade of criticism for lack of training, oversight, and poor pay compared to public police, who had been improving in these areas during the 1970s. These revelations were highly publicized in reports by the Rand Corporation and Law Enforcement Assistance Administration. Criticisms prompted pressure on state legislatures to license and regulate private police. The industry responded by improving its own standards to avoid regulation from outside. It also responded to successful lawsuits for negligence, insurance companies’ demands for higher standards and opposition to arming of security guards, and security regulations of industries that were frequent clients, such as banks and energy production firms. The industry had become highly competitive with many small companies serving local interests as well as large corporations like Wackenhut, Burns, and Pinkerton.78 Competition

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can serve to check the worst abuses but not always because it may encourage low bids to potential clients and consequently poorer service. A larger issue is responsibility: to whom do the private police answer, their employers or the public? The arrest and trial of Joseph Conover, head of the Nova Company Police force in Raleigh, North Carolina, would seem to support the critics’ worst fears. He was charged with four counts of obstructing justice, one felony charge of seconddegree kidnapping (of a teenage boy whom he allegedly detained and beat), “multiple” charges of assault, including with pepper spray and a taser, and illegal use of computerized government data. The news report does not say what he was using the data for but implies that he was checking if any cars in the driveway of an obstreperous individual were stolen or had outstanding traffic violations—that is, looking for a cause of arrest. The Wake County District Attorney dismissed thirty-five of Conover’s arrests (Nova had arrest powers on the territory of its client) that he had made while contracted with his construction company client. Conover was tried, convicted, and sentenced to eighteen to twenty-four months in prison for the unauthorized use of government data.79 He still faces trial on the obstruction of justice, assault, and kidnapping charges. Conover is a worst case, not typical but pointing out some problems of private policing. Even without extreme cases like Conover, private policing raises an equality issue. As resources for public police decline, will policing become a luxury for those who can afford to pay for security? As one head of a firm, a former deputy police commissioner in Philadelphia, put it: “You can see the public police becoming like the health system … the government provides a certain base level. If you want more than that, you pay for it yourself.”80 Increasingly as state and local governments lose revenue because of politically popular tax cuts or loss of tax base, they will turn to private security firms to provide the level of safety citizens demand. Even without financial constraints, the growth of private policing will make wealthier people less committed to supporting the public police, creating inequalities between neighborhoods that can afford private policing and those that cannot.81 The public police would be concentrated in poor neighborhoods. In the United States, any service that serves only or mainly the poor, like public schools, loses support of wealthier people. Private security takes many forms, from the sleepy guard at a small shop, the bouncer at a club, neighborhood patrols, and railway and airport security. Many perform tasks that the public police do not have the manpower to take on. Like the public police, all of them have faced criticism about their conduct. Like the public police, the more transparency of their operations, the better.

Figure 4  A Pinkerton Arrest. Allan Pinkerton, Thirty Years a Detective: A Thorough and Comprehensive Expose of Criminal Practices of All Grades and Classes (New York: G.W. Carleton and Co., 1884), p. 378.

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Private Detectives

Private detectives existed in large numbers when the police had not developed trained detective divisions or scientific criminal investigation. They also filled a void when the police simply lacked manpower, were corrupt, or were unwilling to probe into certain crimes. They were useful to people who wanted to keep the investigation itself secret. In the United States, they usually worked with public officials when a suspect was ready for arrest. The law of “citizen’s arrest” did give detectives power to make arrests, but most often the police would be brought in at this stage to charge the individual and hold him or her pending court arraignment. Private detectives are an ambiguous cultural icon in the United States. They were deeply distrusted as unscrupulous spies, but they also became heroes of popular literature. A popular writer declared that “the word detective, taken by itself, implies one who must descend to questionable means to attain justifiable ends; but with the prefix of private, it means one using a machine permitted to the exigencies of justice for the purpose of surreptitious personal gain.” The larger agencies, concerned about publicity, were more scrupulous than individual “guerillas” or lone operators. Whether large or small, though, they damaged society by pandering to people’s desire to have property recovered rather than burglars or robbers being brought to justice.1 In contrast, Allan Pinkerton declared the detective is “an intelligent, keen sighted and accomplished gentleman, relying on his own high moral character, his superior intelligence and his indefatigable energy” to fight criminals who were becoming increasingly professional and scientific in their methods.2 Pinkerton believed that “the ends being the accomplishment of justice, they justify the means used,” even if not strictly legal.3 This was a viewpoint one could interpret differently whether you were a client of the detective or the person detected. Pinkerton’s view of the ends justifying the means finds its fullest expression in fiction, whether the dime novel genius Old Cap Collier or the Anglo-Saxon

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athlete Nick Carter, detectives always worked for justice, achieving it in the end despite official indifference or interference.4 Even the ruthless, morally ambivalent heroes of Dashiell Hammet or Micky Spillane in the end served a justice higher than police and courts. Likewise Sue Grafton’s and Sara Paretsky’s courageous women often have to work around official bureaucracies to reach justice. In fiction, justice is most often achieved through the accidental, selfinflicted, or at the hands of the hero, death of the villain. The American fictional detective’s view of justice is not radically different from that of many vigilante groups. Instead of “The safety of the people is the supreme law,” the safety of the detective’s client (and the detective) is the supreme law. Though not entirely unique to the United States, private detectives have played a much more important role in the history of policing than in other nations.

Origins of private detectives In Britain before 1842 and the early United States, detective work was essentially private, a personal relationship between the victim and the detective rather than between the victim and the state. Detectives were officers attached to courts who carried out their investigations on a fee for service basis, the fee paid by the victim. Some, like eighteenth-century England’s Jonathan Wild, were entrepreneurs whose relationship to the law was vague. Wild was a thief who also made money catching other thieves. Most detective officers did not go that far, but their success depended on familiarity with the underworld and a collection of informers. If a man had his gold watch stolen, he would go to the court and arrange with a detective for an investigation, paying the necessary fees including daily expenses. The detective then would start inquiring among his informers or might be personally familiar with the modus operandi of the watch thief. Once he located the culprit, he made an arrangement: a portion of the cash value of the watch, probably long-since fenced, would go back to the victim, and another portion to the detective. In some circumstances, the thief would be allowed a smaller portion. The thief had a choice of agreeing or going to prison. The victim was grateful for recovering at least some of the value of the watch. When modern full-time day and night police patrol forces were established, in London first in 1829 and New York second in 1845, such practices became illegal—“compounding a felony.” The new police were originally established to prevent crime by visible patrolling, and detective divisions came several years later. Some of the old entrepreneurial detectives established their own private

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agencies, taking advantage of their underworld connections and experience. A former York City constable, Gil Hays, may have been the first of these private detectives. Hays and some colleagues planned to open an office concentrating on arrest of burglars and pickpockets in 1845, just as the new police force was being adopted. It is not clear whether he carried out his intent or how long his operation lasted. Private detectives formerly connected with the police established firms in St. Louis in 1846, Baltimore in 1847, and Philadelphia in 1848.5 When dealing with thefts, they took on cases only where the property was of substantial value. Consequently their customers were mostly wealthy individuals, banks, jewelry stores, railroads, and express companies. The new police were not equipped to handle complicated robberies and burglaries. In the 1850s, Chicago witnessed arguments between proponents of strengthening public police detectives (usually Republicans) and those who wished to use private police for detective work (usually Democrats). Both agreed that the public police were ineffective in solving property crimes, but neither wanted a detective force controlled by their opponents. When the Democrats came into power in 1856, they fired Chicago’s first police chief, Cyrus P. Bradley, who had established an eight-man detective unit. These men joined him to form a private detective agency. By 1857, even the Republican Chicago Tribune favored hiring private police for detective work, as long as they came from Bradley’s firm. Following revelations of Bradley agents interfering with the regular police’s investigations, charging excessive fees, taking money from criminals, and operating a brothel, Chicago finally recreated a police detective unit in 1861. Bradley returned to the police and organized the detective bureau, bringing several of his employees with him.6 Public police detective units grew during the later nineteenth century, but it was not until well into the twentieth century that they became as innovative and efficient as the best private agencies. Some private detective agencies conducted investigations of infidelity to provide necessary proofs for obtaining a divorce, restricted to infidelity or desertion in most state laws. Sometimes this involved framing a spouse or cooperation between spouses who both desired divorce. The first divorce case that involved private detective spying was in 1860. Many commentators attributed the 157 percent rise in divorces between 1867 and 1886 as the result of the unscrupulous activities of detectives, including perjury, blackmail, and entrapment, though in fact the increase may have been the result of liberalization of divorce laws. After some divorce cases were thrown out of court because of detective perjury, most states required that detective testimony be corroborated by independent evidence.7 Divorce investigations, and detectives’ close

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connections with the underworld, gave private detectives a shady reputation among respectable people, except of course those who benefited from their services. The Pinkerton Agency refused to accept divorce cases, criticizing “bogus” detectives, and sought to convince the public of its professionalism, honesty, and connections to prominent people.8 In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, numerous cases of private detectives’ high-handed or illegal practices led to a regulatory movement parallel to the regulation of industry generally. The larger agencies usually saw regulation as a way to suppress the smaller ones whom they thought undermined the profession’s reputation. Massachusetts in 1879 was first to require state licensing of private detectives. Maine and Nebraska followed in 1885, Colorado and Pennsylvania in 1887, and Rhode Island in 1892. Five more required licensing between 1898 and 1910, and eight followed between 1913 and 1925.9 States sometimes revised the requirements in the wake of scandals or investigations. In 1910, the New York state controller, who was in charge of licensing detectives, began a crackdown on unlicensed detectives who blackmailed businesses and individuals or manufactured evidence. “Bogus” unlicensed detectives were especially active in divorce cases, where they blackmailed people who wanted evidence suppressed and gave false testimony in court. In the spring of 1910, the controller’s office closed down several unlicensed agencies, hauling law clerks, former licensed detectives, “plain professional thieves,” and two women “detectives” into court. The controller wanted it to be a misdemeanor for a licensed detective to give information to anybody except the client, to prohibit badges except to agency heads who should be responsible for their employees’ proper use, and to provide for investigation of the backgrounds of all private investigators seeking a license. Five years later, the controller launched a sting to catch unlicensed detectives. His agents placed ads in New York City newspapers seeking a private detective. Eight who did not have licenses responded, and they were promptly arrested.10 In the next decade, the New York Crime Commission proposed that applicants for private investigator licenses be required to take a training course. The Board of Regents would be in control of licensing.11 In the 1950s, arrest of a private detective for illegal wiretapping (without a court order) led to another state probe, which concluded that licensing requirements were too lenient. The problem was that the head of an agency may be licensed, but employees were not required to have a license as a condition of employment. Although investigation did not reveal widespread wiretapping, it did uncover “misuse of badges by licensed detectives,” presumably by presenting themselves as police, and hiring of men with criminal records by some agencies. These got

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around the state’s fingerprint requirement by submitting the prints of another person without a record. In 1959, the state reacted to concern about private investigators, banning them from wearing any badges or shield that resembled police badges, and forbade them from calling themselves “private detectives,” requiring “the rather more pedestrian title ‘private investigator’.” The legislature also required all applicants for a license to submit their addresses for past three years and a photograph no more than six months old. In 1961, the legislature required that all fingerprints be made in the presence of an “authorized witness.” It also gave the secretary of state, who issued licenses, power to suspend a detective’s license while a hearing about possible violations was in progress.12 Today a private investigator organization describes the test for applicants as “so tough that, unlike other states, NY makes you pass the PI license test BEFORE you can apply for a NY PI license!”13 Today twenty-two states administer licensing through a state agency; sixteen through the state police or other law enforcement agencies; and six have no licensing requirement, except in certain cities or places, the detective is working.14 The British government did not find it necessary to license private detectives until 2015,15 suggesting the earlier and greater significance of this form of private policing in the United States. Although Sherlock Holmes, the most famous fictional private detective, was English, private detective agencies were much more common in the United States. The London Metropolitan Police established a detective division in 1842, which survived a scandal in the 1870s, to become world famous as “Scotland Yard.” At first, it lived up to Arthur Conan Doyle’s image of officious bumblers, as in its failure to identify Jack the Ripper. In the 1870s and 1880s, many people in England preferred to employ “inquiry offices” instead of the police.16 Nevertheless, during the twentieth century, the Yard became synonymous with efficient and thorough detective work. Britain’s most famous actual private detective was Charles Field, who had served several years in the Metropolitan Police and was among its first detectives. He was Charles Dickens’s guide through London’s underworld and a well-known figure to journalists. In 1852, he retired from the police to establish an “inquiry office,” apparently continuing until 1865. He got into trouble with the Metropolitan Police, briefly having his pension stopped because journalists referred to him as “Inspector Field.” He was cleared of any falsification of his connection with the London police.17 There were other British private detectives, but they did not become as significant as their American counterparts because the British police were less involved in corruption, with exceptions like the senior detectives involved in an international gang of confidence men in 1877, and were free from political control.

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American police detectives, like ordinary patrolmen, often established positive individual reputations, but the political corruption in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries always made people suspicious of detectives’ motives for both success and failure in investigations. They were unable or unwilling to pursue professional criminals who were a good source of payoffs. A well-known example was New York’s Chief of Detectives Thomas Byrnes, famous for his “deadline,” keeping professional criminals out of the Wall Street area, but he was also known for taking cases only where there was a substantial personal reward and for “third degree” harsh interrogation of suspects.18 Consequently a private detective agency that could establish a reputation for honesty and efficiency could win public confidence.

Two famous detectives’ careers Although not the first, Allan Pinkerton and William Burns are the most famous heads of private detective agencies. The two agencies were often bitter rivals, each accusing the other of incompetence and illegal operations. Allan Pinkerton was a Scotsman who had been a Chartist (supporter of universal male suffrage and labor unions in Britain) in his youth. He immigrated with his family in 1842, first to Montreal then to a town in Illinois. A barrel maker by trade, he began his detective career accidentally by stumbling on a gang of counterfeiters while looking for wood on an island. He also apparently aided slaves escaping from the South, part of the “underground railroad.” Conflicts with his strict local church, and consequent loss of customers in his occupation, made him jump at the offer of a position as deputy sheriff of Cook County (Chicago) in 1847. Pinkerton as a deputy proved to be honest and intelligent, and he got to know local politicians. They secured his appointment as the Chicago Police’s first detective in 1849, but he was out after only a year because his friends were defeated in elections. He became a mail agent for the US Post Office, investigating commercial theft through the mail, and worked as a private detective as well. He turned to fulltime private investigation, establishing his firm in 1855 with a partner as the North West Police Agency, then heading it himself in 1858 as Pinkerton’s National Police (later Detective) Agency. He proved to be a very hard worker, demanding equal commitment from subordinates. He was able to combine traditional detective methods, such as relying on informers and inducing confessions by force or fraud, with new technology as it developed over the years, such as mug shot photographs, distribution of wanted posters, adoption of the

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Bertillon system of body measurements of criminals, and later fingerprinting. Pinkerton increased an already wide reputation when he became head of the US Secret Service, protecting President Lincoln from an early assassination threat in 1861 and serving as military intelligence for General McClellan during the Civil War. He was able to take advantage of several post–Civil War social trends. The first of these was America’s railroad expansion, which led to the early work of the agency watching out for dishonest railroad employees and later protecting railroads against bandits in the West. A concurrent trend was conflict between labor and capital, which gave private detectives opportunities to work with employers to undermine labor unions and break strikes through spies or guards for “scabs.” Finally, the general national increase of wealth encouraged professional criminals to perfect burglary tools and techniques, leading bankers and jewelers particularly to become Pinkerton clients. The Pinkerton letterhead logo, an unblinking eye with the motto “We Never Sleep,” gave “private eye” to our language. One man, Charlie Siringo, “The Cowboy Detective,” illustrates the range of Pinkerton activities. Operating out of the Denver office, he traveled all over the Western states, from Alaska and Mexico, investigating stealing of gold and silver ore, “salting” of mines (placing ore from elsewhere in a new mine to falsely encourage buyers), train robbery, escaped prisoners, cattle rustling, burglary, and murder. He worked as a labor spy and infiltrated various outlaw gangs and the New Mexican “Whitecap,” Gorras Blancas, vigilantes. He rode the rails as a hobo and played the role of a moonshiner while investigating a kidnapping case. Occasionally he got himself arrested with members of criminal gangs so he could coax confessions out of his fellow prisoners.19 Less well known than Siringo but equally courageous and resourceful was Frank DiMaio, who specialized in Italian extortion gangs. He began his Pinkerton career investigating the killing of New Orleans Police Chief David Hennessy in 1890. Hysteria about the “Mafia” surrounded the case and made it difficult for anybody to infiltrate Italian groups. Having arranged with the US Secret Service for his arrest as a counterfeiter, DiMaio entered the jail in New Orleans. There, among a number of Italians arrested for the murder, he befriended a prisoner whom he thought would eventually provide information and was able to get evidence against members of the Matranga gang. These were put on trial but acquitted and shortly afterward lynched by vigilantes. DiMaio continued as an Italian specialist, investigating extortion and a murder in the mining country of Pennsylvania, and later working for wealthy Italians who had employed the Pinkerton agency to break up extortion rings. Disguised as a laborer, he was able

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to infiltrate the secretive gangs, and he became known as a mysterious spy, “the Raven,” whom the gangsters feared but were unable to expose. Working with the Pennsylvania State Police, DiMaio and other Pinkertons were able to arrest and secure conviction of no less than thirty-five gangsters. He later became head of the Pinkerton Agency’s Pittsburgh division.20 Unlike public police who were limited in jurisdiction, the Pinkertons could operate across state lines. They, and other detective agencies, were the closest thing to a national police force until creation of the FBI in 1908.21 Allan Pinkerton was a great self-promoter, publishing no less than eighteen books recounting the adventures of his detectives. After his death in 1884, Pinketon’s sons, William and Robert, took over the agency, which continues to exist as a security guard service no longer in family control, Pinkerton’s, Inc., a subsidiary of Securitas International.22 Allan Pinkerton’s promotion of his agency influenced middle-class readers of his seventeen books, creating a durable detective mythology of the intrepid loner, uncorruptible, committed to justice above law, always in the end successful.23 Nevertheless, many people had reason to object to what his men were doing. The role of Pinkertons for many years in labor conflict, beginning with a detective during the 1870s working as an agent provocateur to destroy the Mollie Maguires, a secret society of Pennsylvania coal miners, made the name “Pinkerton” anathema to union workers. A fatally botched attempt to capture Jesse James in 1875 in which Pinkertons exploded a bomb in the home of James’s mother, maiming her and killing a half brother, led to considerable criticism. James cultivated a reputation as a Robin Hood, even though he had killed two Pinkerton agents earlier and he and his gang “were nothing more than sociopathic thugs.”24 Thousands of readers of dime novels and newspaper accounts that had made James into a folk hero denounced the Pinkertons’ irresponsibility. Charles Siringo, who had worked for the Pinkertons for many years but later fell out with them, charged that the agency was “the most corrupt institution of the century” that cheated clients by inflating expenses, interrogated suspects with harsh or tricky methods that led to false confessions, and corrupted elections by paying “floaters” to stuff ballot boxes and “fixing” judges and juries, kidnapping, murder, and attempted murder.25 Nevertheless, many people supported the attack on labor unions and thought that outlaw gangs should be suppressed by any means possible, and few read Siringo’s accusations, which the Pinkertons were able to almost entirely suppress. The agency’s reputation, based largely on its criminal investigations, continued to grow despite criticisms.

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The detective career of William J. Burns, Pinkerton’s leading rival, wove between public and private. Born in Baltimore in 1858, he became interested in detective work after his father was elected police commissioner of Columbus, Ohio, where the family had moved. In 1870, his father delegated him to interview victims of a burglary wave in Columbus. He discovered that all of them had advertised trips out of town in the local newspaper’s society page. His deductions helped capture a local man. In 1885, the district attorney chose Burns to investigate a case of election fraud that he knew the police were unwilling to pursue. He found the culprit already in prison for a different crime; Burns fingered him because he had been bragging about the election fraud. This case established his reputation, and three years later he became a freelance investigator for the Furlong Detective Agency in St. Louis, traveling throughout the Midwest. Seeking better pay, Burns joined the US Secret Service as a part-time detective in 1891. He devoted himself to the Secret Service’s primary mission, tracking down counterfeiters. In one case, he moved to Cincinnati to spy on Charles Ulrich, a well-known professional criminal who was part of a counterfeiting ring. He followed Ulrich to the train station, got on the train to New York, and remained five months shadowing him. He finally was able to arrest Ulrich and the ring’s engraver. Promoted to full-time detective in 1896, Burns continued his investigations in other areas as well as counterfeiting, including identification of members of an Indiana lynch mob that had executed five jail inmates who had been accused of burglary and rape. The lynchers included several prominent citizens of the town of Versailles, and the state attorney general declined to prosecute because he knew conviction would be impossible. In 1903, President Roosevelt personally selected Burns to investigate illegal use of public lands by private companies in Oregon. He uncovered corruption among public employees, including the local head of the US Forestry Division, state officials, and even a US senator who was convicted and sentenced to prison but died while awaiting an appeal. He later played a major role in investigation of Mayor Schmitz and political boss Abe Ruef of San Francisco who orchestrated major corruption involving forced payoffs by railroad and street car companies and restaurants. The cost of Burns’s work was carried by San Francisco businessmen, including William Randolph Hearst. Both men were convicted. Schmitz’s was overturned, but his political career was over. These two cases while working for the secret service made Burns’s reputation as a great detective who methodically and patiently went about his work. He cultivated an image as friend of reformers and ordinary people who exposed corruption and tracked down the perpetrators.

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Burns went entirely private in 1909, founding a firm with a partner and a year later becoming its sole proprietor. The “biggest case of his career,” the bombing of the Los Angeles Times building, came in 1910 (see Chapter 6). Like Allan Pinkerton, Burns began writing tales of his detective adventures, particularly the Los Angeles bombing, and cultivated newspaper publicity. He played himself in the 1914 movie The $ 5,000,000 Counterfeit Plot. He continued investigation of major cases, including in 1914 Leo Frank’s alleged murder of Mary Phagan, a worker in the Georgia pencil factory that Frank managed. Frank’s supporters hired Burns to search for evidence proving his innocence, but he was convicted on shaky evidence and sentenced to death. After a series of unsuccessful appeals up to the Supreme Court, the outgoing Georgia governor reviewed the evidence and procedural irregularities and commuted Frank’s sentence to life imprisonment the day before his scheduled execution. However, a lynch mob that included prominent citizens kidnapped Frank from prison and hanged him facing the house where Mary Phagan had grown up. Ironically, most students of the case think that Jim Conley, an African-American who claimed he had helped Frank dispose of Mary’s body after the murder, was the actual culprit. Burns himself had this suspicion and nearly got lynched himself when he suspected Conley and criticized “Georgia justice.” The would-be lynchers accused Burns of being the tool of Northern Jewish businessmen as did many Georgians later.26 Increasingly in the teens, although Burns did not completely lose his reputation as “America’s Sherlock Holmes,” many people began to question some of his high-handed methods. In 1912, President Taft pardoned one of the men convicted on Burns’s evidence in the Oregon land fraud cases. The grounds for pardon were charges that Burns had tampered with the jury in the original trial, finding out who was most likely to convict. Burns was not legally charged, but he and the Department of Justice exchanged insults. Next year, Governor Cole Blease of South Carolina declared that he would pardon anybody convicted on evidence supplied by the Burns Agency. He was angry at Burns agents who planted a Dictaphone in his office, seeking indiscretions their employer, an election opponent, could use against him. Blease proved entirely discreet but both he and the general public reacted furiously against the spying, which likely won his reelection. In 1916, the agency found itself embroiled in a long controversy over wiretapping. Burns agents had installed a Dictaphone in a law office apparently to obtain information about clients who were selling munitions to European nations in violation of American neutrality laws. Burns maintained the legitimacy of wiretapping, especially since he had police cooperation, but William Pinkerton opposed its use. Burns and his client, a J.P. Morgan and Company executive,

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who was in fact selling munitions to France, were tried for unlawful entry, a misdemeanor. In an odd decision, the judge fined Burns $100, said he had acted “from the best of motives,” and encouraged an appeal, which was successful. The client was acquitted after his testimony in a closed courtroom. Opponents took the opportunity to seek revocation of Burns’s detective license, and hearings with many damaging revelations went on intermittently for two years. Burns emerged successfully, accusing the Pinkertons of instigating the hearings. There was no clear law about wiretapping; the Supreme Court approved it in a 1928 case. States began passing laws restricting its admissibility in court as evidence, and in 1934, it was limited under the Federal Communications Act. Wiretapping now requires court permission in advance, which is never granted to private detectives.27 Burns made a serious mistake when he went public again, accepting Warren G. Harding’s appointment as head of the BI (later FBI) in 1921. He entered a morass of corruption that included his own subordinates. His reputation plummeted because of another case involving illegal use of public lands, the Teapot Dome Scandal, which included high federal officials and some of his own BI agents who received kickbacks for leasing government land to private corporations. To make things worse, he did not investigate anything before the scandal became public and became a scapegoat for criticism of the whole Harding administration. Leaving the bureau in 1924, Burns continued some investigations, but these did not enhance his reputation. In 1927, one of the Tea Pot Dome defendants, oil tycoon Harry Sinclair, hired the Burns Agency to follow federal jurors for his trial and report on their activities. Revelation of this scheme led to a mistrial and a new hearing in which Sinclair was convicted of corruption with a six-month prison term. Burns himself received a fifteen-day sentence, and his son had to pay a $1,000 fine. Burns’s conviction was later reversed by the Supreme Court. He died in 1932. The Burns Agency has become part of a corporation providing security guards, Securitas (the same that had absorbed the Pinkerton agency), with no connection to the family after William’s widow died in 1958.28 Both Pinkerton and Burns established reputations as investigative geniuses but also had to deal with scandals that dimmed their luster.

Rank and file detectives The great majority of private detectives were men, although women did engage in the work. For both sexes, the primary qualifications were intelligence and

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ability to blend in with people of all income levels and occupations, depending on the investigation they were conducting. A sample of thirty-five applicants to the Glen Bodell Detective Agency of Los Angeles in the 1920s typically was white men in their 30s and 40s, married and often with children. The applicants had little education, in this case only grade school. They possessed little property, but often a car and a gun. They commonly had previous experience as detectives. The applicants came from all over the country; very few from Los Angeles. Employees of Wisconsin’s largest detective agency consisted of twentythree men and one woman. These labor spies were mostly from the state, and most had at least a high school education. They had previous military, police, or private detective experience; they were a bit younger than the California group, in their 20s or 30s; and two of three were married. Sine these people were labor spies, it is possible that more may have been expected of them in this delicate and dangerous work than from the operatives in Los Angeles. Despite variations, sociologist John Walton’s summary of the Los Angles group fits both: “they were solid working-class men with reputable employment histories, family men with community attachments, not scum” as their critics portrayed them.29 The general argument in favor of women detectives was that they could go places and strike up friendships with other women, which men could not. Kate Warne, Allan Pinkerton’s favorite woman detective, and possibly the nation’s first, convinced Pinkerton to hire her with that argument in 1856. He was apparently “smitten” with her, and she became his mistress. He hired other women detectives and placed Warne in charge of them. His sons were hardly as keen; Robert questioned her expense accounts at one point. Nevertheless, she and Allan are buried near each other. Despite family scruples, Warne became an effective detective, able to don disguises and change accents to suit the occasion. Warne solved the Adams Express robbery case of 1858 by befriending the suspect’s wife and obtaining enough evidence to lead to his arrest. She became famous as detector of a Southern plot to assassinate President-elect Lincoln while passing through Baltimore on his way to the inauguration. Posing as a “flirty Southern Belle,” Warne gathered enough hints to suggest a plot to kill Lincoln while his train was stopped in the Baltimore depot. On her evidence, Pinkerton organized another train to bypass Baltimore and had Lincoln disguised in a shawl and soft felt hat. He arranged for the train to arrive well before schedule and had Lincoln switch to another to take him to Washington. During the war, Warne was an effective spy, able to mingle at the parties of high-society Southern sympathizers and chat with bored Confederate soldiers.

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Sometimes she and Pinkerton pretended to be a married couple. After the war, Warne continued her detective work, including a Mississippi robbery-murder in which she befriended the suspect’s wife who told her where the loot was cached. In another case, she disguised herself as a fortune-teller to expose a woman who was plotting to poison her brother. Warne’s career was cut off early by pneumonia in 1868, at the age of 35.30 After Allan’s death, his sons refused to hire women as agents.31 Warne was unusual in the variety of her roles and talents. Agencies that stooped to gathering evidence for divorce suits often employed women to place the husbands in compromising positions to aid their client, the aggrieved wife. Clara Thurnaur, who worked for the small Edward Hall Agency in Philadelphia, was skilled at obtaining evidence from errant wives on behalf of husband clients. Cora Strayer of Chicago set up her own agency, specializing in women’s complaints. She advertised, “When in need of legal or confidential advice, why not confer with one of your own sex?” Nevertheless, her “Supt. of the Criminal Department” was George Holben, apparently her lover. A former agency employee, claiming that Cora had promised to marry him, murdered Holben in 1910. She denied any such promise and argued that Ayers, the murderer, was “unreliable.” Like men, women worked in department stores and factories, looking out for thieving clerks, laborers, or shopkeepers. They also fingered union organizers, who usually lost their jobs. The Pinkerton Agency, as part of its contract to guard the 1915 San Francisco Panama-Pacific Exposition, employed young women to work as cashiers and ticket collectors at the various concessions. They were assigned to watch for thieving colleagues, but, finding none, they complained about their unsuspecting male supervisors who demanded long hours, accused them of theft when cash was short, and restricted their social activities.32 They became champions of the people they were supposed to spy on. Women private investigators have become more common today.33 There were also African-American detectives. Many worked as labor spies, ferreting out union organizing in firms that employed large numbers of black workers. Others, though, established regular agencies, were serving AfricanAmericans who could afford their fees. Detroit’s Sheridan A. Bruseaux headed the Keystone Detective Agency, which called itself “the pioneer and only colored licensed and bonded detective agency in the world.” He was not alone, though: Louis Q.J. Gilmore headed the National Negro Detective Agency in Kansas City, Mo.; L.S. King ran Cincinnati’s “Negro Detective Agency,” the King Detective, Photography and Fingerprinting Agency. In 1920s Los Angeles, Samuel Marlow

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ran an agency on Central Avenue, heart of the black ghetto.34 Like most AfricanAmerican entrepreneurs, they worked among their own people, as clients and targets.

Relations with the police and other public officials Although fictional private detectives are usually at odds with the police, actually the public and private agencies often cooperated, and as the careers of Pinkerton and Burns indicate, private detectives could move between the private and public sectors in their careers. Heads of Pinkerton regional offices looked to hire “former policemen who have come under our observation as good men.” George H. Bangs, one of Pinkerton’s most effective agents, had been a New York City policeman, a member of the elite Crystal Palace squad in the 1850s. He joined the agency when Allan Pinkerton came from Chicago, seeking recruits.35 Pinkerton Superintendent Frank Murray had been police chief of Joliet, Illinois, for three years and served fifteen years as a state prison “officer” before joining the agency.36 Some of these had aided the agency in investigating major crimes. The agency was also on the lookout for men who lost their police jobs because of electoral defeat of their political protectors. The politicization of the public police created a pool of trained men for private investigation. The first chief of Chicago’s new police force, hired in 1855, lost his job a year later due to change in the political party controlling the city. He established a private agency, which allowed him to retain his contacts with the police.37 Private employment of former public officials has remained popular to the present. George Wackenhut, founder of the third largest private security firm in the 1970s, was a former FBI agent, who hired eighteen fellow ex-agents. Three ex-FBI men were executives of the Pinkerton firm and seven of the Burns company.38 Since agencies had these personnel connections, it seems likely that they would cooperate with public police forces. The Chicago Police in the 1890s hired Pinkerton detectives in burglary cases, because their own men were too “well known” to professional criminals. The Pinkertons prohibited their men from accepting rewards, which made for good relations with the police because they would make the final arrests and collect any rewards. A swindler was about to be released for lack of evidence when the police detective had a talk with Supt. Daugherty of the Pinkertons, who identified the man as William J. Fields, defrauder of shopkeepers through “several thousand dollars” in forged checks. He

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had been initially arrested “on speculation” because one of the officers recognized him from the department’s Rogue’s Gallery (collection of mug shots).39 When police rounded up several burglary suspects, Pinkerton and police detectives cooperated in identifying them in a lineup. The police superintendent himself called in Robert Pinkerton.40 Pinkertons and detectives of the Providence, Rhode Island, police were able to capture America’s most famous forger, William Brockway, and his partners, aided by a former member of the gang who worked with the detectives to trap Brockway.41 In Chicago, the police and Pinkertons even shared interrogation methods: each used the “sweatbox,” confinement of suspects in a narrow unventilated space until they confessed, and other forms of torture.42 As early as 1860, the agency had developed a working relationship with the police.43 District attorneys and other officials as well as police worked with the Pinkertons. In 1877, detectives from the New York district attorney’s office joined Robert and William Pinkerton to arrest a notorious forger, Stephen Raymond, who had fled to London. William sailed to London with extradition papers and was able to bring Raymond back to New York, despite his efforts to frustrate the detective in British courts. Once arrived, Raymond managed to escape but was arrested in Philadelphia under an alias for practicing the “pocket book” confidence game upon “hundreds” of people. Robert Pinkerton and the two district attorney’s detectives greeted Raymond at the gates of Eastern State Penitentiary when he was released, and they were able to bring him back to New York to be tried on the earlier forgery charges. Raymond’s appearance had changed during the past two years “so as to be almost unrecognizable,” but Robert Pinkerton was able to identify him because of his glass eye.44 The same trio also arrested groups of clever forgers in the fall of the same year and in 1880.45 Later on, the Pinkertons worked with district attorney’s office detectives to arrest several men who had arranged for “repeaters” to vote at elections throughout New York City. Two of the Pinkertons, “colored men from Chicago,” had infiltrated a gang of black repeaters who planned to sell their services to the highest bidder. Another scheme was for detectives to disguise themselves as tramps to catch the men offering money for their multiple votes. The Pinkertons discovered that repeaters were organized into actual clubs who bartered with politicians for their votes. Like many groups in the 1880s, the repeaters responded to the imperative call to organize for survival.46 The Connecticut district attorney called a prime witness a Pinkerton detective who had shared a cell with an accused murderer for the express purpose of entrapping him into a confession, “a brilliant, though treacherous, piece of detective work.”47

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Detectives worked with police in areas of mutual interest, especially tracking down notorious forgers, swindlers, and robbers. Sometimes, though, the police did not want to pursue criminals—gamblers, brothel keepers, and others who provided lucrative sources of payoffs. District attorneys and other officials hired private detectives to go after these underworld characters. In New York City, with a well-developed but corrupt police force in the late nineteenth century, the district attorney sometimes hired private investigators to probe criminal activity the police were either unable or unwilling to deal with. In a confusing 1873 arrest attempt in New Jersey, private detectives got arrested after they tried to arrest a man without a warrant. They apparently were acting for the New York district attorney who “commissioned” the Pinkerton men to arrest him to serve as a witness at a trial. The New York Times, believing that public detectives should do investigations for public officials, speculated that the district attorney was not confident in the regular police detectives, who were themselves under an investigation for misconduct.48 In 1882, the district attorney employed eleven Pinkertons to raid a major “lottery policy” (numbers) operation without notifying the police (who might have tipped off the gamblers). The detectives, led by Robert Pinkerton, followed their usual method of surveillance to gather evidence. After presenting their evidence, a judge made the agents deputy sheriffs with full arrest powers. They broke down the door to find operations in full blast and arrested ten men. They took them to the district attorney directly instead of to the police. A police sergeant who was passing by heard that the office was “cleaned out.” He exclaimed, “By Jupiter, won’t this make some people at headquarters stand on their heads.”49 In 1884, District Attorney Peter B. Olney bypassed the police in arranging a sting operation against Fredericka (“Marm”) Mandelbaum, a notorious fence. He hired the Pinkerton Agency instead, because it did not have a connection with Mandelbaum that “some members of the force” had, including accepting bribes and buying stolen goods from her. Robert Pinkerton first had his men surveying who came and went at Mandelbaum’s storefront. They spotted not only pickpockets and shoplifters but also “respectable” people such as shopkeepers who appreciated the lower prices of stolen goods they then would resell. After these observations, Pinkerton selected one of his best men, Gustave Frank, German-born, like Mandelbaum. Newspapers reported that Frank posed as a customer who claimed he was a “jobber in silks” looking for cheap quality goods. At first, Mandelbaum was hesitant but finally agreed, and Frank became a regular customer on condition that he would not sell his silks in New York City. Frank went to the leading dry goods stores to see if they could identify any stolen

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merchandise. Many could not, but two positively identified some rolls of silk as stolen by shoplifters. The district attorney now had his evidence, and Frank and other detectives arrested Mandelbaum, her son, and an associate in July 1884. Mandelbaum expressed her anger at Frank’s betrayal by punching him in the face. Granted search warrants, the Pinkertons searched Mandelbaum’s store and found more silks with the same identifying marks as the ones the storekeepers had declared were stolen. Although the warrant limited their search to these particular silk rolls, the detectives found many more and a safe full of watches and jewelry, likely the loot of pickpockets. Mandelbaum and the others went on trial on July 25, 1884. Various dry goods dealers identified the rolls of silk found at her store, and Gustave Frank described his dealings with her. Despite the eloquence, outrage, legal learning, and efforts to undermine Frank’s character by her attorneys, the notorious Tammany Hall favorites William Howe and Abraham Hummel, it seemed likely that Mandelbaum would be convicted. Determined not to serve jail time, Mandelbaum, her children, and associate fled to Canada. She escaped imprisonment, but her career as “Queen” of New York City’s fences was over.50 Several years later, Police Commissioner Francis Greene of New York City hired four detectives from Kansas City, Missouri, and Indianapolis, Indiana, agencies to investigate gambling halls against which the police could not obtain any evidence. They quickly got the evidence, and Greene asked hard questions to the head of the police detective division.51 It is not quite clear why he did not hire the many New York detectives available. In New Haven, Connecticut, Pinkertons carried out a sting against a trusted police captain suspected of stealing money from prisoners in the station house. They pretended to be drunken, rowdy young men who, as planned, got arrested and taken to the station house. They had been carrying money in their pockets when brought in, but when released the next day, they got only a small sum back. The detectives had been hired by two of the city’s police commissioners, who allowed the captain to resign when confronted with the evidence that he had pilfered around $3.00 of the men’s money.52 Atherton and Dunn, a private detective agency led by two former FBI agents, investigated systemic corruption of the San Francisco police in the mid-1930s. They revealed that almost everybody in the police department was taking payoffs from a wide range of illegal businesses: prostitution, bookmaking, illegal abortion, thieves, and fences. To avoid licensing problems and other harassment, even legitimate operations such as restaurants and bars had to provide payments to the police. The police were part of a city-wide ring led by Peter McDonough, a “fountainhead of corruption, willing to interest itself in almost any matter

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designed to defeat or circumvent the law.” The detectives’ report made it clear that they were not working on behalf of a “moral crusade” to close down illegal businesses, which most San Franciscans would have opposed. They were aiming directly and only at the police and their connections in the underworld.53 If the private detectives circumvented the police, the police did not always think much of them. In the 1920s and 1930s, private detectives complained that the police did not respect the badges they showed, thinking they were from “some junk or toy shop,” and objected that they had to acquire a permit from the police to carry a pistol, a process some detectives thought police captains prolonged unnecessarily. Detectives urged that their license include a pistol permit. The police also seemed unwilling to cooperate with private investigators watching the shops of suspected fences.54 Overall, despite inevitable conflicts and jealousies, private detectives and the police worked together to capture criminals. Out West, where detectives were scarce, local officials employed private detectives. In Archuleta County, Colorado, officials hired the Pinkertons to protect them against an “insurrection” seeking to topple them from power in 1887. What made the situation unusual in this sparsely populated area was that the local officials were Mexican, who won elections based on the Mexican sheep farmer vote, and the “insurrectionists” were Anglos. Charlie Siringo, in his first operation as “cowboy detective,” infiltrated the rebels and saved the officials from more than one assassination attempt. Through “hard lying,” Siringo saved himself from death threats by suspicious members of the Anglo group. After an armed standoff, the two factions reached a political settlement that provided an “even division of the political pie.”55 Four years later, Siringo worked for the territorial government of New Mexico. Men on horseback had fired into a meeting of the Senate executive committee, wounding one of the senators. The context was this senator’s introduction of a bill to provide for free public schools in the territory, much opposed by the Catholic Church and most members of the Mexican community. The senators suspected the Gorras Blancas or Whitecaps, the Mexican group, which sometimes practiced vigilantism, other times electoral politics (see Chapter 3). Siringo, a very persuasive man, befriended a Whitecap leader and was able to be admitted into the secretive organization as its only Anglo member. After a long period of membership, Siringo concluded that the Whitecaps were not involved but instead possibly an outlaw gang and some local Mexican farmers. After a long investigation, punctuated by a serious illness, Siringo was certain he could at least identify the man whose horse had made an unusual footprint outside

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the office where the shooting occurred. Since the suspects were not Whitecaps, but members of the dominant Republican Party, the senators dropped the investigation because they feared too much political turmoil. Siringo returned to the Pinkerton Agency’s Denver office.56 Two other Western detectives, James B. Hume and Harry Morse of the Wells Fargo express company, joined a local sheriff in tracking down the colorful and elusive stage coach robber “Black Bart.” During one of his attacks in 1883, the bandit had dropped a handkerchief during a shoot-out, which he escaped. Hume thought that Black Bart had fled to San Francisco, where he led a respectable life as Charles E. Bolton. The detectives followed a methodical strategy. Morse compiled a list of all the San Francisco laundries, and the detectives went about seeking to match a laundry mark on Black Bart’s handkerchief. They found a laundryman whose mark it was, and he provided Hume and Morse with “Bolton’s” address. Armed with revolvers, they arrested Black Bart without a struggle.57 The Federal Government did not have its own criminal investigative unit until creation of the Secret Service in 1865, which focused its efforts on counterfeiters. As early as 1793, the post office appointed inspectors to investigate mail thefts, later extending their work to frauds. The Treasury Department’s Bureau of Internal Revenue, created during the Civil War, was responsible for investigating and solving evasions of federal excise taxes on liquor and tobacco. Not until formation of the Bureau of Investigation in 1908 (later the FBI) did the Federal Government have a force of investigators of general federal law violations. Like city officials, federal agency heads sometimes hired private detectives. The most famous collaboration of federal and private detectives was in 1861, when Allan Pinkerton, using evidence supplied by Kate Warne, warned President-elect Lincoln of the assassination plot in Baltimore, Maryland. If there had been a plot, and there is a bit of evidence to suggest there was, Pinkerton saved the President’s life. He became chief of the Secret Service, essentially the first military intelligence unit, and he and his operatives, including Warne, spied on the Confederates. They do not seem to have accomplished a great deal; in fact, the agents consistently overestimated the number of Confederate troops facing General George McClellan, contributing to what Lincoln called his “slows.” Nevertheless, the war experience enhanced Pinkerton’s reputation.58 During Reconstruction after the Civil War, the Federal Government sometimes relied on private detectives to aid local federal district attorneys. Congress passed the legislation that established the Department of Justice in

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1870, essentially an expansion of the old attorney general’s office, in the face of repeated Southern violations of the Reconstruction laws protecting AfricanAmerican voting rights. Unlike the Treasury and post office departments, the Department of Justice did not have its own force of investigators. In 1871, the department did receive funds for detection of crime, but most of the money actually went to investigation of corruption among local federal officials. Most attorney generals did not like the idea of a national “secret police,” sharing widespread public sentiment, even though they realized the need for detectives. Sometimes they borrowed agents from the Secret Service, but they also hired some private investigators on a case-by-case basis.59 The attorney general allotted some money to each regional district attorney to conduct investigations, but the amount was small. Active US Marshal James H. Pierce of Northern Mississippi requested department funds to hire a detective but was turned down for lack of funds. He hired the investigator at his own expense, and the detective gathered evidence useful in a murder trial as well as preventing a jailbreak. Pierce wrote the attorney general describing this success, and he finally paid the detective’s bill for $200.00. When Congress passed the act funding detection, Pierce received $1,000 (equal to about $20,000 today) for Northern Mississippi. In Utah, the US Marshal was able to obtain money for a private detective to investigate prominent Mormons, who were violating the Edmunds Act, which outlawed polygamy. The Arizona district attorney employed detectives to seek evidence in the Wham army payroll robbery case of 1885, but the gang was never brought to justice.60 District attorneys and marshals sometimes acted as investigators themselves, but more often when they could not hire detectives, they posted rewards for notorious criminals. Amateurs often responded, but so did skilled detectives like the Pinkertons seek the rewards. After 1892, federal officials could no longer directly hire private detectives. Following the Homestead Strike in which Pinkertons and workers exchanged shots, Congress passed the “Anti-Pinkerton Act” that prevented federal officials from employing private investigators.

Urban anti-vice reformers and private detectives Nineteenth-century cities offered many perils and temptations to young men and women who migrated to them—prostitution, gambling, alcohol, blood sports, and dangers lying in seemingly innocent places like dance halls or soda parlors. For many years, women were active in the efforts to control vice,

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focusing on the prostitutes and their customers, saloon keepers, or gamblers whom they hoped to reform. The police received too many payoffs to be useful allies. After the Civil War, the war on vice became a concern of men as well, who were less interested in reforming the vicious than in driving vice out of business or regulating it through enforcing existing licensing, liquor, or obscenity laws or passing new ones. The American Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA), founded in 1851 to provide wholesome recreation and safe lodging for men, was an important force in the effort to stamp out vice. The YMCA supported the first of the male anti-vice crusaders, Anthony Comstock, at least until he became too extreme in his tactics. Comstock, like many young men, was a migrant from New England. As a clerk in a mercantile firm, he was horrified by his fellow clerks’ pleasures in the sins of New York. The YMCA had already begun a campaign against pornography dealers, and Comstock began his career in 1868 as self-appointed crusader against vice by having a pornography dealer arrested whose books he thought had corrupted a friend. Comstock bought an erotic book and took it to the local police captain as evidence of violating New York’s obscenity laws.61 Comstock continued to fight the pornography dealers, but he and the YMCA both thought the laws were inadequate. The wealthy gentlemen leading the YMCA supported Comstock financially and appointed him agent of its Society for the Suppression of Vice. He achieved nationwide reputation by his involvement in the adultery scandal featuring popular minister Henry Ward Beecher and a congregant’s wife. He tried to prosecute two remarkable women, the sisters Victoria C. Woodhull and Tennessee Claflin, who were New York’s only female stock brokers and published a sensational newspaper advocating many outrageous things, including free love. Woodhull and Claflin blared forth the Beecher scandal to the world, and Comstock had them arrested under an 1872 federal law that forbade sending obscene material through the mails. After more than one sensational trial that kept New Yorkers amused and made Comstock look like the stereotype of a rigid sour Puritan, the federal case against Woodhull and Claflin was dismissed. Comstock’s defeat was only temporary, for after some hard lobbying, he had persuaded a majority of Congress to pass a new federal obscenity law, fittingly known as the Comstock Act of 1873. This measure forbade the sending of any obscene material through the mail, including all sorts of literature (the 1872 law had failed to mention newspapers) and information about and advertisements for birth control and abortion for good measure. Comstock succeeded in getting himself appointed a special agent of the post office to enforce the law, and he returned to New York with powers of arrest. As special agent, Comstock proved

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a detective of “endurance, patience, persistence and keen resourcefulness.” He pursued one manufacturer of “articles of a vile sort” from New York, through Bridgeport, Connecticut, Chicago, St. Louis, Memphis, New Haven, Connecticut, Havana, and New Orleans, collecting warrants against him along the way. Finally, a deputy US Marshal arrested him in New Orleans, bringing him back to New Haven, where he was tried and convicted.62 The President of the Town Council of Summit, New Jersey, Comstock’s home, was so confident in his detective ability that he asked Comstock to help track down a gang of burglars. Requesting and receiving full authority, anonymity, and legal protection, Comstock set about his detective work. After careful gathering of clues, questioning of witnesses and suspects, a bit of entrapment, and thwarting a police scheme to allow the suspects to escape, he personally arrested some of the gang and obtained convictions for all of them. “Summit took a long and grateful breath of relief.”63 Comstock concentrated on visual and print obscenity, and objects such as birth control devices. In 1874, the Society for the Suppression of Vice claimed it had destroyed 67 tons of indecent books, 194,000 pornographic pictures and photographs, 60,3000 “rubber articles”, 5,500 “indecent playing cards,” and 3,150 boxes of pills and powders. The total of prison terms secured was twenty-four years and one month, and $9,250 in fines.64 Comstock thought any visual representation of the nude body was obscene: he targeted art galleries and museums, culminating in seizure of the catalogues of the Art Students’ League, which included life-drawings of nude men and women. Even though a jury conviction forced the league to withdraw its catalogue in 1906, sexual attitudes were beginning to become more liberal in the early twentieth century, and increasing numbers of people began to laugh at “Constockery.”65 Comstock was not only interested in indecent things that went through the mail or were sold in newsstands or art galleries. One of his successes was ending the career—and life—of Madame Restell, the queen of New York City’s abortionists. Serving wealthy customers who could afford hushing up daughters’ or wives’ illegitimate births, she was wealthy herself, living in luxury in a Fifth Avenue mansion. Except for a year in New York City’s Blackwell’s Island Penitentiary, she was able to hire excellent lawyers and avoid conviction even after abortion was made illegal in 1848. Madame Restell also sold abortifacients for self-administration and birth control devices. Since her advertisements had appeared in newspapers in violation of the 1873 law, he laid a trap for her. Serving as his own detective, in 1878 he went to see her and persuaded her with a story of poverty and desperation that he and his wife could not possibly afford

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another child. She gave him some of her remedies. Comstock then returned with a warrant and policemen to arrest her. Out on bail, she realized that she could not win her case this time, and at 67, dreading another jail term, committed suicide. He received considerable criticism for his entrapment and driving her to death, but Comstock’s summary was “a bloody end to a bloody life.”66 Comstock also went beyond pornography or art to attack brothels that provided live, all-female sex shows, “French flea circuses.”67 Twice in 1878, he watched these shows at different brothels to the end, apparently with disgust, and then arrested performers and patrons. This sort of show had been known to customers at least since the 1830s. Realizing he could never eliminate prostitution itself, Comstock was especially disappointed that brothels were places of indecent entertainment as well as sale of sex.68 Like obscenity in all its forms, Comstock viewed illegal gambling as a prime corruptor of youth.69 He tried to raid the Louisiana Lottery’s offices in New York City (Louisiana was the only state in the later nineteenth century with a legal lottery) but found it too well protected by police and higher officials. Finally, in 1890, Congress passed a stricter federal law outlawing interstate transportation of lottery tickets and advertising by mail, and the Louisiana Lottery closed in 1893. Comstock was more successful in raiding Long Island City’s “pool rooms” (where bettors pooled their money on horses and sports) in 1882. Accompanied by Pinkerton detectives with “commissions” signed by the county sheriff, he raided two places, getting into scuffles with “denizens” and smashing down doors. At one point, he saw the glint of revolvers and drew one himself, “and with my warrants in one hand, revolver in the other, and my shield on my left breast, I commanded their peaceful surrender.” They finally did, but at another establishment, Comstock was thwarted by no less than the county coroner, who demanded that he stop. Comstock “flung him off ” and kicked in a door and seized gambling equipment and betting tickets. However, the “rumselling Coroner” returned with “one of his sneaks,” grabbed him and demanded his name. Comstock shouted, “Peace officer, and you will be obliged to get out of here.” Comstock, a large and strong man, “ejected” the coroner twice, the second time along with a police sergeant. He and his raiders managed to escape an angry mob yelling that he should be shot or hanged. Despite such spectacular battles for virtue, Comstock was not as enthusiastic about combatting gamblers as he was about eliminating public displays of sex.70 By the 1920s, Comstock was a figure of ridicule among urban sophisticates. However, he had a nationwide impact, inspiring formation of anti-vice organizations in several cities, by 1888 in Cincinnati, St. Louis, Chicago,

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Louisville, and San Francisco. Comstock and a local anti-vice crusader tried hard in Philadelphia but never gained the upper-class support enjoyed in other cities.71 His most famous inspiration was Boston’s Watch and Ward Society (W&W) (until 1890, the New England Society for the Suppression of Vice) formed after a Comstock lecture in 1878 by a group of elite Bostonians. Earlier Comstock himself had managed to rid Boston of its crudest pornography. Considered more genteel than Comstock’s group, it was most famous or notorious for banning literature it judged obscene—not just newsstand pornography but novels by the likes of Sinclair Lewis, Theodore Dreiser, and Upton Sinclair in the 1920s. In this activity, it had full cooperation of the police. “Banned in Boston” became a selling point for such literature in other cities. The W&W also acted in other cities and the entire New England area. It hired agents to trick book stores into selling them books the society then had declared obscene and prosecuted the booksellers. For many years, leading booksellers protected themselves by consulting with the W&W before putting suspect literature on their shelves. Despite Comstock’s efforts, censorship of literature never reached the same extent in New York, perhaps because there was less upper-class agreement than in Boston than about what deserved censorship.72 The W&W employed full-time agents, private detectives, and part-time agents (often Harvard or other university students) to conduct investigations of prostitution and gambling. The agents could gather evidence that the society used for obtaining warrants from sympathetic judges. When local police were unwilling to cooperate, the agents worked with county sheriffs or the state police. In one of the most spectacular raids, J. Frank Chase, secretary (head agent) of the W&W, led his assistant and a squad of deputy sheriffs against New Bedford, Massachusetts, gambling joints and brothels in 1916. The first place attacked was a gambling operation, which had been under surveillance by W&W agents and detectives from the Woods Agency for several weeks, pretending to be regular patrons. The inmates “exchanged blows” with the raiders, and finally twenty people were arrested. Not until a deputy sheriff called the police to send a paddy wagon to pick up the prisoners did the local police know anything about the raids. In the end, seventy-nine people were charged with various violations; only two of whom were acquitted. Like the American Protective League and National Civic Federation, W&W became an agent of the Federal Government in the First World War, part of the Commission on Training Camp Activities’ campaign against vice near military bases. Toward the end of the war, the society raided brothels in Woonsocket, Rhode Island. At the Old Staples roadhouse, members of the Camp Devens Provost Guard, six BI agents, four US Marshals,

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and ten W&W agents found themselves under fire from the house. One W&W agent had been wounded. Lieutenant Hannibal Hamlin of the Military Police organized a counterattack involving threats to burn the place down with lighted torches and breaking a door down to swarm into the house. Again, Lieutenant Hamlin’s call for a police ambulance was the first time the Woonsocket police knew anything about the raid. Brothels had declined after the First World War, and in the 1920s and 1930s, the W&W concentrated on banning books in Boston, but the society also investigated and secured warrants against cafes where prostitutes solicited customers, burlesque houses, and gambling joints. By 1961, liberalization of obscenity laws and court decisions had ended the W&W’s censorship activities, and by then, it had given up raids in favor of lobbying and investigation. As of 1957, it had changed its name to the New England Citizens Crime Commission. In 1961, the society earned national attention and praise for its investigation and exposure of police corruption involving ties to an illegal bookie operation. W&W agents had been keeping the Swartz Key Shop under surveillance for ten years, but its complaints aroused no official attention. The secretary then contacted the television documentary show “CBS News Reports” to publicize corruption in Boston. The show set up cameras opposite the Key shop and revealed hordes of men going in and out of “probably the busiest key store in the world,” including ten uniformed Boston police officers. The police commissioner lost his job, and there were several corruption investigations throughout the state government. The W&W had ousted two corrupt district attorneys in the 1920s, but years of overzealous raids and entrapment of booksellers had damaged its reputation. The 1961 exposure revitalized the now-called Citizens Crime Commission, which many people did not even know was the old W&W.73 Anthony Comstock’s most prominent successor in New York was Reverend Charles Parkhurst, another New Englander who became leader of the Society for the Prevention of Crime (founded by another clergyman in 1878) in 1891. Like Comstock, he realized that the police were often an obstacle in the way of fighting vice, but unlike his predecessor, Parkhurst was targeting the police more than the purveyors of vice, hoping the force could be compelled to enforce the laws. In early 1892, he delivered a sensational sermon denouncing Tammany Hall and the police for the graft that kept disorderly places running despite the law. Thinking they could derail Parkhurst, Tammany called for a grand jury investigation of his charges. Realizing that he would have to prove his charges, the crusader hired private detective Charles Gardner to take him and a parishioner on a tour of the vice of the great metropolis. Disguised as

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sporting men out on the town, they visited basement lodging houses, Chinese opium joints, a brothel featuring young gay prostitutes, “fairies,” and passed by the policeman guarding Marie Andrea’s brothel, which featured a flea circus show. Gardner praised Parkhurst’s ability to see such sights, although when he learned about the “fairies,” he left the place in disgust. Parkhurst had the proof he needed, and he presented his evidence before the grand jury. He told them that he was not interested in convicting the madams or saloon keepers but to raise the issue of police corruption. The grand jury did indict brothel owners, however, and at Hattie Adams’s trial, her lawyers put Parkhurst and his colleagues through an embarrassing ordeal during which they had to describe their own roles in the flea circuses. Many reformers spurned Parkhurst because of his apparent hypocrisy, but he recovered his reputation through speeches and rallies. Gardner became Parkhurst’s chief agent, and his detectives continued their investigations of vice. Unfortunately some of them blackmailed saloon keepers and others by offering to withhold their reports for money. Gardner told Parkhurst, who promptly fired them. The police struck back against the crusaders by having a madam, Lillie Clifton, charge that Gardiner had extorted regular payoffs from her and later extra money to prevent her from being indicted by the grand jury. The detective was convicted of extortion, but after almost a year in jail, the New York Supreme Court reversed the conviction. Frank Moss, the principal agent of Parkhurst’s anti-vice campaign, had a narrow escape from a group of thugs after he forced a man during a trial to admit he had warned a defendant to evade arrest. The man turned out to be Max Hochstim, ward political boss and leader of the Essex Market gang. While Moss was detained, his private detectives left the courtroom. Outside, Hochstim’s supporters mobbed them, forcing them to run for their lives and escape by boarding a streetcar. Moss praised his men, who “acted with rare patience and discretion, and did not draw their firearms.”74 Despite such difficulties, Parkhurst’s campaign laid the ground for a New York State Senate investigation of the police (the Lexow Committee) in 1894. This investigation led to some reform of the police, and the Mazet investigation of 1900 to more, but the systemic link between police and vice would take years to break, and even then not completely.75 Partly because of the moral crusaders’ own methods, and partly because of private detectives’ shady reputation, after 1900, moral reformers began to hire amateurs, people from the neighborhood and class of the places they were investigating. Often they were more effective as undercover agents, but also they

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could be paid less and were less likely to inflate their reports to keep employed, since most were part-time employees outside of their regular jobs. Vice and police corruption seem to have fallen back into their usual patterns until 1900, when Episcopal Bishop Henry Potter gave his sermon denouncing police links with organized vice operations. Wealthy gentlemen were once again alerted and formed the Committee of Fifteen to launch a new crusade against vice. At first, the committee favored the strategy of its predecessors, raids on targeted establishments by committee members themselves accompanied by policemen. This was unsuccessful as the sight of well-dressed men wandering through the neighborhood with a policeman at their side aroused people’s curiosity and they began following the would-be raiders. The Committee then decided to use untrained amateur investigators to visit saloons, cafes, hotels, dance halls, and “boarding houses” to observe and report on illegal activities, especially prostitution. In saloons, they were looking out for prostitutes working the customers or bartenders serving liquor after hours. They sought to determine whether hotels were houses of assignation, places prostitutes took their customers. They worked to distinguish between prostitutes and legitimate unescorted women at dance halls by their behavior. They went to boarding houses or any place suspected of being a brothel. Some of the men who went to brothels seem to have gone about as far as one can go with the women without actual intercourse, suggesting that for them that the occupation of investigator was pleasant indeed. Young women sometimes encouraged men in cafes or dance halls to think they were prostitutes or at least “charity girls,” who gave sex in exchange for drinks and a night out. The investigators were not able to arrest anybody, only to write up reports for the committee members to use. Sometimes they secured warrants for arrest of proprietors; other times they met with them and compelled them to clean up their place or lose their business or liquor license.76 The Committee of Fifteen dissolved after the sudden death of its chairman in 1902. Three years later, under the sponsorship of the Anti-Saloon League, it was reconstituted as the Committee of Fourteen. This new committee, somewhat surprisingly considering that it had the records of the old one, hired a private detective firm to investigate hotels that were thinly disguised brothels. By 1907, though, the committee’s executive secretary favored use of part-time amateur investigators like its predecessor. He mistrusted detectives for the usual reasons, including manufacturing evidence to keep themselves employed, and he also thought that they were so familiar with vice they were not able to tell which behavior really violated “public decency.” Not until 1912, though, did the secretary stop investigating himself and turn to the amateur investigators

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or “observers.” He discovered that owners of saloons or hotels had come to recognize him and sent word to their friends to temporarily eject the prostitutes or obey the hours for serving liquor.77 The Committee of Fourteen added a new element to vice reform. Normally neither the reformers nor the police cared about vice in African-American neighborhoods as long as it stayed there. The committee did worry about one form of “vice”—mixing of white women and black men in saloons, restaurants, and dance halls. Their concern and treatment of racial mixing as a crime was contrary to New York State’s Civil Rights Law of 1873, which outlawed segregation in public accommodations. In 1911, working with conservative black leaders concerned about the behavior of new migrants from the South, the committee established a “Colored Auxiliary,” later called the Committee of Seven. Using the same amateur undercover surveillance methods as their white allies, the black committee harassed black proprietors of various establishments into segregating their facilities, with separate rooms for blacks and whites or refusal to allow whites in the door. The owner of the popular Marshall’s hotel, a rare place where middle-class blacks could mingle with whites of their own class, gave in to the committee’s pressure and separated black and white diners and drinkers. Rickey’s, a less exclusive place in Brooklyn, closed down. The Committee of Seven had a genuine concern to maintain order in black neighborhoods, but its parent was more interested in segregation. W.E.B. DuBois threatened to charge the committee with violation of the Civil Rights Law, but nothing came of it.78 In other cities, people were concerned about vice, especially prostitution. Chicago’s Vice Commission, appointed by the mayor in 1910, used undercover investigators to expose all the ramifications of the “Social Evil.” The commission published a full report in 1911 (ironically banned briefly under the Comstock Act as obscene) on the nature, extent, and causes of prostitution. Failing to achieve one of its goals, a city agency to deal with prostitution, Chicago’s Committee of Fifteen took over, blaming most prostitution on AfricanAmericans. Nevertheless, the Vice Commission’s report encouraged formation of such groups, some public, others private in forty-three cities. One of these was the Rockefeller-sponsored Bureau of Social Hygiene, which published its report on prostitution in New York City in 1913. The bureau hired George Kneeland, former head of investigation for the Chicago commission. Kneeland employed undercover investigators, whose reports made up most of the evidence of the final report, written by Kneeland.79 By the later nineteenth century, New York’s lower Eastside was developing an unsavory reputation as a hotbed of gambling, prostitution, and street gangs.

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The city’s Jewish elite feared that this reputation was feeding already existing anti-Semitism. German and East European leaders, who normally disdained each other, determined to redeem the Eastside. In 1909, a coalition of 222 organizations formed the “Kehillah,” modeled on similar groups in the old world. It established a “Bureau of Social Morals” in 1912 that employed amateur private investigators to uncover crime and vice. Abe Shoenfeld, the head investigator, had already worked for the Bureau of Social Hygiene, so he was familiar with prostitution. He hung out at Segal’s Café and other underworld meeting places, compiling long lists of madams, prostitutes, macks (pimps), guns (pickpockets) and gun molls, yegg men (safe crackers), guerillas (or gorillas, strong-arm enforcers), and pipe-fiends (opium smokers). Police sometimes accompanied by Shoenfeld’s investigators raided brothels and gambling halls, and there were some convictions, but rivalry between public and private raiders and collaboration of police and vice entrepreneurs led to waning interest. Shoenfeld was active between 1912 and 1917, when money for the investigations dried up. He never compiled a report, though his lists of hundreds of great and small crooks remain in manuscript.80 Whether professional or amateur, anti-vice reformers relied on private detectives to supply the information vital to their understanding of urban vice and to their ability to make charges and demand reform.

Public and private red hunters Anti-vice reformers responded to public fears of moral corruption. Similarly, red hunters appealed to public fears of political subversion by Communists. The American Protective League, Ku Klux Klan, and American Legion attacked “Reds” and any sort of leftists during the First World War. A “Red Scare” continued after 1919 though less dramatically through the twenties and thirties. Although the thirties have been called “the Red Decade” because of the increased membership and activity of the American Communist Party during the depression, the period was also an “anti-Red decade.” Fascist and sympathetic groups constantly attacked Communists and increasingly New Deal Liberals. Representative Martin Dies led House Un-American Activities Committee investigations of leftist groups in the later thirties. The committee were supposed to investigate Fascist groups as well but were much more interested in Communists, especially after the Hitler-Stalin Pact of 1939. Dies used the same tactics as earlier and later anti-Red government activity:

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producing lists of Communists working for government agencies, staging raids on leftist organization headquarters. State legislatures followed suit: New York’s Lusk Committee purged scores of teachers from the City College of New York and public schools. Despite American alliance with the Soviet Union during the Second World War, anti-Red sentiment and activity continued. The beginnings of the Cold War introduced new governmental calls for vigilance against internal subversion by the Communist enemy. The Communist Party USA was declared illegal in the Communist Control Act of 1954, but its language was ambiguous and the act was not strictly enforced. Nevertheless, anti-Communists considered the party a serious internal threat that should be suppressed because to them it advocated violent overthrow of the social and political order. All levels of government, from the federal to state to local, not only warned about the Communist threat but investigated people suspected of Communism, most of whom had left the party by the 1950s, and alleged Communist sympathizers, purging them from public employment. Labor union leaders, university and college presidents, public school administrators, and private employers heeded the call for vigilance and removed members, teachers and employees suspected of Communist affiliations. The entertainment industry, deemed especially susceptible to Communist propaganda, fired directors, actors, script writers, and other workers, creating blacklists to prevent them from continuing their careers. Not only did private groups respond to governmental calls for vigilance and purges, anti-Communism during the Cold War era carried on the role of private organizations acting as investigators and conduits of information to the government, and the government agencies sometimes obtained information from the private groups. The era from the late 1940s through the 1950s is commonly called the “McCarthy Era” after the loud senator who led highly publicized investigations. It began before Senator Joseph McCarthy waved his lists and persisted after he was censured by the Senate and abandoned by President Eisenhower in 1954. Private red hunters joined government and corporate groups to suppress Communism. Many were simply propaganda outlets, who warned against the danger of spies and conspirators. These included the John Birch Society, which called President Dwight Eisenhower a “conscious agent of the Communist Conspiracy”, the (Protestant) Christian Anti-Communist Crusade, various Catholic groups such as those supporting Poland’s exiled Cardinal Mindzenty, and the Minute Men, survivalists who were preparing for an imminent Soviet invasion, all vocal components of anti-Communism. Other organizations accused people of Communism without any form of due process and respect for

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constitutional rights and had the power to punish them economically by firing them and preventing their future employment. These private employer groups consulted government investigations and information provided by specialists in ferreting out Communists. They did not act in the face of government inability or unwillingness but rather at government’s urging. Similar to the APL and other groups during the First World War, they blended into the state’s effort to destroy Communist subversion.81 The FBI and private anti-Communist groups continued to cooperate in the second red scare after the Second World War as they had during the First World War, although no group achieved the official status of the APL. In 1940, the American Legion was making plans to recreate the APL, proposing to the attorney general that it should be authorized to investigate “subversives” in defense plants and elsewhere to report information to local police. Rejected by the attorney general, the Legion seemed about to create an unauthorized program. Hoover sought to reserve national security issues for the FBI and worried about the excesses of “inexperienced men.” Following a field agent’s suggestion, he created the “American Legion Contact Program.” The Legion Commanders were happy to cooperate with the FBI. Although the Contact Program’s primary purpose was to provide informers in defense plants and Italian and German neighborhoods, it legitimated the Legion’s political spying while containing it with FBI supervision. By late 1943, some 60,000 Legionnaires worked as informers, though the program was practically useless. The program continued, less formally and more for retaining contact with the Legion than any useful surveillance, until 1966 without the knowledge of either the attorney general or Congress. Though of little, if any, intelligence value, the Contact Program proved “mutually beneficial” to the FBI and the Legion.82 Ex-FBI agents became important in the American Legion, and the FBI actively reshaped it to suit its own goals. While the FBI and the Legion were entirely in sympathy with each other, even J. Edgar Hoover thought that the Legion had a tendency to “run amuck hunting for spies and subversives.” In 1953, Hoover charged his important aide Cartha De Loach with the task of “straightening out” the Legion. De Loach soon became head of its Americanism Committee, and the Legion fell in line with FBI procedures and policies. In the 1950s, many people thought the Legion’s annual conventions were “FBI productions.” Hoover did not mean to supplant the Legion: he was its staunch defender in public. 83 Some ex-FBI agents became private detectives specializing in anti-Communist sleuthing. Three former agents established American Business Consultants (ABC) with funding from two prominent anti-Communists, a businessman

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and Catholic priest, for collecting and publicizing information about people’s political activities that the FBI itself could not legally reveal. The firm investigated employees for business clients and published Counterattack, a newsletter that listed supposed Communist ties of entertainers, union leaders, and others suspected of subversive activities. Their 1950 Red Channels became a major source for corporate blacklisting of entertainers. In some cases, ABC named suspected Communists to employers for a fee and then helped these people clear their names, also for a fee.84 By 1970, after most of the anti-Communist agitation had died down, the Wackenhut Security service, a corporate security agency, was focusing on anti-Communism as well as many other activities. It held files of suspected and actual “reds” that had formerly belonged to the House Un-American Activities Committee and published “The Wackenhut Security Review: Communism and You” for its clients. The board of directors included two right-wing military officers and a member of the national council of the extreme right-wing John Birch Society.85 Although anti-Communism no longer dominated national politics, redhunting groups continued their activities often in cooperation with public officials. In 1956, Robert E. Wood, a retired Sears Executive, became head of the Mid-American Research Library. To manage a 1-million name file from the estate of Harry Jung, publisher of “‘American Vigilante’ and a Notorious AntiSemite,” Wood hired John M. Fisher, a former FBI agent. Jung had headed an industrial espionage firm that he created in 1928. Fisher soon became President, serving until 2002. By the early 1970s, the group had compiled an index of some 6 million names and had over 3,000 corporate members.86 Western Research Foundation was a similar group founded by a group of ex-FBI agents, with West Coast construction firms as its clients. Jerome Ducote, an “ex-cop and freelance political burglar,” who broke into political groups’ California offices seventeen times between 1966 and 1968, provided some of the files. John Rees, “a mysterious figure of the right-wing underground,” formed National Goals, Inc. in 1968. The group published “Information Digest,” which provided names and activities of “leftists.” Some of this information was from informants within political groups, including Rees and his wife who operated a left-wing bookstore in Washington, DC, in 1971 and founded an anti-capital punishment and prisoners’ rights group. Sheila Rees got a part-time job with the left-leaning Lawyers’ Guild. In 1971, National Goals, Inc. limited subscribers to forty police red squads and “other interested agencies.” Since the Freedom of Information Act (1974) did not include private groups, people could not find out whether they were on the lists.87

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Anti-Communists viewed radio, television, and films as particularly vulnerable to subversion by Reds. Mass audiences provided an opportunity to blatantly or subtly insert propaganda into scripts and images. What constituted propaganda was whatever the investigators thought was. If the performer had ever been connected to Communists, they assumed he or she was disseminating propaganda. In the case of one radio actress, propaganda seemed to be her special talent, imitating a baby’s gurgling sounds.88 Fearing loss of audiences if they retained accused Communists, studios and networks listened to the professional blacklisters or groups like the Motion Picture Alliance (MPA) for the Preservation of American Values, founded in 1944 and once led by John Wayne and Ronald Reagan. This was a group of movie studio employees that accused people of Communist sympathies, which included “criticizing Americanism, of praising collectivist values, of producing political films” as well as “hiring personnel who would advance the Communist cause.” This was a prelude to the Hollywood blacklist, which originally skeptical studio executives initiated in 1947 under growing pressure, at first including only the famous “Hollywood Ten” producers, directors, and writers. The greatly expanded list remained in force until 1960 but lost strength as a coercive mechanism in the later 1950s when small studios produced films by blacklisted individuals. The American Legion criticized the brevity of the original list, and nervous studio executives requested names from them. It submitted 300 employees’ names. The Legion’s newspaper, Firing Line, was edited by an ex-FBI agent who guided radio and television broadcasters lists of employees with alleged Communist connections by legislative investigations or whose names appeared in the Communist Party’s newspaper, The Daily Worker. Outside groups remained important suppliers of information, or misinformation, to blacklisting employers. The American Legion and the Catholic Legion for Decency joined the MPA in actions against allegedly subversive films such as Salt of the Earth. The FBI used the MPA’s “Screen Guide,” partly written by Ayn Rand, and informers as evidence in its hunt for Communists. About 250 movie studio employees were blacklisted; some, like writer Dalton Trumbo, returned later after years of writing under pseudonyms. Others like Charlie Chaplin left the United States, not to return until 1972. Many others lost their film careers, such as actress Dorothy Tree. Another sort of victim was some of those who named fellow workers a Communist before Congressional investigating committees, but their cost was only a bad conscience.89

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By the mid-twentieth century, political policing was an activity of both the state and officially authorized as well as tacitly approved private anti-Communist groups.

Private detectives today The Second World War provided new opportunities for private investigators. Many people were moving about in wartime society, soldiers traveling to bases and embarkation ports, civilians moving to wartime industrial jobs. Amid this flux, it became easier for people to evade spouses and even marry another person, to spend paychecks on high life, to manufacture fake or knockoff brandname products, to hijack shipments of scarce consumer goods, and to sabotage war production. Parents whose sons or daughters suddenly announced they were getting married wanted investigations of who their prospective in-laws were. Detectives benefited not only from client demand, but it became easier to trace men through military records and the increased number of civilian taxpayers through tax records. However, with 300 licensed private detectives in the New York City area, down from 1,200 after the First World War, there was much more demand on their time. Also, by the 1940s, an individual investigator paid $200 and a firm $300 for a license, which limited new entries into the field.90 Private investigation today is a thriving industry, although most work is routine, ranging “from dull to sleazy,” according to a 1970s writer, but there is an “elite handful” whose “careers rival the most famous of fictional sleuths.”91 This distinction remains in the twenty-first century. Private detectives’ work is varied and calls for specialists with unique skills as well as people with general abilities to sort out clues, interview people, and tolerate long hours of boring surveillance. They work for individuals, businesses, and attorneys to uncover and interpret information about legal, financial, or personal matters. Private detectives provide many services to clients, including executive, corporate, and celebrity protection; and job applicant and employee background checks (one of their earliest activities). By the 1990s, about 75 percent of credit and work history checks were routine computer operations.92 Those who provide corporate security investigate embezzlement, employee drug use, theft of trade secrets, and other aspects of internal security and checking the financial status of firms involved in buyouts and acquisitions. The original corporate detective is Jules Kroll, who began in 1982 and has since developed a major international agency, having

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saved many firms from financial embarrassment.93 Some specialize in computer crimes, including identity theft, harassing e-mails, and illegal downloading of copyrighted material. They also aid attorneys in criminal and civil liability cases, checking the background of witnesses, locating missing witnesses, and in general performing the investigations for defense attorneys who can afford their services that police detectives do for prosecutors.94 They investigate insurance claims and follow up suspicions of fraud. They investigate child custody and protection cases, missing persons cases, and provide background information on potential marital partners. They often work for aggrieved spouses seeking to prove infidelity. Some of the more exotic specialties include investigation of art forgeries, tracking down the source of fake watches and jewelry, and probably a unique detective who specializes in Brooklyn’s Hasidic Jewish community. There are even medical detectives who will help people with cancer locate the best treatments amid the vast amount of often confusing and dubious information.95 Private detectives rarely investigate murders, but sometimes they are asked to deal with difficult cases for clients dissatisfied with the police. California private investigator Logan Clarke assigned twelve of his men to find the murderer of a young girl, whose aunt called from Paris demanding that the killer be found before she returned to the United States. She thought that the police were not giving the case enough attention, although they said they had given it first priority. The private investigators did locate the murderer, a pregnant teenage woman involved in a failed drug deal. Different private detectives worked for friends of Nicole Simpson seeking evidence of spousal abuse by O.J. Simpson “and 18 other angles,” according to the head of the agency.96 There were about 52,000 private investigators in 2006. A bit less than onethird fit the traditional image of the self-employed loner. Many of these, in fact, performed investigations as a second job. By 2014, the number of selfemployed private eyes was only one-fourth the total, suggesting an increasing tendency toward working for others. Most private detectives are employees of governments as subcontractors, legal firms, employment agencies and “head hunters,” and banks. In 2006, only 34 percent were directly employed in detective agencies and security services. Department and other retail stores employed an additional 9 percent. As a group, private detectives are not particularly rich: the median yearly earnings of those working on salary were $33,750 in 2006, rising to around $53,000 in 2015. The lowest paid made about $27,000 in 2015, and the highest 10 percent earned more than $85,000.The largest number of private investigators worked in the Los Angeles metropolitan area, followed by the New York, Boston, Chicago, and Baltimore metropolitan areas.97

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Not only has the number of people working as private detectives been rising since the 1980s, there have also been changes in the type of person employed in the profession. Men with experience in law enforcement or the military were the typical private investigators in the 1950s and 1960s, but more recently college graduates with computer skills and young women have been entering the field. One agency, T&M Protection Resources, doubled its employees between 1999 and 2003.Younger people have been attracted to detective work through the impact of the television show “C.S.I.” (Crime Scene Investigation), which, though misleading, encouraged people to take high school and collegelevel forensics courses. One agency head added that “the paranoia business is booming” since 9/11, with more people fearful and suspicious of others.98 In 1987, women already made up about 20 percent of licensed investigators in New York. The appearance of women detectives in television shows and retirement of women in police forces after only twenty years of service led women into a typical second career for law enforcement personnel. Women seem especially good at undercover work, since they do not arouse suspicion when following someone and are effective in obtaining information. Men and women alike seem more willing to talk to a woman than a man, as Kate Warne suggested back in the 1850s.99 One woman head of an agency argued that “the seamy image of the private eye has been somewhat sanitized over the years” and people have come to see private detectives as “much more respectable, as something they can use to protect their rights.”100 Perhaps private eyes have become more respectable today, but scandals have had an unpleasant habit of surfacing through the years that have raised questions about some of their practices. An honest, enterprising private detective will avoid any illegal actions, but some are willing to come very close. For example, the woman who set up fake Internet dating was engaging in a form of entrapment, which is illegal in its most outrageous forms but can be unclear around the edges. One prominent investigator declared, “I’ve done nothing illegal, nothing, that is, that can be proven. I’m not concerned with the moral angle.”101 This man sounds like the hard-boiled character of 1930s thrillers, and although his views certainly do not represent the majority of the profession, enough have shared them in the past to keep private detectives on a delicate edge of social respectability.102 The person just quoted was Vincent Gillen, at the top of his profession in 1966 when a law firm representing General Motors (GM) hired him to discredit Ralph Nader, whose sensational Unsafe at Any Speed awoke Americans to car makers’ disregard for passenger safety in vehicle design. Nader had singled out the Chevrolet Corvair, a GM product, as particularly dangerous. It was, and

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is, not unique for a corporation to try to discredit whistle-blowers and hire detectives to do so, but this case gained far more attention than GM or Gillen wished.103 Gillen, who had been an FBI agent, operated a pre-employment investigation agency with twenty-five branches throughout the country that he had founded along with a group of former colleagues in the bureau. Hired by GM’s law firm for a fee of $6,700 ($49,446 today), Gillen described his job as “to check Nader’s life and current activities, to determine what makes him tick, such as his real interest in safety, his supporters, if any, his politics, his marital status, his friends, his women, his boys, etc.; drinking, dope.” Nader charged that Gillen had employed two young women to entrap him into having sex with them, one introducing herself out of the blue in a drug store asking if he would come to her apartment to talk about “foreign relations.” The other asked him for help moving some of her furniture. Because Nader was of Lebanese background, Gillen’s men looked for indications of anti-Semitism. They speculated as to why a “a 32-year-old man with adequate means should still be unmarried.” Nader sued Gillen for harassment and invasion of privacy. Although GM appealed the original decision in favor of Nader, New York’s highest court, the Court of Appeals, upheld part of his privacy invasion claim in 1970 and GM settled for $425,000.104 Meanwhile, Senator Ribicoff (D-Conn.) was conducting an investigation of Nader’s charges about auto safety, inviting him to testify. Two of Gillen’s detectives followed him into the Senate Office Building, only to be promptly expelled by guards. Not only were the detectives prying into Nader’s life, but they began to investigate Ribicoff, hoping to reveal some political or personal connection between the two men. Ribicoff said, “There’s too much snooping going on,” and told Nader that he should be proud that the investigation had not found “a damn thing wrong with you.” The GM president had to apologize twice at the hearing.105 Shadowing Nader proved a very poor investment indeed. A more recent scandal involves a common but dubious practice of private detectives, “pretexting” or pretending to be another person, a friend or relative, or even official, to obtain normally confidential information. Some detectives specialize as “information brokers,” selling data obtained through pretexting to whoever requests it, most often other private detective agencies. James J. Rapp and his wife operated a million-dollar-per-year business, Touch Tone Information Inc., in the Denver area, obtaining addresses, phone numbers, and credit information for third parties, including tabloid newspapers and an alleged member of the Israeli mafia, who was looking for informers. Stars and celebrities were frequent targets. Investigators found a list of over 1,200 private

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detective agencies as purchasers of information. Colorado is one of a few states that make illegal “impersonating someone else for gain.” Rapp and his wife were indicted, and the Federal Trade Commission also filed a civil suit against them based on invasion of consumer privacy. Colorado officials hired another private investigator, Jane Cracraft, who asked Rapp to obtain phone records and bank statements for a certain woman. He provided them, but the woman was actually an employee of the Colorado BI.106 Rapp had numerous supporters among information brokers and debt collection agencies, arguing that his work was essential for uncovering assets of spouses who refused child support. The group even paid for his defense in the FTC civil case. However, he was hardly a good model for his industry because he served two terms in prison in the 1970s and 1980s, once for theft and again for probation violation. He had pled guilty of impersonating a police officer and owed thousands of dollars in back federal income taxes.107 Based on a formal complaint by the FTC in the previous year, in 2000 Rapp was convicted in Federal Court of racketeering with a seventy-fiveday jail sentence and four years of probation for one of his pretexting schemes involving pretending to be the father of JonBenet Ramsay, the murdered child beauty queen. Rapp’s effort was to find out what the father had bought in a local hardware store soon before the girl’s death.108 Congress passed a federal anti-pretexting law in 2006, but it was limited to falsely obtaining telephone records and applied only to interstate or international commerce. States also passed laws but also limited them to telephone records.109 The laws said nothing about impersonating an actual person. These laws against pretexting were not inspired by the Rapp conviction but another exposure involving Hewlett-Packard Inc. The chair and several board members of the company accused other members of obtaining confidential information that they leaked to journalists. One member who resigned revealed that company investigators had used pretexting techniques to obtain the phone numbers of the board members, reporters, and family members of both. Several board members and investigators were indicted by California’s attorney general, but eventually the company settled and felony charges were dismissed. One of the investigators was convicted of conspiracy and identity theft (he had obtained a journalist’s social security number by pretexting) in Federal Court and sentenced to three months in prison. Congress held hearings as a preliminary to passing the 2006 law.110 Stella Pechanac, an agent for Black Cube, a secretive Israel-based detective agency, has become notorious for impersonating employees of businesses and journalists. Her latest involvement is with the lawyers for Hollywood media

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tycoon Harvey Weinstein, who are trying to discredit the sexual harassment charges against him. She posed as an investigative journalist to interview an actress who was writing a book that exposed Weinstein’s activities. Pechanac’s job was apparently to prevent the revelations from being published. Black Cube was straddling the thin line between proper and improper detective activities.111 A media-sensation private detective scandal centered on illegal wiretapping, the old temptation that had caught William Burns in the 1910s and prompted the New York state investigation of detectives in the 1950s. Anthony Pellicano was a larger-than-life private detective for Hollywood’s elite—movie stars and their attorneys, the rich and famous generally. Opponents maintain that Hillary and Bill Clinton hired Pellicano to discredit Gennifer Flowers and later Monica Lewinsky, but this may have originated in a report about Jack Palladino whom the Clintons did indeed hire for that purpose in 1992. Once the name got changed, the story got a life of its own.112 In 1969, Pellicano, under the name Tony Fortune, established a private detective agency in Chicago. He went bankrupt after five years, the court documents revealing that he had borrowed thousands from a Chicago mobster. The whiff of mob connections followed him for the rest of his career but only added to his reputation for “playing hard ball.” With the support of Elizabeth Taylor, for whom he apparently helped recover Richard Burton’s body stolen from a cemetery in Illinois, Pellicano moved to Los Angeles in 1983. After successfully aiding the defense of Richard De Lorean, the car maker, against drug charges, Pellicano became the private investigator of choice for powerful people in trouble. He became wealthy himself and “favored double-breasted silk suits, patent leather shoes, mirror shades and the cold stare so beloved of movie heavies. Pellicano—whose nicknames included the Celebrities’ Thug, the Ultimate Problem Solver, and the Big Sleazy—was loud and public.” His downfall began in 2002 when a Los Angeles Times reporter investigating alleged mafia connections of actor Steven Seagal discovered that her car windshield had a bullet hole, and a tin tray taped to it contained a dead fish, the mob’s classic warning. The FBI tracked down a small-time mobster who said that Pellicano had hired him. When agents searched the detective’s offices they found explosives and $200,000 in cash. He was convicted of illegal possession of explosives and sentenced to thirty months in prison. In a second search, the FBI found transcripts, tapes, and computer records of private conversations, which led to charges that he had illegally recorded conversations of people involved in litigation to help one side of the case. He had designed his own

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wiretapping program, “Telesleuth.” Prominent Hollywood attorneys and their famous clients, all of those who denied they knew Pellicano was acting illegally, appeared in these conversations. Attorneys who had hired him worried that he would turn informer, although Pellicano said, “I would never rat on a client.” Several prominent people sued the detective.113 Pellicano was indicted and tried for illegal wiretapping and operating a criminal enterprise in 2003; he appealed while serving prison time but lost in 2015. He is scheduled for release from Federal Prison in 2018.114 The Pellicano scandal brought attention to an illicit aspect of the cooperation of public authorities with private investigators, which actually goes back to at least the 1960s.115 Among the many charges against Pellicano was that he paid a Los Angeles police officer and a Beverly Hills policeman to search the National Crime Information Center, a protected FBI database that contains information including criminal records and stolen vehicles. Only law enforcement personnel may use this data. A private investigator who retired from the Los Angeles Police said that unauthorized use of the database “happens day in and day out … I don’t believe there’s a cop on the beat who has not accessed a police computer for some type of personal reason.”116 Remarkably, the LAPD had no restrictions on officers having second jobs as private investigators, although it turned out that only two were actually licensed P.I.s.117 Officials said that California law made it difficult to restrict outside employment, but the Los Angeles county sheriff ’s office and Boston police prohibited working as private detectives of any sort. New York police allowed officers to work as investigators in civil but not criminal cases. Chicago restricted command-level officers from private investigation but not ordinary officers. LAPD Commissioner William Bratton refused to comment about his officers moonlighting as private detectives, but former Chief Darryl Gates said he did not allow the practice: “It’s a definite conflict of interest.”118 Aside from such dubious cooperation of the police and private investigators, there is less need today for working together to solve crimes than in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. As early as 1934, a writer described the advantage of private detectives over the police: they were less familiar to criminals than the public detectives; they could be specialists in various types of crime; they were not handicapped by budgets and could acquire the latest equipment, “listening-in devices,” and long-range cameras.119 Today the larger police forces have caught up: they do have specialists and have well-equipped forensic laboratories and sophisticated surveillance equipment. Since the majority of investigations by private detectives do not involve actual crimes, or

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marginally criminal activity, the police are not involved. Where crimes such as embezzlement or theft of trade secrets occur, corporations are most often likely to dispose of them internally, not wanting the publicity of police involvement. In fact, if all such cases were referred to the police, the criminal justice system would be bogged down. Budget limits force the police to set priorities, and increasingly victims of such crimes as burglary, fraud, or missing persons have turned to private investigators, if they can afford them. The police are not always happy with the competition but usually recognize that they have limited resources for these cases. Sometimes, even in more serious cases, the police focus on a single suspect and devote limited resources to that person only. A common problem in mystery stories, it is also a real-world issue. Victims hire private detectives when they are not sure the police have the right culprit. The police complain that they are hampered by constitutional protections private investigators can ignore. They can conduct searches without warrants and turn information over to the police as long as they were not acting under police direction. California police detectives handled two or three times more cases in the mid-1990s than in about 1980, while the number of private detectives tripled.120 As occurred earlier, government agencies have continued to hire private detectives for certain purposes, on one occasion for spying and another to conduct routine background checks. In 1967, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) employed Anderson Security, who usually provided investigations, such as checking for bugs and developing secure document disposal, to conduct domestic political spying on anti-Vietnam war groups in the Washington, DC, area. By the next year, the agents were active in New York, Philadelphia, and Baltimore. The CIA found the private detectives valuable because they refused to identify for whom they were working.121 During the 1980s, the Federal Office of Personnel Management hired four firms, Pinkerton’s Inc., Wackenhut, Wells Fargo Guard Services, and Intertech, to do background checks on 7,000 job applicants at $500 per investigation. The office also hired individual private detectives to check 5,000 more applicants. The office said that using private contractors for work normally done by its own agents was temporary, to reduce a backlog of over 14,000 applications. Critics complained that this was just another example of the Reagan administration’s preference for private over public and charged that the background investigations were conducted by untrained people. Even Pinkerton’s and Wackenhut had to admit that wages were so low in the private security industry that they sometimes “employed untrained people,” whom they hoped would soon gain experience and skill.122

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Private detectives could be mobilized in the interest of liberal causes as well. In 2006, under Mayor Michael Bloomberg, a dedicated opponent of gun violence, New York City hired private investigators from the James Mintz Group to expose illegal sales at gun shows. They concentrated on “straw sales” in which one person fills out the required federal background check paperwork for a gun clearly meant for someone else who would not pass the check, usually an individual with a criminal record. The detectives conducted their sting by one of them talking to the dealer and agreeing to buy the gun, then calling over another detective, usually a woman, to fill out the papers for the background check. Then the first person would buy the gun with cash. They targeted about sixty dealers in Georgia, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, and Virginia, states that were sources of illegal guns used in crimes in New York City. Most dealers refused to participate in the straw sales, but the detectives found fifteen whom the city was suing for creating a public nuisance through illegal weapons in May 2006, adding twelve more in December.123 A federal judge upheld the sting operation, ruling against dealers’ claims that they were victims of entrapment. No less than twenty gun dealers settled city suits against them, which required a “special master” to supervise sales at their store. Two cases were thrown out of court, one agreed to settle at the last moment, two went out of business, and two cases were pending trial in 2008.124 Although federal law prohibited suits against gunmakers and distributors, the dealers were not exempt. Evidence suggested that illegal guns making their way to New York City by the “iron pipeline” dropped by 75 percent after the suits were initiated.125 Later the city again hired private detectives to check on unlicensed gun dealers in Nevada, Ohio, and Tennessee who under federal law were able to sell to people without a background check but could not sell to those whose background they knew was questionable. Nineteen out of thirty unlicensed dealers responded to detectives’ statements that they could not pass the background check by selling anyway. One replied that failure to pass the check did not matter, “because I wouldn’t pass either, bud.” In a simultaneous investigation, sixteen of seventeen licensed dealers went ahead with straw sales.126 Private investigators on the public payroll can be used for many purposes, just as they are by individual clients.

Bounty hunters Bounty hunters are a little-known but pervasive form of private policing. They are not really detectives but do engage in surveillance and tracking people down.

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Rewards for capture of criminals, “dead or alive,” were issued by both states and private institutions such as railroad companies in the nineteenth century. Ordinary citizens could claim the rewards for capture or information, as they still can, but bounty hunters also developed as a profession. Bounty hunters are active today as enforcers for the bail bond industry, seeking and capturing people who have jumped bail. The bail bond industry itself is uniquely American, a descendant of the old practice of private, trustworthy citizens providing bail, sureties.127 In some ways, this is less democratic than a commercial bail system, as the majority of people charged with crime do not have such friends or supporters. In the industry the person seeking bail pays a fee for the company to provide the bond. Ever since it was first established in 1898, the bail bond industry has some shady members. The first bail bondsman, Peter McDonough of San Francisco, was often accused of corruption and bribery and was considered “the crime boss of San Francisco” in the 1930s. He was in the business of granting bail to thieves and other underworld characters who worked under him, and drove out most of his competitors.128 In 1872, Supreme Court Justice Swayne declared that sureties (holders of bail) “may exercise their rights in person or by agent. They may pursue him (a bailjumper) into another state; may arrest him on the Sabbath, and, if necessary, may break and enter his house for that purpose.”129 This has been interpreted to allow bounty hunters as agents to ignore the usual legal limits of police powers. In 2002, though, a Federal Appellate Court held that bounty hunters must obey the laws of the state into which they go in search of a bail-jumper.130 Bounty hunters actually capture more “skips” than the police. A quick search of the Internet reveals ads for training programs and job opportunities. Several websites offer online criminal justice degrees for potential bounty hunters. Bail bond companies are regulated, but there are few requirements for bounty hunters. Texas grants a private investigators’ license to qualified individuals. New Jersey recently enacted a law requiring a license but with a very short training period.131 It is not surprising that there have been major problems with bounty hunting in recent years: criminals pretending to be pursuing fugitives, bounty hunters harassing the wrong people, and violence connected with their activities. A notorious example of violence occurred when seven bounty hunters in ski masks broke into a house and killed the couple living there. They said they did not know the person they were seeking. In another case, a Harlem woman won $1 million against bail bond firms whose bounty hunters had seized her, telling her she was another person and taking her to a jail in Alabama.132 In another episode, after a Florida court found a Canadian citizen guilty of land fraud in absentia, bounty

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hunters located him in Canada and brought him back to serve forty years in jail. The Canadian government was outraged at the violation of sovereignty and the US government so embarrassed that the man was released. The bounty hunters themselves were convicted, presumably of kidnapping.133 The latest shoot-out occurred in Greenville Texas in June 2017. The two bounty hunters and the man they were pursuing were killed. Earlier in April in Tennessee, no less than seven bounty hunters shot into a car they thought contained the fugitive but instead killed an innocent man. Since Tennessee allowed bounty hunters to use deadly force only in self-defense, they were charged with murder.134 In the 1980s, the state of Connecticut employed a different sort of bounty hunter, private citizens to collect taxes from people who had not paid them. Called bounty hunters, the state paid them a fee of 6 percent over the amount of money they collected. Most, but not all, were deputized by county sheriffs. The job often involved confiscation of assets, such as a car or boat. These bounty hunters were appointed through unpublicized “no-bid contracts,” that is to say, political patronage. State auditors’ investigation did not uncover abuses but did reveal how lucrative the job, admittedly difficult, could be. One man made nearly $429,000. Another held collected taxes in a bank account for a month, earning interest. The main criticism is that the state should use salaried state officials for this purpose, as others did.135 A 1995 letter writer to the New York Times revealed New Jersey’s use of a private firm to collect taxes on New Jersey income earned by out-of-state businesses and individuals. The firm determines how much is owed and then paid a percentage of what the state collects. The writer compared this private tax collection to a traffic cop receiving fees as a proportion of the traffic tickets he or she issued.136 “In the great tradition of the old West,” California deputized bounty hunters to enforce state environmental laws. In 1986, a referendum approved the Safe Drinking and Toxic Enforcement Act, which eventually included a list of over 600 substances businesses had to warn consumers about with a $2,500 penalty per day. The creation of these bounty hunters led to unanticipated consequences. They are lawyers who search for business violations of the 1986 law. They sue such businesses for minor violations and agree to a settlement with the businesses. They collect a quarter of the money gained. Between 2000 and 2007, one lawyer filed more than 200 lawsuits for a small number of clients who never claimed injury from the substances. He received a quarter of the $15 million in settlements, doing well for both the state and himself. The California attorney general criticized this lawyer, Clifford A. Chanler, for obtaining money from businesses that have “little or no past violations” and charging excessive

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legal fees. The reporter, though, said that Chanler was not really to blame: “If you deputize bounty hunters, you should not be surprised when they go out and hunt.”137 Reform organizations have focused on court requirements that people held for trial either post cash bail or be confined to a county jail if they cannot provide bail. Even small amounts of cash bail are hard for poor people because bail bondsmen refuse to provide them as they realize so little profit. Detention for trial is incarceration of people who are supposed to be innocent until proven guilty at trial. It is severe hardship for the detainees and their families. Nationwide 70 percent of people in jails are under pretrial detention because they cannot pay bail or are deemed likely to flee. The growth in American jail population during the past thirty years is mainly due to pretrial detention.138 Alexis de Tocqueville condemned bail as unfair in the early nineteenth century: “Clearly such legislation is directed against the poor and favors only the rich. A poor man does not always make bail, even in civil matters, and if he is forced to await justice in prison, his forced inactivity soon reduces him to destitution.”139 Recently New York City Comptroller (chief financial officer) Scott Stringer called commercial bail “egregious” and said that “bail should not be punitive.”140 Reformers favor alternative systems of making sure people arraigned for trial turn up for their court date. Bail reform substitutes surveillance for bail or detention. In 2014 New York City adopted a “supervised release” program, similar to probation, in which people awaiting trial are required to report in person and by telephone to caseworkers. Eligibility for the program is limited, and caseworkers are already overburdened. New Jersey’s 2016 law provides more modern surveillance, an electronic ankle band, which records the person’s movements. Washington state’s bail reform program culminated with a law forbidding imprisonment for financial reasons, of which inability to post cash bail is the most significant.141 Federal legislation proposed by conservative Senator Rand Paul and liberal Senator Kamala Harris would provide grants to states developing a “risk assessment” standard of granting pretrial release instead of simply the ability to post bail. Detention was meant as a guarantee of appearance at trial; risk assessment would investigate the actual chances a person would fail to appear, presumably based on past conduct. So many of the offenses that lead to detention are minor that in most cases the risk of “skipping” would be low. It is unlikely that such legislation will pass in the Republican Senate with the attorney general himself opposing bail reform.142 The bail bond industry, local bondsmen and the insurance companies that underwrite them, have rallied against elimination of cash bail. Taking the high

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ground, they have initiated lawsuits claiming that reform is unconstitutional, violating the Fourteenth Amendment’s guarantee of due process of law and the amendment’s prohibition of unreasonable searches and seizures (presumably, though the source does not state, because the risk assessment method and pretrial surveillance are not legal processes). The bond industry is worried that, as has already happened in New Jersey, its profits will plummet with abolition of cash bail.143 The bail system, at the time of writing, is contested terrain.

Private national security The 9/11 attacks generated a huge national security apparatus of agencies to prevent future terrorism. The threat has been mainly external, but there is a thin line when Americans receive terrorist training abroad and plot actions in the United States. The Bush administration defined counterterrorism as a war, but in practice, many aspects are a form of policing—prevention and detection. Since 2000, as governmental agencies had trouble keeping up with computing developments, national security has become a mix of public agencies and private contractors who perform the government’s work. In 2013, about 70 percent of the National Security Administration’s budget has been payment to private contractors.144 There have always been military contractors who manufacture uniforms, weapons, and other war material. However, in the past, there has been a limit—a prohibition against farming out of “inherently governmental” work. The Bush administration’s belief in privatization of public services has led to corporations performing basic intelligence work in every governmental agency. A temporary emergency response to 9/11 has become permanent: the government depends on them. About one-third of the people with top-secret security clearance are contractors, who enjoy corporate perks and salaries that are substantially more lucrative than those of civil servants. Sometimes it seems that government employees are reluctant to penalize contractors who violate regulations because they themselves may very well join those private companies.145 The Department of Homeland Security employs as many private employees as government workers. Sixty percent of the employees of its intelligence-gathering office work for contractors. Most private security contractors work in data collection and analysis; they often have people more expert in these areas than equivalent civil service workers.146 Edward Snowden, who exposed the secret government domestic and international surveillance program in 2013, worked for one of these security contractors, Booz Allen

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Hamilton. Naturally questions of loyalty and oversight have arisen. Another aspect is that the line between governmental supervised national security and private companies’ internal security has become thin, if there even is any. Hackers invade both public and private realms, and disrupting a private utility company, for example, has national security implications.147 The relations of private detectives and public law enforcement range through cooperation in solving crimes, working directly for public officials, to hostility and competition. The two groups are personally connected through private investigation having originated among former policemen to today, when it is a common career path for former law officers. Both police and private detectives have sometimes misused connections, obtaining information officially denied to them. For better or worse, public and private are intertwined.

Figure 5  Strikebreakers Escorted by Pinkertons, Hocking Valley Ohio, 1884. Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper, October 25, 1884, p. 152. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, LC-USZ62-118122 (b&w film copy neg.).

6

Policing Labor

After the Civil War, American industry accelerated its long evolution from artisan labor to wage or piece-work labor. The older factory system, which did not entirely disappear, was based on skilled workers who had considerable power to hire less-skilled members of their work team and set a “price” the owner paid them for their product. A factory was simply an assemblage of groups of artisans who, while they did not own the shop, retained some control of working conditions. Manufacturers, many of whom had been artisans themselves, needed the skilled workers to continue production. By the 1850s, it became clear to many workers that they were losing their power relative to employers, who began to implement hourly wages or piece-work payment as a means of increasing production and controlling pricing. Some workers after the war began to complain that since physical slavery had been abolished, it was time to abolish wage slavery. Industrial unions like the National Labor Union and Knights of Labor (both founded in the 1860s) opposed wage payment and advocated, and sometimes established, cooperative factories run by the workers themselves. Not until the 1880s did the American Federation of Labor (AFL) tacitly accept wages and sought only better pay and hours for its craft union members. Meanwhile, employers were doing their best to reduce the cost of labor by deskilling the work process through introduction of machinery and hiring of low-wage unskilled immigrant workers. During the later nineteenth century, ownership of factories, railroads, and mines increasingly became separated from local management. Owners of industrial conglomerates like Andrew Carnegie’s steel empire often knew a great deal about steel, as did Carnegie, but he did not know much about the lives of workers. Financiers and bankers, like Jay Gould with his railroad networks, or J.P. Morgan who bought out Carnegie in 1901 to create United States Steel, relied on managers even more than entrepreneurs like Carnegie. In times of

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depression, employers cut wages without thought of whether workers could live at the new level. Skilled workers still had room to maneuver because in many industries they remained important, but in those where workers were becoming “machine tenders” or “hands” working by the hour, they increasingly lost control of their lives. As industries grew larger and smaller factories were absorbed into larger operations, many workers accelerated efforts to form unions, their ultimate weapon being the strike to stop production. Strikes, some small brief events, others major outbursts of bitterness and violence, such as the 1877 railroad strikes, the 1880s eight-hour strikes, the Homestead steel and Pullman sleeping car strikes of the 1890s, the Western mining strikes of the early 1900s, New York garment industry strikes, and the great steel strike of 1919, punctuated the years between 1865 and 1920. Employers, believing in the absolute necessity of reducing labor costs and that only they had the right to control the business, resisted unionization. Bosses had the resources of the state and legal system on their side. The Federal Government could send troops to protect property when state officials could or would not do so, as when Illinois Governor Altgeld refused to request federal aid during the Pullman strike of 1894. Not until the New Deal era did the Federal Government support the right of workers to bargain with employers through unions. Even without federal action, employers usually could rely on state and local government support. State officials could mobilize the militia and later National Guard against strikers. State and federal courts issued injunctions against picketing or major decisions outlawing “secondary boycotts,” other unions in related industries striking to support strikers. They also declared strikes to be “conspiracies in restraint of trade” under the Sherman Anti-Trust Act of 1890, which was intended to regulate corporations, not unions.1 Local officials, sheriffs and police chiefs, usually sided with employers to “maintain order,” prevent strikers from blocking entry of strikebreakers into factories. Most middle-class opinion, and most newspapers, supported employers’ insistence on their right to negotiate individually with workers instead of through a union. Consequently exercise of force against strikers usually had public support, unless it was particularly cruel and violent. Sometimes public officials were not completely reliable, or did not have sufficient strength, to control strikers. In towns with working-class majorities, local officials were sympathetic to workers. Mayors Samuel “Golden Rule” Jones and Brand Whitlock of Toledo, Ohio, refused to allow the police to protect strikebreakers.2 In Matewan, West Virginia, the police chief frustrated coal mine

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owners’ strikebreaking efforts. In the mining and milling town of O’Fallon, Illinois, residents declared that “the Mayor, the City Marshal, Constables and part of the bankers, and every man in town carries a union card.”3 In Chicago, under Mayor Carter Harrison, who sought political support from workers before the 1886 Haymarket bombing, the police, usually valuable to employers, acted with restraint at picket lines.4 When local officials were un-cooperative, bosses could usually appeal to the state government or federal authority. When bosses could not depend on the state at any level, they had the resources of private police, who were loyal only to them as clients, unconstrained by voters or legal scruples. Sometimes the private forces acted when public officials were hostile or indifferent to employers’ demands for order, but more often they worked in harmony with local officials to increase the power arrayed against strikers. Frequently they were deputized by sheriffs or made “specials” by police chiefs. Employers mobilized several types of private control of workers. Companies that styled themselves “detective agencies” supplied spies, guards, and strikebreakers. Some of these did genuine private detective work, but most of the agencies’ income came from services to employers. Employers hired detectives during times of industrial peace as well as strikes to determine workers’ attitudes, infiltrate and destroy unions, or recruit workers to act as spies on their mates. They employed guards to protect strikebreakers and property when a strike was imminent or in progress. Employers contracted with agencies to provide “professional” strikebreakers. They also had their own permanent company police forces, legally confined to corporate property but sometimes going outside it with public officials’ support.

Industrial espionage Private labor policing began in the 1850s when six railroads hired Allan Pinkerton’s new detective agency to provide “spotters” who rode on trains, checking whether conductors pocketed passengers’ payment for tickets. This spotting evolved into investigating the feelings and opinions of workers for the companies, who were concerned with weeding out “trouble makers” or “malcontents,” especially those talking about organizing a union.5 The Pinkerton agency, joined by scores of others by the 1930s, entered into the business of “industrial espionage,” which established both its fame among the general public and notoriety among workers and their supporters. Employers felt the need for detectives to discover workers’ attitudes and activities as owners became separated from workers through

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increasingly complex levels of management. Along with this bureaucratization came mass immigration, which made managers even more distant from the workforce. It became increasingly difficult for them to anticipate strikes or even know under what conditions their men labored.6 The most famous industrial espionage operation was the Pinkertons’ destruction of the Molly Maguires, a secret society of miners in the Pennsylvania coal fields during the 1870s. Labor conflict was especially violent in the mines with both owners and workers resorting to force when they thought necessary. The Mollies, apparently connected to an earlier Irish secret society, waged war against the mine owners, foremen, and nonunion miners, issuing death threats and apparently carrying them out against foremen judged too exploitative or nonunion workers who stubbornly held aloof. Mine owners charged the Mollies with conducting a reign of terror and sought help from the Pinkertons. Operative James McParland traveled to the area and gradually worked his way into the leadership of the Mollies. He was tough and resourceful and more than once had to overcome suspicions that he was a spy. He was an agent provocateur, urging the leaders into violent acts that they were at first reluctant to carry out. He assembled evidence that led to arrests of many Mollies by officers of a private police force, the Pennsylvania Coal and Iron Police. McParland showed up at their trial sensationally revealing his real identity. The prosecution was carried on by a district attorney who was also president of both a major railroad and mining company. McParland’s testimony led to the execution of eighteen Molly leaders in 1877–78 and destruction of the group. Doubts about McParland’s accusations remain today; some people argue that the Mollies were a fiction spun by prosecutors and the Pinkertons out of the legitimate Ancient Order of Hibernians.7 One of the executed men was pardoned by the governor of Pennsylvania in 1979. If not framed, the leaders were certainly entrapped. McParland’s exploit was dramatized in Allan Pinkerton’s first of many books about the work of his agency, and McParland himself went on to become head of the Pinkerton Denver office. There he supervised the effort to prosecute three leaders of the Western Federation of Miners, William Haywood, Charles Moyer, and George Pettibone, for the murder of a former governor of Idaho and several other men in 1906. The prosecution was partly based on a confession McParland “secured” from Harry Orchard, the apparent murderer of a virulently anti-union former governor. This was collaborated by another man’s confession, which he later withdrew. McParland believed that the miners’ union was controlled by a bloodthirsty inner circle, more violent than the Molly Maguires, who hired men to carry out murders and blow up mineshafts while avoiding suspicion.

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However, defense attorney Clarence Darrow’s attacks on Orchard’s veracity and appeals to the jurors led to acquittal of the three union leaders.8 If the Pinkertons lost considerable reputation in this case, four years later, William Burns gained a national reputation for the “biggest case of his career,” the bombing of the Los Angeles Times building in October 1910. Burns had said that he would not use his agency for breaking strikes, but that did not keep him out of cases against labor leaders whom he considered dangerous anarchists. The Times was harshly anti-labor and often criticized Burns himself. The bombing in the early morning of October 1 destroyed much of the building and killed twenty-one workers inside. Burns happened to be in Los Angeles for a meeting, and the mayor immediately hired him. He told the mayor, who thought the declaration premature, that the bomber was John A. McNamara, a militant leader of the AFL ironworkers’ union. Once Burns went to work comparing explosives used in earlier bombings, he concluded that two known anarchists had been hired to set off the bomb, materials of which had been purchased by Ortie McManigal. Burns, arranging for the arrest of John McNamara and McManigal on false charges of safe cracking, began to work on obtaining a confession from McManigal, who for various reasons he thought would break sooner than McNamara. Burns was successful: McManigal confessed to purchasing bomb materials and implicated McNamara and his brother as masterminds of the plot. With police cooperation, Burns secreted McManigal and John McNamara in Chicago, while he used highly dubious extradition procedures to arrest James in Indianapolis, and finally sent the three of them on a train to Los Angeles. Labor leaders and their supporters declared that the men were framed and even obtained an indictment against Burns for illegally extraditing the men from out of state. Burns was acquitted, as he expected to be. With labor champion Clarence Darrow for the defense, the trial of the three unionists became a rallying point for labor supporters. However, Burns was able to make a strong case based on letters and bomb alarm clocks found when he “gained entry” to a vault in union headquarters. Darrow, apparently realizing the strength of the prosecution’s case, persuaded the McNamaras to confess, hoping to gain life imprisonment instead of death for his clients. Darrow became almost as much a target of labor criticism as Burns. Burns then attacked Darrow with charges of tampering with the jury. The lawyer faced two trials but survived this worst ordeal of his life. Burns collected a large reward for the McNamara case and enjoyed a nationwide reputation as a detective.9 Most industrial espionage did not involve accusations of murder. Employers hired detectives to either prevent strikes or disrupt ones that did occur. A contract

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between Duluth (Minnesota) Universal Milling Co. in 1920 with the Marshall Service, a detective agency active in the Midwest, clearly specified the duties of labor spies, though it did not describe how they would carry them out. Agency operatives would “obtain information regarding any actual, or threatened labor troubles, or agitation which may directly effect [sic] the interests” of the client. The agency office would provide the client with news of “labor troubles and agitation” in other parts of the country that may be helpful indirectly to the client. Operatives would “obtain information regarding any act, or acts, of any person, or persons, or organization, or corporation, which may, or might have the affect [sic] of disrupting the efficiency of the employees, or the working organization” of the client. The agency was responsible for providing operatives who were “experienced Flour Mill Workers” to secure a job in the client’s mill. These spies “shall endeavor to protect” the client against “Robbery, Theft or Arson,” “Labor Troubles and Agitation,” “Strikes or Mob Violence,” and “Any illegal act, punishable under the Criminal Law.” The remainder provided for the client’s payments to the agency.10 Operatives entered factories, mills, or mines as ordinary workers. They were usually congenial fellows who were good at making friends among their workmates, seeking information about whether they were critical of the employers and thinking about unionization. The operative passed this information, including the names of critics or union members, on to the detective agency in daily reports. The agency office edited the reports and sent them to their clients. The result was often sudden discharge of unionists or “troublemakers.” Occasionally the detectives uncovered worker complaints about unsafe conditions, which employers actually corrected, but that was only a minor part of their work. Operatives often “hooked” fellow workers to serve as informers, appealing to their ambition or need for the income from the agency. Detectives had to be clever as sizing up the men they recruited, leading up slowly to describing their role as stool pigeons, sometimes giving them routine tasks before the real espionage work. Sometimes the operatives claimed they were working for stockholders who wanted to investigate the company’s performance or even for the US government in the 1930s.11 One experienced spy maintained that most of the “hooked men” knew pretty quickly what they were getting into and doubted claims of long-term deceit.12 Deeper espionage involved detectives winning the confidence of union leaders and popularity among members to get elected to a union office. Agencies generally considered the position of recording secretary to be the best place for a spy, for he could obtain full membership lists and minutes of meetings.13

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Another important post was treasurer, where the detective could slyly disrupt union locals’ budgets to bankrupt them. One agency told a client that it did not allow operatives to become union business agents, as they were responsible for recruiting workers into the union: “It is not our policy to induce men to join the Union, but to endeavor to keep them from joining.”14 Nevertheless, a detective from the same agency did become a business agent. This operative got elected partly because he told members that he agreed $50 per week was too high pay, and he would be happy to take the job for $30 “as that would be ‘easy money’”—$30 per week with nothing to do, “suggesting that his strategy was to sabotage the recruiting work of the business agent.” Replying to other operatives’ objections, the head of the agency said that the man “is a very square union man” and it is much better for “us to have him in, than it would be some crook.”15 As officers, detectives like one of McParland’s Pinkertons in the Western Federation of Miners could also push unions into premature strikes, which ended up in destruction of the local.16 One Burns agent, Morris Lublin, took his role as agent provocateur too seriously during a garment workers’ strike in Cleveland in 1911. He became a union leader and acted out the role of a violent militant, raiding the homes of strikebreakers, attempting to scare them off by having men shoot off guns when a trainload of them arrived at the station. He handed out revolvers, blackjacks, and lead pipes to fellow militants. He went too far when he and a group of union men beat up a strikebreaker who eventually died. Lublin ended up in prison.17 Another tactic was discrediting union leaders, spreading rumors of their incompetence, criminality, or betrayal of the union. A detective from the Marshall Service targeted Jean Spielman, a top AFL organizer in the Minneapolis flour mills, telling workers that “Spielman was an I.W.W. at heart” and that workers were foolish to pay their dues “and get nothing out of ” the local. Spielman was actually strictly AFL, strongly opposed to the radicalism of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW). The operative was successful, for the agency later reported to its clients that Spielman “is entirely discredited with the Labor Unions of the Northwest” and was “forced to resign his position as organizer for the International. He is entirely out of the game as far as the Flour Milling Industry is concerned.”18 Attacking the organizer was part of the same operative’s general tactic of obtaining union office to start faction fights in the local. “The members of local no. 92 are fighting among themselves, and I intend to keep them fighting as long as I can.” The goal was to disrupt meetings so the members “will get disgusted and either way it [a specific fight, raising union dues, supported by the detective] goes it will make hard feelings and help

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destroy the morale of the membership.”19 The agency told its miller clients that it was now in the position to either destroy the local and end union organizing for years or retain a weak local controlled by its operatives, which would do as employer wished and serve to keep other organizers out of the mills. Although the head of Pillsbury agreed with the agency’s self-interested advice to keep a weak local functioning, Local 92 actually did collapse because of loss of members and money to keep it functioning.20 In the early 1920s, detectives apparently took over the IWW, badly wounded by raids and arrests during the red scare. A federal detective stated under oath to labor attorney Frank P. Walsh that Burns and Thiel detectives “dictated the policy of the I.W.W. propaganda committee that issued the radical manifestos and literature; that the entire committee in 1920 and 1921 was composed of Thiel agents and that private detectives created radicals and formed radical labor organizations and fomented labor troubles … in order to have big fees in exposing the movements.”21 A Marshall Service operative got himself elected to the committee on bylaws and appointed head of Minneapolis organizing at the lightly attended 1920 Chicago IWW convention. He declared to his chief that first he would “start immediately in disorganizing” the AFL mill workers’ local, and at the same time he would prevent any member of the IWW from getting work in the flour mills. Because he was “in a position now to know these things,” he could get anybody discharged who might have slipped through.22 An AFL organizer stated that there were only seven members of the Minneapolis IWW and four of those were detectives.23 The Department of Justice happily cooperated with the detectives, who turned over the names, mailing address, instructions, and district to which any IWW organizer was assigned. “Every one of our operatives carries an I.W.W. card, with permission of the United States Department of Justice.” The federal agents “either keep an I.W.W. organizer on the move or arrest him at once” under the Sedition Act of 1917.24 The IWW was doubly useful to the detectives: they could scare employers like E.V. Hoffman of the Kansas Flour Mills Co. with an IWW threat—the Marshall Service claimed that 60 percent of workers in one of his mills were IWW.25 On the other hand, the agency could boast of its successful infiltration and neutralization of the IWW.26 Beyond simply destroying locals, agents sometimes charged union leaders with advocating violence so a court would issue an injunction ordering men back to work during a strike. An agent of an employer’s association planted in a miner’s local in West Virginia swore under oath that John L. Lewis, leader of the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA), gave a speech “in which he stated that they intended to kill all the gunmen, poison the waters and blow up every damned

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tipple in Mingo County.” Lewis responded, also under oath, that he “never made any speech whatsoever on any occasion in the State of West Virginia in the year 1921, that … [he] has not been in the State of West Virginia in the year 1921 except upon a railroad train while crossing said State.”27 One opponent accused James McParland of fabricating murder charges against Western Federation of Miners leaders “to win new clients.” He did add that McParland “doubtless in time actually deceived himself into believing the product of his fancy to be a substantial reality.”28 The stakes were high in the battle against unionization. Obviously detectives who rose to union leadership had to be appealing personalities, careful to cover their tracks, and courageous if they were suspected as spies. Sometimes they had to talk their way out of punishment as a spy, rarely murder but often public exposure, a beating, or being run out of the district. One detective, whose reports were discovered by a rival for a union position, had to concoct a story and charges against his rival.29 Many times unionists suspected a spy in their ranks, because employers knew too much about their plans or too many men were being discharged, but were unable to pinpoint who it was. Labor spies were not always efficient or effective. Some did not have the skill or bravado to avoid exposure. In one case, the Quincy Iron mine in Michigan, the spies were unable to obtain information from Italian and Finnish miners because they did not speak the languages. In the Quincy mines, Theil agency spies failed to uncover any union agitators, whom management thought were causing trouble, but did discover abusive foremen and unsafe working conditions. The owners fired the foremen but did not fix the conditions. Strikes that did occur were spontaneous, so detectives could not infiltrate unions that did not exist.30 A veteran Pinkerton spy said that agency managers were always concerned about detectives’ ability: the “average operative is a positive trial from the day he enters the service until he resigns or is discharged. He is always doing something foolish or imprudent, and is a constant source of anxiety to the Agency.” New operatives were sometimes “officious, over-zealous or lazy.” Veterans were likely to become “careless or overconfident.” The supervisor of one successful agent, who had to beat up a man who had suspected him and discovered his reports in his room, told him that he should have planned more carefully to avoid just such a situation.31 Assistant superintendents kept busy checking reports for problems, and the Thiel agency often planted two operatives in the same plant, unknown to each other, so their reports could be compared.32 Detective agencies were in the business of industrial espionage because it was profitable; they did not usually espouse a justification for spying because they wanted to keep the whole operation secret. When they did provide justification,

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they spoke vaguely of the virtue of “industrial harmony” or efficiency. As the head of the Sherman Service intoned, its mission was “establishing and maintaining peace and harmony, good will and efficiency in manufacturing, industrial and business enterprises among the employes [sic] and between the employes [sic] and employers thereof, throughout said territory, the resultant effect contributing to the stability of our national structure and greater mutual productivity to employer, employes [sic] and Community.”33 One veteran spy told a colleague that an operative should not have qualms about responsibility for discharging a few workers because if a strike took place, many more would lose their wages and probably their jobs because unions usually lost strikes.34 Another appeal was that the detectives were combating labor racketeers, and sometimes they did. When the agencies were honest about their work, they could be remarkably blunt. One advised a client that if he placed three more agents in his plant, “we will guarantee to break the Union in Topeka within the next ninety days and we will smash it up so that it will be several years before they will attempt to organize.”35 After proclaiming that “there is nothing about your relationship with your fellow workers which can be considered underhanded or deceitful … Our work is most honorable, humanitarian, and very important, and must be recognized as such,” a set of lessons for a correspondence course (!) offered by a detective agency described necessary traits for a successful operative: You must be daring. You must be prepared to overthrow your moral scruples. You must be hard. You must learn to lie easily and often. You must convince yourself that practices which most people regard as definitely wrong, are definitely right. You must be slippery, shrewd, sharp, sneaky. You must not hesitate to beat the law where you can and break the law where you must.36

This sounds much like the formula for “hard boiled” detectives of Mickey Spillane, roughly serving some higher law. It also plays right into the hands of critics of amoral detectives. Critics charged detective agencies with inflating reports of discontent to retain their clients. Roger Babson, a management guru of the 1920s, warned employers that “these spy agencies set out to find rottenness, and if they do not actually find it, some make it or fake it.” A mine owner wrote to a local manager in 1913 that at headquarters, detectives’ reports “are padded to make them a little more important and valuable than they really are.”37 One agency, facing slow times, actually strongly hinted that operatives should exaggerate their reports:

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You must see to it that your reports are long, interesting and detailed. See to it that they contain items of value to your employer along the lines he is most interested in … Indicate in your reports that matters are in such shape at the present time that it would be a bad move to eliminate this form of protection. 38

Responding to the head of Pillsbury Mills’ complaint that detectives were not providing any valuable information about agitators, the Marshall Service directed them that the client wanted “the names of the agitators and radicals, together with their [time] clock numbers and the Mill where they work and the position he [sic] holds.” The office reassured the client that “in the future these reports will show all that you desire and will continue to clear your Mills of all radicals and agitators which will, without any question, relieve the situation in your plants.” If not an invitation to false charges against innocent men, this directive could lead operatives to very loose interpretations of radicalism or agitation.39 Critics also asserted that operatives warned employers of violence, fomented it, and thereby convinced clients that the detective service was necessary. In Chicago, during the 1919 steel strike, Sherman agency operatives apparently encouraged striker violence. “War Department agents” investigated the agency, which led to a raid of the offices and indictment of one of the heads for intending to “murder divers large numbers of persons” and to incite riots. The state of Illinois responded by declaring illegal any detective agency incitement to violence.40 In the 1930s, the militant anti-union Los Angeles Merchants’ and Manufacturers’ Association complained that “although it is difficult to get any actual proof, it is a fact that some agencies have, by false reports and actual agitation [by labor spies], caused trouble where none existed, for the sole purpose of profiting by the necessity of employing guards” provided by the same agency.41 Employers did not like agencies causing trouble and profiting at their expense. Criticism remained mostly confined to union supporters until the mid1930s after passage of the Wagner Act, which recognized workers’ right to bargain collectively with employers through unions. The law set off a massive union-organizing drive throughout the country and equally massive employer resistance. At the behest of the AFL, which resolved that Congress should investigate industrial spying,42 Senator Robert M. La Follette, Jr., chaired a Senate investigation of a wide range of union-busting practices. The widely publicized testimony, much of it by reluctant officials of the Pinkerton, Corporations Auxiliary, Railroad Audit, and a host of other detective agencies, exposed the vast network of industrial espionage. The committee staff sometimes had to reassemble subpoenaed records that agency workers had hastily destroyed and stuffed into wastebaskets.

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Faced with such bad publicity, the Pinkertons in 1937 and other agencies announced that they were giving up the business of industrial espionage, even though it had been the most profitable of their operations. The Pinkertons especially were concerned about publicity, even though they were willing to carry on all sorts of activities that remained secret.43 There seems to be no record of unions spying on employers, although somebody working for organizer Jean Spielman, or himself, was able to provide a trove of agency correspondence with operatives and employers in Minnesota.44 An experienced spy argued that unions should in fact hire their own detectives to uncover operatives among them, forcing employers to cancel the agency contracts. This would be far more valuable to the AFL than its “half-baked effort to organize the Southern textile mills” in the 1930s.45

Guards for strikebreakers A successful labor spy had to be intelligent as well as daring and was the most sophisticated service that detective agencies offered management. Agencies also provided rougher or cruder assistance: guards to protect strikebreakers, and strikebreakers themselves. Most of the Pinkertons’ revenue came from providing operatives in factories, though they also supplied guards. The Pinkerton Protective Patrol, originally a guard service for city businesses, first served to break an 1866 strike in Braidwood, Illinois. Between 1877 and 1892, Pinkerton guards, now mostly men recruited specifically for the job and commanded by regular officers of the guard service, were involved in seventy strikes.46 Other agencies concentrated on guard services. The Burns Agency’s income from guards was twice as high as from spies, whereas the Pinkertons got only 10 percent of its “industrial service” income from guards by the 1930s.47 A major reason for this low percentage is that the Pinkerton Agency received very bad publicity from its guards’ handling of the Homestead Steel Strike in 1892. When nationwide industrial depression descended in 1892, Andrew Carnegie’s hardheaded lieutenant Henry C. Frick of the Homestead, Pennsylvania, steel mill, cut workers’ wages drastically. The workers, members of the Amalgamated Association of Iron, Steel and Tin Workers, called a strike, and Frick responded with a lockout of union workers and importation of strikebreakers. He developed a plan to sneak Pinkerton guards onto the Homestead mill property to protect the scabs. They were to float down the river in a barge unknown to the watchful workers and to be in position before

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the strikers could respond. Frick called upon the Pinkertons because of a humiliating 1889 strike experience with a sheriff ’s posse: “Immediately upon the arrival of these deputy Sheriffs the strikers took their maces [billy clubs] away from them, took their coats away from them in many cases, and their hats and sent them back to the city.”48 Presumably Pinkerton guards would be more reliable. These men were not individually armed, but Winchester rifles were aboard the barge for defense. Frick himself requested that the 300 guards not be armed, “unless the occasion properly calls for such a measure later on for the protection of our employes [sic] or property.”49 According to Pinkerton policy, they were under command of experienced officers, but the guards themselves were not trained regular employees, although they should have been “old men,” experienced in strike work, and “sober, attentive, prompt, … worthy, faithful men” with references “as to their character and standing in the community in which they live.”50 One of the commanders of the Homestead Pinkertons declared that the men from the Eastern states, most of whom he knew personally, were “very good men indeed.” The men from Chicago, whom he did not know, “appeared to be a first-class body of men.”51 However, according to John W. Holway, a “student” who was aboard the barge, most of the guards were a motley collection of men who were not entirely clear what they were supposed to do. The plan to enter the mill property secretly went awry because the workers were better organized than the Pinkertons: they established a network of signals to warn of the guards’ approach by river. They chartered a tug that patrolled the river in company with fifty small rowboats, each manned by two men. As the Pinkerton’s tug pulling the barges approached, it almost ran down one of the rowboats. The men in it fired revolvers at the Pinkertons. Workers and their families, armed with rifles and pistols, clubs, and stones lined the bank. When the barge landed, workers rushed to prevent the guards from debarking. One man lay down on the gang plank: when a Pinkerton tried to remove him, he shot the guard with his pistol and the gunfight began. The workers could not force the Pinkertons to retreat, as they were under fire from a group of “experienced sharpshooters” aboard the barge (most of the guards simply ducked for cover) and the Pinkertons were under fire from the workers. Finally, one of the Pinkertons, a medical student, managed to negotiate a surrender. The Pinkertons had to run a gantlet of angry workers who wounded many of them.52 In the end, over 150 Pinkertons had been injured, and seven killed. Nine workers died. The workers won the battle of Homestead but lost the war. Militia came in to restore order, union leaders were arrested and charged with treason against the state of

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Pennsylvania, and the demoralized workers lost their jobs. The Amalgamated, in 1891 the strongest AFL union, was destroyed, and steel remained unorganized.53 Workers had hated Pinkerton guards since the 1880s with good reason, as when in a Chicago Meatpackers’ strike, they “acted like a marauding army … Often drunk, they insulted citizens and threatened them with their Winchesters.” The police, themselves no particular friend of strikers, arrested several of the guards.54 One of the guards sent to Wyoming and Montana during 1886 testified that most of his fellows were “tramps and bums that didn’t know anything at all about strikes and didn’t care, and furthermore they didn’t know any thing about the guns, or any law, or anything else.”55 The Homestead battle, though, prompted a Senate investigation and revealed the world of strikebreaking to middle- as well as working-class Americans. Senators, especially Populist Senator Peffer of Kansas, grilled officials of the Pinkerton and other agencies, not used to being challenged, about their activities. The Senate and House investigations led to the 1893 “Anti-Pinkerton Law,” which forbade Federal Government agencies from employing private detectives. The agency managed to get around even this narrow restriction. The heads told subordinates that government officials were unable to pay Pinkerton bills. They could avoid this problem by submitting two bills: one private, in full detail; the other a simply voucher payment to a Pinkerton clerk, with no letterhead or mention of the Pinkerton Agency. The operative involved should have a number only, and no mention of the agency.56 It is unlikely much of this was going on, since the FBI was the federal detective agency after 1908. However, some officials may have had matters they wanted to be secret from even the FBI. Federal officials hiring Pinkertons was not the real issue, though. The original House bill had prohibited any “individual, firm, or corporation” contracting with the government to “employ Pinkerton or similar agencies.” The Senate dropped that wider provision because it would hamper the steel industry, which was engaged in providing material for the Navy’s “all steel fleet” program.57 The Pinkerton Agency publicly announced that it would no longer provide strike guards, but in the 1930s, it was still providing guards with some restrictions. In 1935, the heads ordered that local superintendents must obey any state laws that limited or forbade guards; they should be deputized as special police or sheriffs; they should be employed only if a factory is closed during a strike, not to protect strikebreakers; they should not carry firearms, and only specially trained men could handle teargas. If anyone were injured by gas or spent projectiles, the client was liable. Neither the client nor the guards should reveal their Pinkerton affiliation, and they should not wear uniforms. Despite restrictions on firearms,

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one Ohio Pinkerton assistant superintendent drew a gun on pickets in front of a closed factory. Local police arrested him and the guards.58 Generally, though, the Pinkerton policy meant that the agency would not actively engage in strikebreaking as it had in the past. The Pinkertons legitimated themselves by their criminal investigation work, keeping spies and guards as hidden from the general public as possible. Other agencies specialized in anti-union work. Probably the most notorious of these was the Baldwin-Felts Agency, founded in 1890 and based in Bluefield, West Virginia, in the coal mining country. William G. Baldwin and Thomas Felts gained a reputation for persistence and toughness by breaking up a notorious group of train robbers, killing or capturing most of them. The agency moved into guarding mine owners’ property and served as general police force in the grim company towns associated with the coal mines. They kept out gamblers, prostitutes, and union organizers. Toughness and persistence became murderous in the often violent miners’ strikes. Thomas Felts testified that “one of the first requirements for a guard was shooting ability.” Usually the agency worked in its home state but twice supported owners in the Colorado coal fields. There Baldwin-Felts guards were heavily armed with machine guns and armored cars, one of which was called the “death special.” During the prolonged Ludlow, Colorado, strike of 1913–14, the guards machine-gunned the miners’ tent colony from a moving railroad car, killing two and wounding sixteen people. The climax of mutual violence between strikers and guards came with the Matewan, West Virginia, strike of 1920. Miners killed seven Baldwin-Felts men, including two brothers of Felts, in a gun fight in May 1920. Three months later, the agency retaliated by ambushing and killing the pro-miner police chief. After 1920, mine owners preferred enforcing “yellow dog” contracts in which workers had to declare they would never join a union. West Virginia finally passed a law prohibiting the use of guards from private agencies in 1935; Baldwin-Felts and other agencies had ignored earlier legislation because it provided for no punishment.59 Before and after the federal “Pinkerton Law,” individual states passed measures against “detectives” to “parade in arms” or “go armed” (Illinois 1879; North Carolina 1893). Others prohibited importation of “guards or armed men” from another state (Maryland, Montana, Idaho, Wyoming, Arkansas, Kentucky, Texas, West Virginia, South Dakota, Nebraska, South Carolina, Utah, Kansas between 1889 and 1897). These laws were vague with loopholes for protection of property or use of unarmed guards. Several states between 1891 and 1911 prohibited use of armed men for strikebreaking (Minnesota, Wisconsin,

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Tennessee, Oklahoma, Colorado). In 1899, Oregon got to the heart of the matter, prohibiting private armed groups for duties “properly belonging to the duly organized police patrol.”60 Later on, between 1927 and 1938, states required licensing of the agencies supplying guards for businesses (California, Illinois, New York, Massachusetts). The only state requiring licensing of individual guards was Wisconsin in 1925, amended in 1931. Individuals seeking the license must have been endorsed by five “reputable” citizens and the fire and police commission in the city where they would work.61 The detective agencies had little problem getting around these laws, as most of them provided no serious punishment.

The public–private connection State laws did not forbid a very common practice, making private guards into deputy sheriffs or special police. Sheriffs had the ancient power of raising a posse to put down disorder, which one usually thinks of as ordinary citizens, but nothing prevented its members from being employees of detective agencies. Similarly, police chiefs could appoint auxiliaries or “specials” from the citizenry in times of crisis. Again, these could be private “detectives.” The Pinkerton Agency maintained that it always required clients to first ask the sheriff for help in strikes. If he did not have enough or trustworthy men of his own, the client should then hire Pinkertons and request the sheriff to deputize them. Only then, a Pinkerton official testified, would they go to the client’s aid. He said that the agency would not send men into states like New York and Michigan that required deputies to be citizens of the state.62 Under questioning, this official said that Pinkerton caution was not followed in “all instances.” Homestead was one of those even though Frick had requested deputization of the Pinkerton men. There was a “chief deputy” named Gray aboard the Pinkerton barge, whom the commander asked to deputize the men, but he claimed he was “only a messenger.”63 Whether deputization of the Pinkertons would have made them more legitimate in the eyes of workers is hard to say. Probably not, considering how they had humiliated the sheriff ’s posse a few years earlier. The agency’s motive may not have been legitimation but “simply to avoid liability for the depredations and assaults these guards might commit.”64 Deputization of guards spans the whole period of detective agency involvement in strikebreaking in many industries. In 1886, the sheriff of Cook County (Chicago) deputized 200 or 300 Mooney and Boland agency men to serve

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during strikes. The sheriff provided their weapons. During the Jersey City coal yard strike of 1887, the police board issued badges to 101 Pinkertons, and “the courts” deputized over 200 Pinkertons as US Marshals. In a Cheyenne, Wyoming, Railroad strike, one Pinkerton testified that fifty of his fellows were sworn in as deputy US Marshals, and Charles Siringo was made a deputy marshal during the Coeur d’Alene conflict of the early 1900s. During a peaceful 1910 Bethlehem Steel Co. strike, the county sheriff deputized 140 company employees.65 During the late 1930s strikes in the steel industry in the Northeast and agriculture in Southern California, deputization was common. Before the 1937 strike against Republic Steel, which refused to recognize unions under the Wagner Act, the company consulted with local officials. The sheriff deputized 214 men, of whom Republic Steel paid for 57 company police and 114 were regular employees of a company affiliate. These company deputies were under company control as long as they remained on company property. Not only did the sheriff choose only forty-three of his deputies, but he had limited command over them. During the steel strikes, “citizens committees” in support of the employers appeared, calling for the maintenance of law and order. Some of these groups provided men as deputies, including non-striking workers.66 In Southern California, employers’ associations mobilized against striking agricultural laborers. Associated Farmers supplied local sheriffs with lists of members of the group available as deputies, leading to “mass deputization,” which the La Follette Committee called “legalized vigilantism.” In the Stockton spinach packers’ strike of 1937, growers and their friends supplied a posse of 1,200 men to serve as “pick-handle brigades,” led by the president of the Associated Farmers. Many of the deputies followed his leadership rather than the sheriff ’s. A group of agricultural truckers, Farmers’ Transportation Association, had a “crew of deputy sheriffs, a sort of strong arm squad” available when striking workers blocked loading or unloading of cargo. The manager of the association, “a bellicose character from Imperial County,” commanded a squad of deputies, who would turn up armed to intimidate the strikers.67 The “legalized vigilantes” were private police furnished by employers’ associations cloaked in public authority to maintain an order defined not by law but by employers’ determination to break unions. Public officials had to sympathize or be indebted to employers to use guards as deputies. Sometimes sheriffs or chiefs refused to deputize detective agency guards. In a 1936 RCA strike in Camden, New Jersey, police officials would not deputize Sherwood Detective Agency men “of such undesirable character that the local authorities refused to deputize them.” During a particularly violent strike against the Black and Decker Co., the union negotiated with the sheriff

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to disarm and arrest the guards hired by the employers’ association. Forty-three were arrested and charged with “shooting with intent to wound.” The La Follette Committee staff was able to obtain FBI records of these men and found that sixteen of them had criminal records for such offenses as larceny, bootlegging, counterfeiting, robbery, rape, and illegal possession of bombs. Some had served prison terms up to twenty-five years. The mayor of Willoughby, Ohio, revoked deputization of employer association guards during a strike against the Ohio Rubber Co. The men had shot off teargas in town where there were no conflicts and had driven around in cars falsely marked “Police Department.”68 The chief of one detective agency, proud that his spies were to prevent strikes, not break them, told a subordinate that men hired as guards should not be trusted with weapons because “his first thought is to protect himself, and not to protect the property of our client. If he is in danger he is more apt to get panicky and start shooting than not. Anyone may get killed, and I don’t want that on my conscience.”69 It is not clear whether detective agencies knew they were employing criminals or reckless amateurs, but it does seem that their claims of carefully selecting their men should be taken lightly. In addition to deputizing private guards or granting police powers to private forces, public officials cooperated with employers in many ways. After the Haymarket bombing of 1886, the Chicago police could always be counted on to help employers break strikes. For five years after the bombing, leading industrialists contributed $10,000 (almost $271,000 today) annually to the police force.70 Pinkerton agents, funded by “public spirited citizens” including the editor of the Chicago Tribune, worked closely with the police to monitor the activities of anarchist leaders after Haymarket. When traction magnate Charles Yerkes wanted to hire Mooney and Boland guards, the mayor told him to rely on the police instead, as the guards would only create more disorder during a strike. Yerkes, a man accustomed to having his own way, did fire the guards, fearing that he would not have police protection.71 Some individual members of the Chicago police during garment strikes of 1910 and 1915 were apparently paid by employers to break up picket lines. Substantial employer donations to the police essentially bribed them to break strikes.72 In the 1930s steel strikes, police joined hired guards and company police in beating and teargassing the men and women who were picketing the plants. Police and sheriffs cooperated directly with employers’ associations in California labor disputes in open-shop Los Angeles and in the fields of the central valley during the 1930s. Southern Californians, Inc., a coalition of employers’ associations in Los Angeles, praised “the close co-operation of received from local law enforcement officials,”

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including the county district attorney who campaigned against unionization over the radio, had union officials arrested, and “held incommunicado.” He also secretly recorded conversations among unionists with a “dictaphone-radio device.” The LAPD’s “Red Squad” supplied information to employers about union plans and activities. The employers’ association of the garment industry in Los Angeles made secret cash payments to the commander of the Red Squad, who claimed they were for “lunch and supper money for patrolmen working overtime.”73 During an attack by vigilantes on a union gathering in Madera, California, the police and highway patrol officers stood by without acting.74 The ease with which members of employers’ associations were deputized during agricultural strikes has been described. Unions sometimes fought back with their own goons to intimidate strikebreakers, nonunion men, or dissident union factions. They did not organize counter-guards to protect picketers, though strikers did prepare for combat. Curiously, one union did not hesitate to adopt employer tactics during a 1919 mine strike unauthorized by the United Mine Workers (UMW), a “wildcat strike.” Strikers traveled throughout Illinois, recruiting men to join them. The union, whose contract with employers included prohibition of wildcat strikes, responded by not only bringing in strikebreakers but had contract supporters sworn in as deputies who joined regular officials in arresting the insurgents trying to organize the strike. The UMW apparently funded these deputies from its own treasury. Internal union conflicts may not be part of employer policing of labor, but in this case the UMW had no difficulty adopting employer tactics.75

“Industrial munitions”: Private arming of the police The La Follette investigation uncovered another form of public–private cooperation, employers’ purchase of “industrial munitions”—teargas, machine guns, rifles, special long billy clubs—not only for their own arsenals but for sheriffs or police chiefs. Since the budgets of public police agencies did not have provision for these weapons, the purchase was carefully hidden from auditors’ view. Detective agencies were often directly connected to suppliers of weapons. The President of Railway Audit and Inspection Company was a board member of Federal Laboratories, the “largest seller of tear and vomiting gas and gas equipment and submachine guns in the country.” In Atlanta, agency officials were actually Federal Labs salesmen. O’Neill Industrial Services of Detroit was the sales agent for Erie Chemical Co., a competitor of Federal Labs. When

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the agency’s salesmen solicited employers, they promoted both strikebreaking services and teargas. Agencies, including Pinkerton’s, received discounts from the munitions suppliers.76 Suppliers suggested to police departments, who said they could not afford gas or machine guns to request the money from banks and businesses. During the 1934 longshoremen strikes on the West Coast, the Seattle Chamber of Commerce paid for weapons that were delivered to the police and county sheriff. The San Francisco and Los Angeles police refused permits for teargas to corporations who wanted to purchase it directly: payment to the police department was the way around this. Shipping companies gave the police money to buy Federal Labs equipment. This may have been to assure police control of the weapons but also reflects the commander and other officials’ closeness to the employers. When the city of San Francisco turned down the bill for the police chief ’s direct purchase of teargas, the Federal Labs salesman went to the shipping companies, and the bill was paid “by a group of men who felt it was a just and due bill contracted for by the city.” A machine gun manufacturer actually had reservations about supplying his weapons to companies for strikebreaking because of public anger. The weapons suppliers found a way around this—if the employer can persuade the sheriff to “officially order it, and … give us an affidavit that the gun will not be transferred without written permission from the manufacturer,” then it can be shipped and the sheriff can lend it to the company, which will pay for it77—a pretty wily method to find a way around a gun manufacturer’s qualms. All this private purchase of weapons for public police was legal, according to California’s Chief of the Division of Criminal Investigation and Identification. As long as police or sheriffs purchased teargas “for use in general preservation of the public peace,” it was not “improper for a private corporation” to pay for it.78 In Chicago, private supplying of arms to the police went back to the aftermath of the violent strikes of 1877. The Citizens’ Association, a business group, provided breech-loading rifles, cannons, a machine gun, and full cavalry equipment to the militia and police. The militia got 303 of the 599 rifles and the cavalry accoutrements, but the police got all the rest.79 Public–private cooperation reflected police officials and employers’ shared views that strikes, especially prevention of strikebreakers entering plants, violated both public order and property rights. The La Follette Senate investigation, which exposed this public–private cooperation, declared that “such dependence of public agencies upon private interests does not make for honest, impartial law enforcement.”80

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The Pennsylvania Coal and Iron Police A unique form of labor policing was the Pennsylvania Coal and Iron Police, a state-sponsored company police. Coal and iron operators believed that county sheriffs were either insufficient or unwilling to suppress strikes and sought legislation to create a police force to protect their property. In 1865 the state legislature authorized the railroads that shipped coal and iron to establish their own police force. A year later, the law was extended to include all corporations in the mining business. The men wore badges, were uniformed like policemen, and were granted police powers by the state. Mine owners paid the state one dollar for a commission, and they could appoint any individual they chose. Some 7,600 of these commissions were issued during the life of the force. There seems to have been no state training of the men, and the first units were trained by Pinkertons. The agency continued to work closely with the Coal and Iron Police, including the arrest of the Molly Maguires. The Coal and Iron Police were mainly a strikebreaking force, composed of men who resembled detective agency guards in their mixed character. After the particularly violent and prolonged anthracite strike of 1902, ended only by President Theodore Roosevelt’s personal intervention, many people felt that the state needed more control of policing. The legislature established the State Police in 1905, charged with general order maintenance in rural areas, but often serving to protect the interests of mining corporations. The State Police enforced a trespassing law that provided a ten-dollar fine for any unauthorized entry of property where a warning sign was posted. The law seems an ordinary protection of property but proved especially useful against picketing of mines and mills. The Coal and Iron Police coexisted and cooperated with the new force and continued its reputation for brutality through the 1910s and 1920s.. In 1929, a state legislator, angered by the killing of a picketing worker, campaigned for its abolition. He wrote a play, made into a movie, about this incident, which publicized practices employers and the Coal and Iron Police would rather keep secret. In 1931, the governor, Gifford Pinchot, refused to issue any more commissions and effectively ended the Coal and Iron Police.81

Company police Company police forces, responsible only to their employers, were another means to control labor. Henry Ford is famous for the Model T and the Five-Dollar Day.

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However, the producers of the cars who earned such good wages were subject to constant scrutiny by company police. During the 1910s through 1920s, the Ford Co. maintained a “sociological department,” a sort of paternalistic moral police that reflected the “welfare capitalism” popular among larger employers at the time. Welfare capitalism, providing worker benefits as well as good wages, was a sophisticated way of discouraging unionization among presumably contented workers. Ford’s sociological department, at its peak containing 200 members, enforced conventional morality among the workers: they should be married, with a wife staying at home, and have children. They should be temperate and frugal, saving enough perhaps to buy a Model T. Above all, they should learn English and become a real American. Ford’s English Language School made sure of that, quite successfully. Most workers tolerated intrusions into their lifestyle because of the good wages and benefits the sociological department provided—nurses and doctors, low-cost loans, lawyer services. Those who were unwilling to fit the model had their wages halved, and if that was not sufficient, they were fired.82 By the 1920s, Ford found high wages too expensive, and he renounced paternalism. When the unionization drives of 1933 and 1936 began, he stoutly resisted. By then, the sociological department had become the “service department,” a company security force. The department was led by Harry Bennett, Ford’s personal bodyguard and right-hand man, who had been a boxer during his navy service. This company police force consisted of “a group of ex-boxers and ballplayers, cons, bad cops kicked off the force, and characters from Detroit’s La Cosa Nostra … Service Department men were noticeable for their size, rough language, and cauliflower ears, and for the fact that they hung around without doing any work.” Part of their function was spying, apparently looking for union literature in workers’ lunch boxes and clothes lockers. They filmed meetings and picket lines to identify union supporters who were promptly fired. Mainly, though, they were eager participants in battles with strikers. After police and the Service Department gassed and beat Dearborn hunger marchers in 1932, the marchers began to retreat. At that point, Harry Bennet drove up and fired a pistol into the fleeing crowd. Workers retaliated by pelting the car with rocks, and Bennett got out and fired off several more rounds. The police and Bennet’s men then opened fire on the marchers with machine guns, killing one man and wounding several.83 A famous series of news photo taken during the 1937 strike against Ford’s River Rouge plant shows Service Department men first walking toward four union leaders who are nervously smiling. They then wade in and begin beating and kicking them.84

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Ford was not alone in his use of tough company police. Republic Steel’s force spied on workers and engaged in “rough shadowing,” following activists to intimidate them. The company police were “drilled to an efficiency unsurpassed by … the Coal and Iron Police.” The force had hearty cooperation from the city police, whose chief declared that “rough shadowing” was not a crime and he would make no arrests.85 During the 1937 “Memorial Day Massacre” at Republic, company police mixed in with regular police in teargassing and beating men and women demonstrators. Goodyear Rubber Co.’s company police formed a “flying squadron,” which received several hours of military training and use of teargas during the month when a strike was anticipated. It specialized in the “wedge formation,” an offensive tactic presumably borrowed from football. A wedge of men surrounded the “gas man” to protect him during an attack.86 By the later 1930s, companies began to prefer their own police over detective agencies as spies. They began to mistrust detectives who seemed to be “creating conditions which will perpetuate their jobs.” Federal and state labor laws, Social Security, and the Securities Exchange Act requiring registration of employees and reports of income and expenses interfered with detective agencies’ secrecy, whereas corporations could disguise labor spies as employees of their personnel department. In 1937 General Motors dropped Pinkerton’s in favor of its own company police.87 After the Second World War, when Henry Ford II became head of Ford Motors, he implemented a more manipulative approach to controlling labor. He appointed ex-FBI agent James J. Bugas head of a new “industrial relations department,” which exerted softer pressure on then-unionized workers.88 Other corporations turned to a similar form of control, private “labor consulting” firms that helped them find ways around the complex regulations of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), created by the Wagner Act. The consultants also advised on how to manipulate workers not to join unions. By the 1970s, in a growing anti-union movement supported by much of the general public as well as business, consultants helped firms encourage workers to vote against unions in NLRB “de-certification” elections, that is, rejecting an existing union. Unions survived 57 percent of these elections, but by 1980, only 47 percent. There were many reasons for union decline, but the campaigns of consultants against unions were an important element even before President Reagan busted the Air Traffic Controllers’ union.89 Not strictly policing, consulting services suggested that control of labor was entering a more sophisticated age.

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Return of the guards However, anti-unionism continues to characterize American labor relations, and in the 1990s, employers began returning to hiring guards, “private armies,” during strikes. One of the first of these was the Vance Asset Protection Team (APT) with a euphemistic title like the old “Railway Audit and Inspection Service.” Charles Vance and two fellow ex-US Secret Service men formed a security service in 1979, and Vance went on his own in 1984. Today Vance’s website describes its personnel as “professional, skilled, dedicated officers meticulously selected and extensively trained. Many of our uniformed personnel have police, federal law enforcement, or military security experience. Their expertise ranges from basic security functions to crisis management and emergency response. Vance guards are subject to the most rigorous training program in the country, ensuring Vance’s standing as the security industry’s quality leader.”90 Between 1984 and 2003, Vance was involved in over 600 strikes. Another firm, Special Response Corporation (SRC), claims it has been involved in 1,500 strikes, and all of its personnel have had two years of police or military experience and are screened for criminal records, drug use, and “motor vehicle violations.” All are “trained in communications, patrol procedures, non-confrontational tactics, use of force, documentation techniques, evidence collection, legal issues, safety, fire prevention, report writing, workplace violence, strikes and labor disputes, the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), courtroom skills and tactics.”91 An SRC ad for the more restricted audience of Covert Action Quarterly declared that it can provide “a private army when you need it.” It pictures a guard with helmet, gas mask, and riot shield, wearing a star-shaped badge, with one fist clenched.92 During a coal mine strike in 1984, Vance guards were armed with M-16 rifles, shotguns, and pistols. They wore riot helmets, shin guards, and body armor. A “sniping-countersniping” expert accompanied them. As in the past, guards sometimes provoked violence, duly recorded on film, to place blame on strikers and secure injunctions or restraining orders against the strikers. Residents of mining areas called the guards “gun thugs,” and some states restricted guards to client’s property, and unions launched campaigns to discredit them. In 1995, responding to union pressure, President Clinton signed an executive order, forbidding use of “replacement workers” during strikes, eliminating the guards’ strikebreaker protection role.93

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Goons, sluggers, strikebreakers for rent Employers hired guards and goons to provide access for strikebreakers whom the union pickets were determined to keep out. Strikebreakers did not serve any police function, but they were the heart of the effort to break unions. “Strikebreaker” conjures up an image of an unemployed worker desperate for any sort of work in his or her trade or misled immigrants or African-Americans who had no idea what they were getting into. There were some of each who served as “finks,” but many employers relied on agencies that supplied professional strikebreakers. Some of these agencies also provided spies and guards, but others specialized in strikebreakers. Three men who ran strikebreaking services succeeded each other as “King of Strikebreakers.” Jack Whitehead began his career as a skilled steelworker in Pittsburgh and Birmingham, Alabama. He returned to Pittsburg in 1891 after the steel workers’ union shut down the Clinton Mills. He organized forty black workers, called by unionists “the 40 thieves,” to run the mill. African-Americans often served as strikebreakers because the work gave them a chance for a good job, and they were able to act out their desire for masculine respect by fighting strikers.94 Needless to say, white immigrant workers had little respect for blacks and could justify their racism by this strikebreaking activity. Immigrant resentment of African-American strikebreakers was an underlying cause of the Chicago race riot of 1919. Whitehead provided strikebreakers until 1901, when he retired a wealthy man. Jim Farley, the second “King,” began as a strikebreaker in 1895. His experience made him a veteran who believed an expert should lead efforts to break strikes. He opened his own agency in New York City in 1902. He specialized in street car strikes, claiming he could recruit 35,000 experienced street car workers, 7,000 or 8,000 of whom were immediately available. His men probably prolonged the conflict in a 1904 trolley strike in New York and a 1907 strike in San Francisco, where local police were hostile to Farley’s men. Farley was also supplier of African-American strikebreakers in Chicago stockyard and teamsters strikes in the early 1900s. Like Whitehead, he retired a very rich man in 1910.95 The third, and perhaps greatest “King,” was Pearl Bergoff, whose thirty-year career included over 300 strikes. He began in 1895 as a “spotter” for a street car line, making sure conductors did not pocket fares when passengers paid them aboard. He formed his own “detective agency” in 1905, later joined by his three brothers. His early strikebreaking days were not particularly successful: in one of

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them, most of his men ran away. He made his reputation when he broke a 1907 New York City garbage hauler’s strike, accompanied by considerable violence. The city government paid him $24,000 for his work. He kept his reputation even though the union eventually won the Pressed Steel Car Co. strike at McKees Rocks, Pennsylvania, two years later. Learning from his earlier experience, he used guards to prevent strikebreakers from escaping. They forced the finks to remain in the factories, and anyone who defied orders was confined in a suffocating box car. In the following years, he achieved many successes, although his men again ran away in the 1917 Kansas City street car strike. Bergoff said that he grossed $2,000,000 from successfully breaking an Erie Railroad switchmen’s strike in 1920. He really came into his own in the early 1930s when industrialists resisted New Deal labor legislation. One of his major successes was in the strike against the Remington Rand Co. of Middletown, Connecticut. Not only were his men involved in conflict with workers but he and Rand developed a clever strategy to fool citizens of Middletown to think he was packing up the plant to move to another city. This success was an inspiration for the federal Byrnes Act of 1936, making it a felony to transport men interstate to prevent peaceful picketing. Like other acts to protect workers’ bargaining rights, though, the Byrnes Act had limits. Generally lawyers interpreted it to apply only to the use of physical force to prevent picketing. The Federal Government sued Bergoff and Rand for violating the act, but the judge in the case instructed the jury to consider the purpose of Bergoff ’s men, including dismantling the plant, leading to acquittal.96 At first, the detective agencies were relieved by this result, but in 1938, Congress amended the Byrnes Act to clarify that intimidation or physical force not only against pickets but any union organizing was illegal when carried out by men from out of state. Bergoff was a leading businessman of Bayonne, New Jersey, who used his wealth to build housing developments and an office building graced with his name. He retired in 1936, richer than the previous “kings.”97 The image of “professional” strikebreakers running away from worker attacks or trying to escape from factories does not suggest they were a disciplined group. Very few were workers in any trade. An employer association stopped supplying strikebreakers because they “did more damage, not being experienced, than they did good, to the machinery and so forth.”98 According to the La Follette investigation, they were “floaters” who were “socially maladjusted,” an underworld of professional or occasional criminals. Strikebreaking “closely approach[ed] a gangland racket.” The committee staff obtained criminal records of 150 strikebreakers and guards and found that forty-eight had

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“criminal or arrest records.” Most had been arrested only once, but one had fourteen arrests. Of an arrest total of 118, fifty-one were for violent crimes or incitement to violence. Those with records made up about one-third of the men the committee could investigate.99 One detective agency chief warned clients that the men he provides are lowlifes but found that they complained of the strikebreakers afterward. He said, “No decent workman would take a job as a fink; so you get the other kind. He’ll cheat and steal and lie from the minute he comes to the job until he leaves.”100 Sam “Chowderhead” Cohen, who worked as a strikebreaker for Railway Audit and Inspection Co., Bergoff, and the Sherwood Detective Bureau represented the low end of strikebreakers. His arrest record began in 1915 (receiving stolen goods) and continued to 1939. During the La Follette Committee investigation, he was serving a prison term of up to three years for welfare fraud.101 By no means all strikebreakers were criminals. In the early twentieth century, college students, of the fraternityathlete type, enthusiastically volunteered to break strikes, seeking an adventure that would fulfill Anglo-Saxon ideals of masculinity battling against foreigners. Another unlikely group were boy scouts, who also volunteered as strikebreakers for similar reasons. Union workers denounced the organization as training ground for the corporate army that would eventually crush the working class.102 Whether guards, goons, or finks, the men bosses used to prevent labor organizing and winning strikes were a mixed lot. In some strikes, employers bypassed strikebreaking agencies and directly hired known criminals, “sluggers,” “gorillas,” or “goons.” Unions replied in kind. In the Jewish garment industry, these gangsters were “shtarkers,” loosely translated as “strong men,” or “schlammers,” which does not need translation. In the early twentieth century, the president of the New York Furriers employers’ association hired Monk Eastman, a well-known gangster, to have his boys break up a mass strikers meeting. On the other hand, Eastman impartially provided toughs to unions to defend picketing workers. Garment industry bosses hired gangsters during the “uprising of the 20,000” in New York City. Thugs and prostitutes beat up the young women pickets during the strike in 1909–10 while the police looked on.103 On other occasions, gang leader “Dopey Benny” Fein had his squad of women who attacked strikebreakers, employers, and even the police. During the 1926 garment workers’ general strike, employers contracted with Jack “Legs” Diamond, and the Communist-led union with Jacob “Little Augie” Orgen, known as the “king of the East Side gunmen.” By the late 1930s, though, Communist Unions were instrumental in driving racketeers out of the furriers’ union, a struggle marked by violent conflicts.104

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The gangster did not choose sides because of political ideology but because one side offered the better deal or the gangs had been long-time rivals. Dopey Benny Fein, who sided with unions, was a bitter rival of Joe Sirocco of the Five Pointers, who worked for employers, and the two gangs engaged in shoot-outs.105 During New York City’s garment industry strikes of 1909–10, Fein with a squad of sixty men armed with gas pipe pieces and clubs invaded a nonunion shop and beat up the workers there. Fein had a regular retainer with the United Hebrew Trades with a weekly rate and rates for protecting picket lines, beating up scabs, or destroying nonunion shops. Fein turned down lucrative offers from employers, insisting that he unconditionally supported workers’ efforts to better their lives. The deal fell through in 1914 when Fein felt insufficiently supported by the union and supplied evidence of his work based on careful records to prosecutors who indicted eight union leaders. Other unions rallied to their support, and the jury found the men not guilty.106 Striking back at strikebreakers may seem only fair, but hiring gangsters marked the beginning of more systematic labor racketeering in which the gangs controlled the unions. The racketeers were able to promise labor “peace” to both employers and unions at a heavy cost, but they came to dominate both sides of labor relations. During the 1930s and into the 1950s, Albert Anastasia controlled the mostly Italian-American Brooklyn waterfront longshoremen union locals, trucking, laundry, and garment industries. He and two brothers were officials of the longshoremen’s union. They collected payoffs from employers and workers alike and beat up or murdered recalcitrants.107 By the mid-1930s, Louis “Lepke” Buchalter and Jake “Gurrah” Shapiro controlled the predominantly Jewish baking, flour transporting, and dress-making, fur, and general garment manufacturing industries. Gurrah coordinated an “army” of 250 that included accountants and union experts as well as enforcers, who could satisfy both unions’ concern with scab shops and employers’ concern to keep costs (wages) down. The racketeers made a fortune from “fees” collected from each side. Employers, union leaders, the Federal Government, and the New York State Special Prosecutor Thomas Dewey pursued “L and G,” finally convicting Gurrah in 1938 and Lepke in 1940 of extortion. Brooklyn District Attorney William Dwyer, in the process of uncovering “Murder, Inc.,” an Italian and Jewish racketeering alliance, got Lepke additionally convicted of murder, ending his career in the electric chair.108 Spies, guards, company police, strikebreakers, and goons were all on the frontlines of conflict between labor and capital that has waxed and waned for

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over 150 years. All of them were forms of private policing, which public agencies usually not only accepted but often actively supported. Sometimes local or state officials sympathized with striking workers or asserted their commitment to public neutrality by refusing to side with employers, but usually their notions of law and order meant cooperating with private policing of labor.

Figure 6  “Stripes But No Stars,” Convicts leased to work on railroad, Asheville, N.C., 1892. Note guards in background, one with shotgun. Wikimedia Commons, Public Domain.

7

Prisoners for Profit

Prisons are not actually police, since police do not administer them. Prisons, though, perform policing in two ways: they keep convicted individuals out of society, and guards police the prisoners. They are part of the policing apparatus,1 and, like other aspects of policing, have private and public components. Like many aspects of private policing, private prisons have a long history. Before creation of modern penitentiaries in the United States and Britain during the 1820s–30s, there were no prisons. County jails held people pending trial or people convicted of minor offenses. Usually public shaming punishments were preferred, ranging from wearing a paper letter (A for adultery, D for drunkard), sitting in the stocks, branding, and ear clipping to public hanging of the more serious offenders. Generally, Colonial Americans were less willing to execute criminals than their British contemporaries. County jails, administered by the sheriff, became more important as public punishments declined during the eighteenth century in a more heterogeneous society where shaming was not always effective. These jails had private aspects: the sheriff provided minimal food and lodging but gladly accepted money from a prisoner's friends or family to supply better food and more comfortable cell furnishings. Like the constables, sheriffs made their income from fees for serving warrants and lodging prisoners.2

Prison industries Privatization of prisons in the United States is usually associated with the late twentieth-century movement for privatizing public services. The modern form, prisons run for profit by companies contracting with the state, descends from the leasing of convict labor by state prisons and the Southern convict-lease system of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Work was part of the

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physical and moral discipline of both early nineteenth-century prison systems: the solitary system as practiced in Pennsylvania and the “congregate” system as practiced in New York. In the solitary system, prisoners worked in their cells; in the congregate system, they worked in shops. Leasing of this labor to contractors was within or outside the prison walls. Prison labor began with leasing prisoners’ work to private contractors who supplied the machinery, materials, and supervision of manufacture of various products. Business competitors of the contractors objected to their unfair advantage of cheap labor, and labor organizations criticized undermining the wages of honest workers.3 These complaints led to not only state control of prison labor but also over sale of many of their products on the outside market. The third stage, beginning in the 1890s, was limiting prison manufactures to use by the prison itself or other state agencies. Finally, in 1979, Congress again allowed sale of some prison-made products or services provided by convicts to private parties. As an experiment in 1821, New York’s Auburn Prison, pioneer of the congregate system, allowed a local manufacturer to use convicts to make tools. He furnished machinery and sold the products, paying the prison a set fee for the prisoners’ work. In 1828, the prison began a system of contract labor. Manufacturers of various products paid the prison 27 cents per day for each laborer, and at the end of the year, the prison’s revenue from contracts just equaled its operating costs. Later contractors paid 50 cents per day for ten hours of labor, supplying machinery and foremen (the silence earlier required in shops was abolished so foremen could speak to the prisoners). The work was within the prison, and guards maintained discipline in the shops. Discipline of unwilling laborers was harsh: floggings and “the shower bath,” similar to today’s waterboarding, were all too common. The guards carried firearms in the shops until 1929. Between 1828 and 1848, Auburn earned enough to meet all expenses, including staff salaries. The village of Auburn grew as a result of the prison’s employment of local guards and contracts with local manufacturers. Those without contracts and skilled workers objected to prison labor as cheap competition. Resentment grew during the financial panic of 1837, when the prison contract system thrived but local businesses failed and workers lost their jobs. Contractors made huge profits from the cheap labor, far greater than the prison made from their payments. Prison officials were determined to make the prison pay for itself and, to do so, often forced the convicts to work harder under harsher discipline. Contract labor produced shoes, tools and machines, furniture, barrels, and window sashes and blinds. Elam Lynds, original warden of Auburn, supervised

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construction of Sing Sing prison in Ossining, New York, in 1828. Convicts from Auburn quarried marble for the new structure, continuing a long tradition of “breaking rock.” After completion of Sing Sing, inmates continued to quarry marble for ten hours a day outside the prison walls, much of which went into Albany’s City Hall, New York’s Grace Church and Ossining’s Calvary Baptist Church. Other prisoners produced items similar to those at Auburn, including boots and barrels.4 Under continued protest from reformers and competitors, the contract system in New York was officially abolished in 1894. Nevertheless, as late as 1923, some 40 percent of goods made in prison were under private contracts, and 60 percent were sold on the open market. Prisons made goods not sold elsewhere in the state or sold them only in other states to avoid the objection of businesses and labor to the competition. The Federal Hawes-Cooper Act of 1929 finally made prison goods not subject to interstate commerce, so states could restrict products made in outside prisons, and in 1935, any interstate sale of convict-made goods was outlawed nationwide. By 1932, only 16 percent of prison goods were made under contract, and in 1940, the system had virtually disappeared. Most prison products, with some exceptions, were no longer sold on the open market.5 At this period, states including New York were confining prison labor to products for state government agency use only, including the prison itself. The classic license plates were first manufactured at Auburn in 1920.6 Today prison labor is managed by Corcraft, a branch of New York’s state prison administration. Prisoners earn various levels of wages themselves. Besides license plates, Auburn prisoners make laminated furniture and chairs of various types. The author’s office furniture, delivered by men in jumpsuits, is from Corcraft, and examination books used at Stony Brook University are from a juvenile facility.7 Michigan’s state prison began providing prisoner workers to private manufacturers in 1843. Prisoners remained confined, and the lessees provided materials and equipment. They paid the prison between 34 cents and 56 cents for each convict per day, but they did not see any of the money. In 1869, 517 of 625 state prisoners worked under this system. By 1900, there was very little contract labor, but in 1922, the state maintained its own prison factories, still selling the products on the open market. Over the years, prisoners made harnesses and other farm equipment, woolen and cotton products, carpets, steam engines and boilers, barrels and copper items, shoes, laundry products, bricks and tiles, cigars, and twine for binding hay bales and tombstones. At one point, they went

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outside the walls to mine coal. In 1910, prisoners made the first license plates, leather with metal numbers. In 1937, Michigan enacted a measure limiting sale of them to state agencies only. In 1980, Michigan State Industries (MSI) was authorized to sell to nonprofits, other state agencies, and the Federal Government. MSI became selfsupporting in 1985 and fulfilled the usual motives for privatization: lower costs and substitution of prisoners for salaried employees.8 Texas established its state prison in 1848, following the Auburn plan and later the Southern convict-lease system. Between 1871 and 1883, private employers leased the entire penitentiary, by then containing mostly AfricanAmerican inmates. It returned to the convict lease system until 1910. Texas did not adopt a state use requirement until 1963, in the meantime maintaining farms or plantations that sold their products commercially for the benefit of the state. Not surprisingly, these plantations resembled those of pre–Civil War times.9 By 1932, 40 percent of all convicts were making products for state use, and 23 percent additionally were working outside of prison on state highway or other infrastructure products. Unfortunately, manufacture for state use was not as cost-effective for the state as it seemed to promise, with agencies avoiding purchase of prison products they thought were inferior, and prison industries did not eliminate a major problem of prisoner idleness, which led to prison riots in the 1930s.10 State use did not end private contracting. Congress, after years of refusing to allow private hiring of prisoners, authorized contracts with private employers in 1979 to help reduce growing prison costs. By the mid-1990s, prison privatization in thirty states included leasing prison labor for non-state-use products. Working, as in the past, for low wages, convicts performed such tasks as “packing golf balls for Spalding, sorting inventory for Toys R Us, and manufacturing uniforms for McDonald's.” They also worked as telemarketers and in lower-skilled aspects of computer manufacturing. The main complaints against private prison labor are competition or undermining of wages, and exploitation because prisoners have no bargaining rights with employers.11 Federal Prison Industries (FPI), a private/public corporation created in 1935, manages the labor of federal prisoners. Its products are for sale only to the government itself. It developed amid protest from both business, fearing cheap competition, and labor unions, fearing job loss. President Roosevelt supported the idea and the American Federation of Labor dropped its opposition. Bureau of Prisons Director Sanford Bates developed a system designed to reduce

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opposition. Its board would contain government, business, labor, and farming representatives to minimize impact on commercial enterprises. Similarly, it diversified its products to avoid competing with any single industry. Bates considered prison labor as a form of rehabilitation that would help reduce prison riots, which were frequent in the 1930s. Prisoners received pay directly from the FPI’s profits, which by 1937 were substantial. Prison operations included textile, shoe, and broom and brush manufacturing. By 1936, FPI was producing mattresses, clothing, furniture, wool, bricks, iron, and laundering. During the Second World War, FPI was a major military contractor and offered prisoners training for defense industry jobs. Its income slumped with the end of wartime contracts, but the Cold War added more military products to its output, including artificial limbs. In 1977, FPI became UNICOR, and the surge of prisoners in the 1980s and 1990s prompted expansion of its prison industries into a wide range of products.12

Convict lease The Southern convict lease system, first developed in 1868, leased convicts to companies that used prisoners in railroad construction, mining, lumber mills, turpentine-distilling, agriculture, and other extractive industries. Reconstruction (1868–77) is usually associated with advancement of African-Americans’ rights, but the leasing system was a virtual return to slavery, highly profitable to the states. After the demise of Reconstruction in Georgia, the legislature passed a law in 1876 that authorized companies to lease prisoners for twenty years. The firms paid the state $500,000 over the term of the lease, excellent revenue for a cash-strapped state government.13 No less than 73 percent of Alabama’s revenue came from convict leases. The convicts lived in labor camps in which most of the prisoners were young blacks arrested for relatively minor offenses. Contrary to the dominant theme of rehabilitation and individualized treatment of the era, in the camp, prisoners simply worked, often to the point of incapacitation or death. In Alabama, reports revealed that 18 to 41 percent of the prisoners died between 1868 and 1870. Tennessee reports mostly give no cause of death, but some, such as “shot,” “drowned,” or “found dead,” reveal much about life in the camps. One way camp bosses could avoid higher death rates was pardoning and sending “broken-down men” away to die at home.14 The camps were isolated in the woods or mountains, so few people knew what was going on, except survivors

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whose voice was not especially powerful. Even survivors often lived only a short time after release. Not even reforming prison inspectors could impose a uniform standard on the camps. Some, an Alabama inspector found, were fine: “Entirely satisfied with the treatment—well, plenty of good food—comfortable lodgings—Negroes satisfied.” Others, though, were “very bad—Cells so low that a man cannot stand upright—No hospital—No privy—No shoes— Bad Clothes—and very little to eat.”15 The camps consisted of tents or rude barracks, sometimes on wheels so the prisoners could be transported from one site to another. Photos show men in wooden cages. Work-related injuries were common. Disease was rampant, armed guards were harsh, and punishments particularly cruel. Prisoners were whipped, beaten, tied to posts in the sun, or crammed into the “sweat box” in which recalcitrant men were confined in stifling heat. In some ways, except for outright ownership of people’s bodies, the camps were worse than slave plantations. Slave masters had a financial investment in individuals; contractors had unlimited access to prisoners at costs far below their profits.16 The profitability of the convict lease system for the state and the contractors prevented much discussion of reform or abolition. Convict leasing became the basis of many post-Reconstruction fortunes, and public-appointed and elected officials in many cases were themselves lessees. Leases were important rewards for loyal political services to party bosses.17 Some people argued that the system was in itself reformatory, instilling the discipline of work in a lazy race. Others, though, realized that ex-convicts returned home angry and vengeful. Within their communities, they were often considered victims of an unjust system.18 Georgia’s first reform effort, prohibition of more than one person punishing prisoners in camps, backfired: it simply created the notorious “whipping boss.” Convict lease was finally abolished in Georgia in 1908, under the progressive administration of Governor Hoke Smith. By then, not only had reformers become more vocal, but the system was losing its profitability.19 In Arkansas, groups like the Farmers’ Alliance and Knights of Labor vocally denounced the system, and Governor George Donaghey, another progressive, urged the legislature to abolish it in 1909, but it did not move. Finally, he essentially ordered abolition of the system in 1912.20 By the 1880s, Alabama’s prisoners worked almost exclusively in coal mines in the Birmingham area. In 1883, the state created an inspection board to oversee the mining camps, but it did not take its duties seriously until a reformer led it in 1885. Despite periodic reform efforts and shocking exposes of conditions, the system persisted until the major contractor, Tennessee Coal and Iron Co., declared that it would employ only

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free workers in 1928. The state then converted to prison farms. Ironically, coal mining for those who survived the harsh camps proved an avenue of mobility: released prisoners, up to half of them, were able to use their skills in regular coal mining jobs. State farms, though, were a dead end.21 The Tennessee Coal and Iron Company, employing 60 percent of Tennessee’s prisoners as coal miners, and leasing others to other companies, cynically used the lease system as “a club to hold over the free laborers” to keep wages down, according to the company’s vice president. The miners naturally resented the club and organized a strike to raise wages and abolish the use of convicts. They attacked the camp guards to free the convicts but were unsuccessful. Later, though, the 1891–92 “Coal Creek War” was ultimately more successful, at least for the convicts. Miners struck and were able to enter the stockades and, instead of freeing the prisoners, shipped them in sealed boxcars to the state capital, Knoxville. The governor sent in militia, but on one occasion the outnumbered militia men had to surrender the prisoners to the miners, who put them in boxcars again. Miners in other areas followed their example. Although the strike was a failure, as usual, in the end, the state legislature established a state prison and abolished the lease system effective in 1896 with expiration of current contracts. Prisoners, though, continued to mine coal at the state prison itself, and the state sold the coal commercially until 1937, when it followed federal law to sell only for state use.22 The formal end of the system made life somewhat better, but not much, for the prisoners. Minor offenders were sent to work on county chain gangs, and others labored on prison farms or mines. The state’s interest in convict leasing was to save the cost of maintaining an expensive institution while actually making some revenue from the contracts. It was a mutually satisfactory system for all, except the prisoners.

Corrections corporations As prison laborers produced for state use only and the convict lease system faded away, private prisons were no longer a major concern, and, in fact, disappeared with the end of convict lease. Everybody assumed that imprisonment was a public responsibility. As crime rates rose and governments at all levels experienced financial crises in the 1970s and 1980s, the notion of privatization of prisons, along with many other public services, seemed to be a solution to the problem of

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providing enough cells for the growing number of convicts. Supporters argued that they were less costly to maintain and more efficient because they could use sophisticated surveillance devices to replace guards. They did not have to hire and retain personnel according to union and civil service rules. The arguments were similar to those for privatization of public services in general.23 Toward the end of the 1960s and into the 1970s, courts began to recognize a new concept that prisoners had certain constitutional rights. Judges approved convicts’ suits against overcrowding, physical abuse, lack of decent food, denial of due process procedures in disciplinary hearings, denial of access to courts, restriction of visitors’ rights, and ability of prisoners to exercise their religion. In 1992, “at least one prison or jail in virtually every state [was] under a court order.”24 By 1995, judges had placed the prison systems of Alaska, Mississippi, Rhode Island, South Carolina, and Texas under court orders to improve unconstitutional violations. Courts directly supervised the prison facilities of thirty-two jurisdictions. States had to rectify prison conditions before the orders or supervision was lifted. In Texas’s case, some reforms had been achieved, but many areas remained as bad as in 1980 when the court order was first issued, so the system was still held unconstitutional in 1992.25 Since improvements often required remodeling old prisons, building new ones, and hiring new personnel, compliance was expensive. One way to save money was to contract with private prison companies who argued their greater efficiency and lower cost. They also promised standards for facilities, discipline, and other areas that would meet those of the American Correctional Association, which the Supreme Court had declared were above the requirements of the Constitution. Thus, states could avoid the disruption and expense of court orders against unconstitutional practices. Convicts in private prisons had to sue the companies instead of the state, so the state did not have direct expense and responsibility for rectifying violations. As a county official put it, going private meant that the county was now “buffered by the corporation in the case of future injuries.”26 The investment prospectus of one company included a map showing which state prisons were under court orders to reform, implying that privatization was better for state governments.27 Cost overruns and constitutional rights issues in private prisons have challenged the argument that they are better than public institutions. In 2000, Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) nearly went bankrupt, partly because of failure of a real estate subsidiary. Its stock dropped from $150 per share to 19 cents. Private companies generally began losing contract bids, some states preferring to build their own new facilities. Companies changed their

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aggressive argument of being better than public facilities to a defensive one of being just as good.28 Nevertheless, despite problems, the Federal Bureau of Prisons “bailed out” CCA by offering contracts for two new facilities.29 Private prisons once again became a growth industry and would remain so until a brief crisis at the end of the Obama administration when the Department of Justice announced it would no longer send federal convicts to private prisons. Private prisons take various forms. Governments contract with firms to operate public facilities, as in four prisons in Texas operated by two major firms. Private firms construct or finance prisons which they then lease to public agencies, such as several maximum-security prisons in Missouri and other states. Finally, there are what we usually think of as private prisons, fully owned and operated by corporations, as in the Marion, Kentucky maximum-security prison.30 Privatization of prisons was inspired partly by privatization of hospitals, usually thought of as charitable or nonprofit institutions. Hospitals became corporations, administered by businesspeople and limiting their role to profitable care of patients. As one executive put it, “We are not in the health care business. We are in the sick care business,” rejecting any notion of hospital activities as connected to public health in addition to what the patient or insurance pays for. One of the founders of a leading prison corporation, CCA, declared that he was looking to the Hospital Corporation of America, founded in 1968, as his model.31 Under the Juvenile Delinquency Prevention Act of 1974, the Federal Government authorized private firms to run facilities for its juvenile offenders. The first privately managed juvenile prison was in Pennsylvania, run by RCA Services, a division of Radio Corporation of America beginning in 1976. The second appeared six years later, when Eckerd Corp, which usually produced medications and owned drug stores, operated a federal boys school in Florida. The Federal Government began contracting with private businesses to manage adult prisons in the 1980s, the first when Eclectic Corp. ran a prison for 18to 26-year-old offenders in California. Today the Federal Bureau of Prisons reports twelve “Contract Prisons,” all in the South or Southwest, except one in California and another in Pennsylvania.32 The bureau requires contracting firms to follow its standards of classification of prisoners, discipline, use of force, and sentence commutation. Members of its staff are stationed at each prison to monitor compliance with requirements and “the safety and security of the inmates and the community.” The CCA (now called CoreCivic) asserts that it has full commitment “protecting and maintaining inmate rights” and providing

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“meaningful” programs for convicts to reenter society after serving their sentences. It also says it “adds value” for taxpayers, improves the communities in which it operates, and provides meaningful careers for employees. It considers itself a partner with government in its prison administration.33 Detention of undocumented immigrants pending deportation hearings has become an important component of private federal prisons, even before but especially after a panic over “criminal aliens” following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.34 By 1988, the Immigration and Naturalization Service had contracted seven centers, housing 800 detainees. In 1984, CCA opened a detention center in Houston, Texas, a quickly redesigned motel. In 1987, the corrections branch of Wackenhut, a security services conglomerate, established its first immigrant detention facility. GEO group, another global corporation, operates five of the ten largest immigrant detention facilities. Even more valuable to the companies is the recent crackdown on undocumented immigrants and construction of new detention centers along the Mexican border. The Immigration and Naturalization Service has reversed the previous policy of “catch and release” of undocumented immigrants, which allowed them to remain free in the United States until called for a court hearing. Now such people must be detained, and the prison corporations are pleased to meet the need. Not surprisingly, private firms were important donors to the Trump campaign, and their first repayment came as increased prices of their stocks.35 Even before the Trump administration crackdown, private prisons accounted for no less than 65 percent of immigrants detained by the Immigrations and Customs Enforcement agency.36 This area seems to be the most promising for the private prison industry. The Federal Government had the greatest increase of convicts of all types in private prisons between 1990 and 2010, 784 percent compared to a 40 percent increase of convicts in state private prisons. State private prisons appeared in the 1980s, the first in 1984, the Hamilton County Tennessee Jail, operated by the CCA, now the largest firm in the industry. CCA launched a campaign to provide private prisons as better designed with effective surveillance systems, requiring fewer guards, which would make them cheaper than public facilities. After winning the Hamilton County contract, CCA proposed to purchase the entire Tennessee prison system in 1985. The prison system was under a court order to reduce its inmate population and faced an urgent need for more space. The governor recommended privatization to the legislature, but it rejected the idea. On the surface, a setback, the proposal and subsequent debate drew attention to privatization and the arguments in its favor. CCA’s move marked the expansion of private prisons into the states.37

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By the later 1990s, investigators revealed harsh conditions, prisoner escapes, poorly trained guards, and other abuses in private-owned/operated facilities, and crime itself began a long decline. More people challenged the legitimacy of private prisons. Opponents point out significant problems. Officers of these prisons cost less than public officials, but they lack necessary training and experience. At the end of the 1990s, their turnover rate was three times that of public appointees. Arizona discovered in 2010 that an inmate in a private prison can cost as much as $1,600 more per year than in a public prison. Assaults in private prisons were two times those in public facilities. This despite the fact that 90 percent of private inmates were rated at minimum- or medium-security levels.38 In one case, the violence can be traced to a prison company’s own policy of reclassifying maximum-security convicts to lower levels to save the costs of increased guarding of the more dangerous convicts.39 In 2010, escapees from an Arizona private prison killed two people before they were apprehended. Relatives of the victims are currently suing the corporation running the facility. A 2012 scandal in New Jersey involved a private half-way house, “a shadow corrections network, where drugs, gang activity and violence, including sexual assaults” and escapes “often go unchecked.” The governor, who had been a consultant with the firm running the houses, vetoed a legislative attempt to require more thorough monitoring of the facility.40 Thirteen states had no private prisoners between 1999 and 2010, and seven abandoned private prisons in the same period.41 In 2015, sixteen states had no private prisons.42 Illinois abolished them in 1990; New York in 2007. The preponderance of African-Americans and Hispanics in public prisons raises the question of whether private prisons simply replicate this trend. It turns out that Hispanics in private facilities outnumber those in public prisons by 2 percent, but the rate for blacks is insignificant. Combining Hispanics and African-Americans, though, shows a 4 percent preponderance in private over public prisons. White prisoners are 8 percent lower than in public prisons. Sociologist Brett Burkhardt, who conducted the research, is not certain why this is true. He suggests that private prisons prefer healthier inmates, who tend to be young Latino and African-American men. Another possibility may be assignment to prisons according to gang affiliation.43 A third possibility not mentioned by Burkhart is that New Mexico had the highest proportion of prisoners in private facilities, 43 percent of the total. No less than 48 percent of the state's population is Hispanic.44 The high proportion of private prisoners and of Latinos could contribute significantly to the total of Latino inmates of private prisons. Generally, private prisons are slightly above the public racial disparity, though the white under-representation raises unanswered questions.

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The only area in which private prisons apparently prove superior to public is in prisoners’ use of drug treatment programs, two times higher in private than in public prisons. This, though, may reflect the lower security level of the private facilities.45 The crucial difference between public and private prisons is that private facilities are operated for profit and depend on that profit for a steady flow of inmates. It is not the state’s goal to increase the number of prisoners; ideally by means of prevention and rehabilitation, there will be fewer convicts and fewer recidivists. Empty beds in public prisons save money for taxpayers; full occupancy rates, whether crime is rising or falling, in private prisons indirectly cost taxpayers more.46 Private prison contracts with governments assure that they will collect their fees for prison beds, even if prisoners are not in them. Most of these clauses require between 80 and 90 percent occupancy, but in 2013, Arizona, Virginia, Louisiana, and Oklahoma contracted with firms that required 95 to 100 percent occupancy. Many contracts provide for state payments to the companies if the occupancy quota is not met. As a recent example, in 2011, CCA bought outright its first existing state prison in Ohio under a privatization plan sponsored by the governor and legislature. The next year, the firm offered to buy prisons throughout the country, requiring a guaranteed twenty-year contract and a clause that bound the state to keep the prisons’ cells full. Private prison companies have a direct interest in housing more convicts, since they are paid by the bed.47 Because more prisoners mean more profit, corrections firms regard criminal justice reform, lightening sentences and providing alternatives to incarceration, as “risk factors” in their industry.48 The peak year of incarceration in the United States, both public and private, was 2010. By 2014, though, prison populations had declined from 1,309,961 to 1,259,768. These years witnessed a growing movement against mass imprisonment generally, and late in the Obama administration, the Federal Government announced that it would no longer send federal offenders to private prisons. However, one of the first actions of the new attorney general of the present administration was to return to use of private prisons and urge harsh sentencing for minor offenders again. Today’s private prisons are not uniquely American; they exist in other countries, including Britain. They came later to the UK, with national legislation authorizing them in 1991 after a visit of Home Office officials to the United States. Like private policing, the prisons came out of the same conservative movement for privatization as in the United States, where earlier experience “set an important precedent and helped launch the idea onto the British political

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agenda.” The organization that promoted neighborhood patrols on the American model in the UK, the Adam Smith Institute, pressed even harder for private prisons beginning in 1984 and throughout the decade. Its arguments influenced the Conservative Study Group on Crime, an important policy shaper in the party. Another political motive was breaking the power of the prison officers’ union. The British prisons seem to have been more consistently successful, despite problems including a serious riot, than the American ones, and are not a lobby group with the same policy impact. The Home Office requires that they adhere to more definite guidelines than the American Federal and state governments, but exposure of abuses has been easier through litigation in the United States.49 Private prisons will continue to exist in America as long as privatization remains the ideological orthodoxy of a major political party and as long as public prisons are overcrowded due to strict sentencing policies.

8

What Should Be the Relation between the State and Private Policing?

Private policing in various forms and private prisons have a long history and are here to stay but are unlikely to dominate the criminal justice system in the United States. The heart of policing, authorization to use deadly force when necessary and to make arrests, remains public. Security guards, neighborhood patrols, and private detectives all have legitimate purposes and should be seen as auxiliaries to the public police. They perform many functions the police are unable or unwilling to do. Privatization of government services became a political creed and policy of the Republican Party during the administrations of Ronald Reagan (1981–89)1 and has continued to the present. The evidence of the superior efficiency and lower cost of privatizing government services is by no means convincing, but many Americans retain a faith that “private” is superior to “public.” Practical arguments favoring private police include their greater flexibility in providing order and safety. Modern governments supply police but then impose limits on their authority that reflect concern for civil liberties. Police unions also in a different way define the limits of public police activity. Both of these issues are much more significant today than in the past, when police were not particularly concerned with civil liberties and courts did not demand it of them, and unionization did not exist. Private policing, whether paid forces or neighborhood volunteers, are less constrained in either way. If they do not do the job of restoring order and safety, or at least creating an impression of greater safety, they cannot plead limits of their power. They are responsible only to their clients: if paid, they can be fired; if voluntary, recruitment will be difficult. Public police are not fired if they do not reduce crime, although their top leaders have been in many cities. Private police work in a market: they must compete, and only the best will survive.2 Additionally, advocates of private policing, as well as the public police themselves, point out that it is impossible for the public police to do everything.

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At first, public forces were expected to do almost everything, checking locks on doors, regulating public markets, rescuing animals, police in the general sense of administering everything to do with the city. Over the years, the police became more specialized and shed many of these early functions. As early as the 1850s, private services like the Pinkertons took over the job of protecting individual businesses. Guards checked those doors and looked for evidence of trespass; detectives worked exclusively for banks and jewelry stores to track down thieves the public police did not have the resources to pursue. Police often appreciated their contribution to order and detection and cooperated with private forces. Public police forces, whose primary duty was order maintenance, did not have efficient detective forces until later in the nineteenth century and did not have the manpower to look after the property of individual businesses. This was true whether the property was warehouses or factories experiencing strikes. Lack of funding and manpower to do all the tasks people demanded of the police is a problem that continues from the earliest days of modern police to the present. Lack of police resources becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy when citizens leave cities or are unwilling to pay taxes to increase their manpower or purchase upto-date technical equipment. Private policing begins to be a compensation for lack of public policing: people who have money can hire private forces to patrol their neighborhoods, malls, or gated communities. Those without money have to rely on volunteers, who in some areas may be afraid to confront drug dealers or street gangs. Of course, the public police act in a discriminatory manner as well: young men and families who have lost them to police shootings feel that the police do too much enforcement in minority neighborhoods. Citizens who live in fear of street violence in these same neighborhoods feel that the police are not doing enough. Such people demand more of the public police and turn to private alternatives when possible. Until the later twentieth century, most people who analyzed public and private policing assumed that policing is, and should be, a state monopoly. The narrative is that modern state-controlled police did not evolve until the nineteenth century in the United States, following the British model. This evolution was progress from a collection of police forces with unpredictable efficiency to one that represented the public interest in social order. Continued use of private police, especially in labor disputes, was illegitimate. Congressional investigations of the 1892 Homestead conflict and the general use of private guards and spies in industry during the 1930s strongly emphasized the abuses of private policing and declared that policing belonged to the state. In his study of the Pennsylvania Coal and Iron Police, Jeremiah Shalloo pointed out that

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private police that have arrest powers are actually agents of the state because the state grants those powers. The problem was that such forces are responsible only to their employer, not the public.3 Private policing was, in the case of control of labor, a usurpation of state power by special interests. This argument, though, idealizes the impartiality of state power: the state remained hostile to labor until the New Deal of the 1930s, and at least since the Reagan administration (1980–88) has become inhospitable, if not again hostile to organized labor. Nevertheless, criticisms of private police as violating the state monopoly continued until about the 1970s and have not entirely been supplanted. In the 1970s, as private policing was becoming more visible, it became of interest to academic researchers. The Department of Justice commissioned the RAND Corporation to provide a comprehensive report in 1971, which addressed growth of the industry, relations with the public police, training, licensing, and legal position. The report included comprehensive recommendations for solutions to various problems of private police. A Law Enforcement Assistance Administration Report of 1976 concluded that the volume of crime was so high that public agencies could not cope with it, suggesting that public and private police cold act as partners.4 Since then, many scholars were inclined to accept private police. These argued that since “policing” is a general function carried out by many people, it is not necessarily a state monopoly. In this sense, they anticipated historians’ more recent arguments about the diffusion of state power among various public and private agencies. In a context of criticism of public police brutality and arbitrary conduct, some scholars thought private police was a more community-oriented form of policing. They argued that communities or organizations hired private police to meet their specific needs for safety and prevention of crimes. Private police could be fired if they did not provide security. On the other hand, public police were more concerned with “clearance rates,” arrests, than with prevention. In a way, private policing returns to the original emphasis of public policing, prevention. Public police have developed a focus on detection, arrests, and “clearance” of a case. The public police themselves are asking “whether they can become more effective in truly preventing crime.”5 This is not a libertarian market solution but a concept of effective community policing. Limitations of “preventive policing” led to creation of private detectives and later public detective forces. Police experts generally see the coexistence of public and private policing, although aware of issues of who gets served by either, as “plural policing.” This term neutralizes much of the potential conflict between the two forms, creating separate spheres for each. Public police are mainly responsible for apprehension

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of criminals by arrest using force if necessary. Where private police exist, in factories, retail stores, and many private properties and as neighborhood patrols, their role is to prevent crime and maintain general order, not only the obviously violent forms of disorder but specialized or communal rules and customs as well. “Plural policing,” to some extent, returns the problem of crime prevention to individuals and groups of citizens who need to survey their neighborhoods for suspicious characters or activities. David Garland coined “responsibilization” to describe this trend of sharing state functions with non-state organizations and individual citizens. The state has the task of educating citizens about their role in crime prevention and control, in a sense recovering the citizen involvement in crime that characterized premodern policing. Responsibilization is a response to despair about the state’s ability to contain crime between the 1970s and the end of the twentieth century—“nothing works,” at least what the state attempted. The goal is to replace citizens’ dependence on the state, which did not solve the problem of rising crime, with a new sense of duty to be actively concerned about crime. This is not an abandonment of state efforts but actually an extension of them beyond its own agencies to coordinating with private groups to cope with a problem that most citizens believe is overwhelming. The state agencies such as the police become educators of the public in its responsibilities and actually gain power by enlisting citizen support of maintaining order. It does, though, undermine the idea that citizens should turn to the state as their representative and protector. Responsibilization “marks what may be the beginning of an important reconfiguration of the ‘criminal justice state’ and its relation to the citizen.”6 Arguments for a state monopoly of policing have by no means disappeared. In 2010, Malcolm Thorburn described the “standing objection” to private police exercising powers of arrest, search, even prevention of crime “as a matter of routine.” He emphasizes that these powers should belong to the state and that private exercise of them is dangerous for the state's “ability to act impartially in the name of all. If it fails to do so, then it undermines its own legitimacy.” Acceptance of private policing with full powers “would require us to abandon one the most basic assumptions upon which much of our liberal legal order is based.”7 Elizabeth Joh describes how criticism became acceptance and calls private police “the forgotten threat to the state.”8 Ideally, private policing should be carefully monitored and regulated by public agencies because of issues of accountability and immunity from constitutional protections of personal freedom. Not that public police are always great respecters of constitutional rights, but they at least can be brought to account for violations

Relation between the State and Private Policing

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when citizens are willing to investigate and prosecute them. Private policing is often invisible or overlooked but is an important police presence. The greatest impact of privatization has been on prisons. Whether private prisons are more efficient or less costly than public prisons is less important than the fundamental moral point that nobody should make money from imprisonment. While private police are legitimate in certain realms, private prisons (as opposed to private provision of services to prisons such as food) are illegitimate in this writer’s view. Police and imprisonment are “inherently governmental” functions. The state should have a monopoly of violence and punishment. This was an essential component of the “civilizing process” in Western Europe. The outsourcing of intelligence-gathering to private contractors raises serious questions about the security of the data collected, to whom employees are loyal, and the “revolving door” between private and public employment. In an era of budget cutting, it is hard for government agencies to keep up with data-gathering technology, and they cannot pay the high salaries of private employment. A form of private policing that is dangerously expanding is the increasingly lenient view of what constitutes self-defense, at least in many states. Such leniency reflects American gun culture and notions of masculine honor, and often a dose of racism. If the civilizing process, as described by Norbert Elias, was reduction of violence through increased self-control and development of the state monopoly, lenient views of self-defense legitimated by state laws seem to be a retreat back to individual violence and a limit on the state monopoly. Instead of restriction of individual violence, such retreat is a de-civilizing process in which states surrender a major check on interpersonal violence. Private policing, defined broadly, assumes many forms in the United States, from self-defense to private prisons. In all these cases, the state is involved, either tacitly or directly. Sometimes inaction will allow extralegal private vigilantism; sometimes it legitimates private operations such as detectives or prisons. An overview of American private policing in the context of the structure and ideology of the American state modifies Lawrence Friedman’s “master narrative of American criminal justice history,” from private to public, amateur to professional.9

Notes Preface 1

Beverly A. Smith and Frank T. Morn, “The History of Privatization in Criminal Justice,” chapter I in David Shichor and Michael Gilbert, eds., Privatization in Criminal Justice, Past, Present and Future (Cincinnati, OH: Anderson Publishing Co., 2000).

Chapter 1 1

2

3 4 5

6

“Modern” here means uniformed day and night patrols under central command with appointment and promotion according to merit. In the nineteenth-century United States, most city police did not meet the promotion by merit stipulation. Some historians claim the seventeenth-century Paris police as the first modern force, but it was very different from this description, as were the eighteenth-century English Bow Street Runners or the Thames River Police. William J. Novak, “The Myth of the ‘Weak’ American State,” American Historical Review 113, no. 3 (June 2008): 752–772; Gary Gerstle, Liberty and Coercion: The Paradox of American Government (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2015), especially Ch. 2 on the “police power” (general regulatory power) of states. Unfortunately the private side pocketed the subsidies and bribed officials, the notorious “Credit Mobilier” scandal of the Grant administration. Novak, “Myth,” p. 769. Pieter Spierenburg, “Democracy Came Too Early: A Tentative Explanation for the Problem of American Homicide,” American Historical Review 111 (February 2006): 111. Also Stephen Mennell, The American Civilizing Process (Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 2007), p. 143. Both authors base their argument on Norbert Elias’s “Civilizing Process” theory, which includes development of state control of internal violence and individual self-control. Stephen Skrownek, Building a New American State: The Expansion of Administrative Capacities, 1877–1920 (Cambridge, UK, and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1982) has described the early nineteenth-century state without a developed administrative bureaucracy as “a state of courts and parties.” Political parties generated and passed legislation; courts interpreted the legislation, sometimes

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extending, other times limiting, its reach. Courts did not play a significant role in limiting the powers of police until the Supreme Court’s decision Weeks v. United States (1914), requiring warrants for all searches but only for federal officers. Skrownek does not address policing in his study. 7 Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, translated by Francis Bowen, 2 vols., 2nd ed. (Cambridge, MA: Sever and Francis, 1863), I, pp. 265–268. Tocqueville defines “magistrates” as “all officers to whom the execution of the law is entrusted” (p. 265, note). 8 Walt Bogdanich and Grace Ashford, “A $150,000 Check and a Sheriff ’s Broad Domain,” New York Times, December 15, 2017. The sheriff quoted is Ana Franklin of Morgan County, Alabama. When the public of Alabama and other states wanted sheriffs to put down civil rights activists, they did so unchecked by legal procedures. 9 Although the police and judges were usually part of the same political apparatus, they were sometimes conflicting elements within it. 10 I have developed this argument about democracy and arbitrary behavior in my Cops and Bobbies: Police Authority in New York City and London, 1830–1870 (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1977), Ch. 1. 11 Jennifer Nedelsky, “Reconceiving Autonomy: Sources, Thoughts and Possibilities,” Yale Review of Law and Feminism, 1, no. 3 (1989): 15–16. 12 Tocqueville, Democracy, II, pp. 119–121; H.G. Wells, The Future in America: A Search after Realities (New York: Harper, 1906), pp. 152–154; Hugo Muensterberg, The Americans (New York: McClure, Phillips, 1904), p. 31. 13 David Brooks, “The Virtue of Radical Honesty,” and Paul Krugman, “Nasty, Brutish and Trump,” New York Times, February 23, 2018. Krugman’s reference to drunk driving is about the United States having a far greater number of traffic deaths than other Western countries, and that the Great Plains and Southern States have both the highest number of traffic deaths and gun deaths. Such extreme individualism is the attitude of about half of Americans, but it is a powerful force in American politics and society. Although Americans take for granted a state that is much larger than envisioned at the time of writing the Constitution, many are hostile to government. At the extreme end are “anarcho-capitalists,” who would entrust all government services to the marketplace, a “pay as you go” state. Generally, less extreme individualists oppose government activity or services that benefit other people, especially poor minorities, than themselves. They will support Medicare, universally available to the elderly, but not Medicaid for the poor. So far, Republican politicians who seek to privatize social security and Medicare have been unsuccessful. 14 Maurice Caudel, Nos Liberte’s Politiques, quoted (in French, my translation) by James Bryce, Modern Democracies, 2 vols. (New York: Macmillan, 1921), I, p. 315.

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15 Tocqueville himself recognized that there were important checks to American individualism, including voluntary political and reform associations that united individuals in a common cause, but these can coexist with a minimal sense of responsibility to the state. In certain periods of American history, individualism has been weakened as a dominant ideology, such as during the Depression of the 1930s when most people accepted New Deal federal action to cope with the economic emergency. Similarly the emergencies of the First World War, and especially the Second World War, placed national welfare above individual autonomy. President Kennedy’s plea to ask not what you can do for yourself but what you can do for your country, and President Johnson’s “Great Society” extension of the New Deal emphasized public over individual interests. Nevertheless, in all these cases, individualism limited the extent to which American voters were willing to elevate public concerns over personal ones.

Chapter 2 The UK today no longer requires a duty to retreat, only that it be considered a factor in evaluating whether an individual had “reasonable” grounds for using force in self-defense. What constitutes “reasonable” is up to the jury when a person pleading self-defense is prosecuted. In general, prosecutors have wide discretion whether to prosecute, and juries decide case by case (The Crown Prosecution Service, “SelfDefence and the Prevention of Crime,” sections on “Reasonable force,” “Retreating,” “Revenge,” “Private Rather than Public Duty.” http://www.cps.gov.uk/legal/s_to_u/ self_defence/, accessed November 20, 2012). Contrary to a right-wing US website, self-defense is not “illegal” in the UK (https://www.thenewamerican.com/usnews/ crime/item/20985-self-defense-in-the-uk-is-illegal), accessed November 20, 2012. Following the UK link quoted in this site reveals that the police are talking only about the illegality of offensive devices used by private citizens. At another point, the police site declares, “What you honestly and instinctively believe is lawful and necessary self defence for either yourself, your family or your property, even if a weapon is used, could constitute reasonable force,” hardly a declaration of the illegality of self-defense (https://www.askthe.police.uk/content/Q85.htm, accessed November 20, 2012). 2 Caroline E. Light, Stand Your Ground: A History of America’s Love Affair with Lethal Self-defense (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017), pp. 25–31. 3 Light, Stand Your Ground, pp. 52–54, 58–59. 4 The Nutt–Dukes affair is told in detail in Andrew Porwancher, “The Devil Himself ” a Tale of Honor, Insanity, and the Birth of Modern America (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007). The first successful temporary insanity plea was in 1859, 1

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leading to acquittal of Dan Sickles, who shot Phillip Barton Key, seducer of his wife. Curiously, in 1895, after James Nutt moved to Kansas, he beat a friend’s wife almost to death, and despite another plea of temporary insanity, served fifteen years in prison for attempted murder (Porwancher, The Devil Himself, pp. 225–227). 5 Richard M. Brown, No Duty to Retreat: Violence and Values in American History and Society (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), p. 26. 6 See Brown, Retreat and Saul Cornell, A Well-regulated Militia: The Founding Fathers and the Origins of Gun Control in America (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), and http://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/158/550/case.html; http:// supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/256/335/case.html, both accessed November 23, 2012. 7 http://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/256/335/case.html. 8 http://www.selfdefenses.com/forcespray/SD-law.html, accessed August 5, 2010. 9 Carlyle C. Douglas and Mary Connelly, “The Goetz Case; Jury Sees Justification, Some See Injustice,” New York Times (hereafter NYT), The Region, June 21, 1987. Goetz was not really a vigilante, but he certainly was prepared for trouble. 10 US Constitution, Article I, section 8. 11 Cornell, Militia, Ch. 5. The latest studies of the Second Amendment and right to bear arms are Patrick J. Charles, Armed in America: A History of Gun Rights from Colonial Militias to Concealed Carry (New York: Prometheus, 2018) and Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, Loaded: A Disarming History of the Second Amendment (San Francisco: City Lights, 2018). 12 Cornell, Militia, pp. 167–197. 13 Peter Duffy, “100 Years Ago, the Shot that Spurred New York’s Gun Control law.” NYT City Room blog, January 23, 2011, https://cityroom.blogs.nytimes. com/2011/01/23/100-years-ago-the-shot-that-spurred-new-yorks-gun-controllaw/; Peter Morehouse III, “New York Has Tough New Gun Law,” Christian Science Monitor, June 9, 1980, https://www.csmonitor.com/1980/0619/061943.html; http:// statelaws.findlaw.com/new-york-law/new-york-gun-control-laws.html, all accessed December 17, 2017. 14 https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/New_York_Constitution_of_1821. Article VII refers to maintenance of militia, not, a right to bear arms. The 1846 Constitution eliminates even mention of the militia (http://www.nycourts.gov/history/legalhistory-new-york/documents/Publications_1846-NY-Constitution.pdf). All accessed September 5, 2016. 15 http://www.lrl.state.tx.us/scanned/statutes_and_codes/Penal_Code.pdf, accessed September 5, 2016. 16 https://tarltonapps.law.utexas.edu/constitutions/texas1845/preamble_a1; https:// tarltonapps.law.utexas.edu/constitutions/texas1876; http://www.constitution.legis.

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state.tx.us/; http://www.statutes.legis.state.tx.us/Docs/CN/htm/CN.1.htm#1.23, all accessed September 5, 2016. 17 Cornell, Militia, pp. 200–207. 18 Linda Greenhouse, “Justices Rule for Individual Gun Rights,” NYT, June 27, 2008. 19 https://www.oyez.org/cases/2009/08-1521, accessed September 5, 2016. 20 The other two are Mexico and Guatemala. Both have some restrictions on ownership. Throughout history, only fifteen national constitutions have ever included a right to bear arms. In all but the three mentioned earlier, the right was abolished or severely abridged. Zachary Elkins, “Rewrite the 2nd Amendment,” NYT, April 4, 2013. 21 “The Top 10 Most Heavily-Armed States in America (Is Yours On the List?)” http:// reverbpress.com/politics/firearms-per-capita-by-state/, accessed January 2, 2017. 22 Rich Morin, “The Demographics and Politics of Gun-owning Households,” Pew Research Center Fact Tank, July 15, 2014, http://www.pewresearch.org/facttank/2014/07/15/the-demographics-and-politics-of-gun-owning-households/, accessed January 2, 2017. 23 Light, Stand Your Ground, pp. 156–158. 24 Lizette Alvarez, “U.S. Won’t File Charges in Trayvon Martin Killing,” NYT, February 24, 2015. Zimmerman was not exactly a model citizen; since his acquittal he got involved in some fights with girlfriends and a road rage incident. Lately he has been auctioning off the gun he used to kill Martin, on the third attempt getting a high bid of about $139,000, but it is not clear if the bid was one of the saboteurs who derailed the first two auctions (Mike McPhate, “George Zimmerman’s 3rd Auction for Gun Brings $138,900 High Bid,” NYT, May 18, 2016). 25 Adam Winkler, “What Florida ‘Stand Your Ground’ Law Says,” http://www. nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2012/03/21/do-stand-your-ground-laws-encouragevigilantes/, accessed March 18, 2017. 26 Christine Hauser, “Florida Woman Whose ‘Stand Your Ground’ Defense Was Rejected Is Released,” NYT, February 7, 2017. 27 Editorial, “‘Stand Your Ground’ Could Get Worse,” NYT, March 10, 2017; Lizette Alvarez, “Florida Poised to Strengthen ‘Stand Your Ground’ Defense,” NYT, March 15, 2017; Mike Spies, “The Arms Dealer: How an N.R.A. Lobbyist Made Florida the Testing Ground for Pro-gun Policies,” The New Yorker, March 5, 2018, 24–31. The lobbyist is Marion Hammer, who virtually tells Florida Republican legislators what to do regarding gun laws. 28 “Florida’s Stand Your Ground Law: Uneven Application, Shocking Outcomes,” Tampa Bay Times, June 3, 2012, http://www.tampabay.com/stand-your-groundlaw/, accessed November 5, 2016; Susan Taylor Martin, Chris Hundley, and Connie Humburg, “Race Plays a Complex Role in Florida’s ‘Stand Your Ground’ Law,” Tampa Bay Times, June 2, 2012, http://www.tampabay.com/news/courts/criminal/

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race-plays-complex-role-in-floridas-stand-your-ground-law/1233152, accessed November 5, 2016; Light, Stand Your Ground, pp. 162–163. 29 Light, Stand Your Ground, pp. 139–154. 30 Note 26 earlier. 31 “How Self Defense Can Go Wrong,” https://www.domesticshelters.org/domesticviolence-articles-information/how-self-defense-can-go-wrong#.WSb2rLhApdk, accessed May 25, 2017. 32 Frances Robles, “Officers in Florida Shootings Say They Can Stand Their Ground Too,” NYT, January 28, 2018. 33 http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/politics/political-pulse/os-stand-yourground-gun-bills-move-in-senate-20151020-post.html, accessed October 10, 2016. 34 http://www.myfloridahouse.gov/Sections/Bills/billsdetail.aspx?BillId=56645, accessed January 18, 2017; Editorial Board, “The Shootout Myth at the Airport,” NYT, January 12, 2017. 35 Patricia Mazzei, “Florida Lawmakers Pass Bill on Guns, Defying N.R.A.,” NYT, March 8, 2018. Patricia Mazzei, “‘Gunshine State’ Enacts Controls,” NYT, March 10, 2018. 36 http://smartgunlaws.org/gun-laws/policy-areas/firearms-in-public-places/ concealed-weapons-permitting/, accessed November 5, 2016. 37 Associated Press, “Missouri Lawmakers Pass Sweeping Gun Rights Expansion,” NYT, May 14, 2016; Editorial Board, “Missouri, The Shoot Me State,” NYT, September 16, 2016. 38 Nicholas Fandos, “House Votes to Expand Concealed Gun Rights,” NYT, December 7, 2017. 39 Rani Molla, “Map: Where Is ‘Open Carry’ Legal?” The Wall Street Journal, August 22, 2014, http://blogs.wsj.com/numbers/map-where-is-open-carry-legal-1715/, accessed November 5, 2016. 40 Guns and Ammo, a publication that clearly reflects its readers’ concerns and interests, ranks Arizona the best state for gun owners, because it “combines strong laws [i.e., weak gun control] with an unmatched shooting culture and strong industry presence.” New York was second worst, because “the overall climate for gun owners is so bad that even industry giant Remington Arms Company is packing its bags for greener pastures.” Vermont is in danger of losing its second best rating because too many New Yorkers are moving there! Washington, DC, is the worst, with too many gun regulations despite the Heller decision overturning its ban on carrying a weapon outside the home for self-defense. http://www. gunsandammo.com/network-topics/culture-politics-network/best-states-for-gunowners-2015/#ixzz4UdJAJW89, accessed January 2, 2017. 41 Molla, “Open Carry.” 42 Cat Cardenas and Manny Fernandez, “In Texas, Almost Anyplace Can Be a Place to Carry a Gun,” NYT, November 7, 2017.

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43 Stephanie Saul, “Arm School Staff? No, Says Armed Educator Who Held a Gunman at Bay,” NYT, February 22, 2018. 44 Kris Klint, “Armed Man Who Helped Stop Anchorage Mall Robbery: ‘I Carry So I am Ready’”; Val Van Brocklin, “Citizen’s Arrest? Keep Your Cool and Know the Law,” both https://www.adn.com/commentary/article/alaskans-take-care-if-youreinvolved-citizens-arrest-either-side/2016/04/29/, accessed November 4, 2016. 45 Rupert Myers, “A Legal Guide to Citizen’s Arrest,” https://www.theguardian.com/ law/2011/aug/09/guide-to-citizens-arrest; “What You Need to Know about Making a Citizen’s Arrest,” http://www.justice.gc.ca/eng/rp-pr/other-autre/wyntk.html, both accessed November 4, 2016. 46 The difference between the groups described later as armed self-defense groups, vigilantes, and citizen patrols is not entirely obvious. I have placed neighborhood watch or patrol groups, the Guardian Angels, and the Minutemen in Chapter 4, although some have characteristics of self-defense groups or vigilantes. All of these three have sometimes been called vigilantes. 47 Daniel Junas, “Rise of Citizen Militias, Angry White Guys with Guns,” Political Research Associates, Covert Action Quarterly, April 24, 1995, http://www.publiceye. org/rightist/dj_mili.html, accessed May 16, 2017. 48 Mark Pitcavage, “Camouflage and Conspiracy: The Militia Movement from Ruby Ridge to Y2K,” American Behavioral Scientist 44, no. 6 (February 2001): 957–981; Kirk Johnson, “F.B.I. Agents Encircle Holdouts at Oregon Standoff,” NYT, February 10, 2016. 49 Kirk Johnson, “Charges against Bundys in Ranch Standoff Case Are Dismissed,” NYT, January 8, 2016. 50 Pitcavage, “Militia,” pp. 975, 957. 51 Pitcavage, “Militia,” pp. 959–960. 52 Junas, “Citizen Militias.” 53 Reuters, “Trump’s Call for More Gun Regulation Boosts Firearm Stocks,” NYT, February 22, 2018. 54 Adam Hochschild, “Bang for the Buck,” The New York Review of Books LXV, no. 6 (April 5, 2018): 8. The latest book on militias is James Pogue, Chosen Country: A Rebellion in the West (New York: Holt, 2018), forthcoming in May 2018, reviewed by Hochschild, pp. 6–8. 55 Light, Stand Your Ground, pp. 118–120. 56 Light, Stand Your Ground, pp. 120–123.

Chapter 3 1

Richard M. Brown, Strain of Violence: Historical Studies of American Violence and Vigilantism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1977), pp. 146–159, 167–179.

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Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, edited by Francis Bowen, 2 vols., 2nd ed. (Cambridge, MA: Sever and Francis, 1863), I, p. 120; Max O’Rell and Jack Allyn, Jonathan and His Continent: Rambles through American Society (New York: Cassell and Co., c. 1889), pp. 192–193. O’Rell is the Nom de Plume of Paul Blouet, a French journalist. 3 Richard M. Wharton, A Treatise on the Law of Homicide (Philadelphia, PA, 1855), pp. 352, 465, 480 quoted by Cornell, Militia, p. 163; Brown, Strain, p. 179. 4 Brown, Strain, pp. 159–162. 5 O’Rell and Allyn, Jonathan and His Continent, pp. 95–97. The widow story is from “a Pittsburg newspaper.” 6 For Horn, James D. Horan, and Paul Sann, Pictorial History of the Wild West (New York: Bonanza Books, c. 1954), pp. 242–243. 7 Brown, Strain, pp. 103–126: Appendix 3, pp. 305–319; Ch. 8. 8 Brown, Strain, pp. 150–151; William F. Holmes, “Whitecapping: Agrarian Violence in Mississippi,” Journal of Southern History 35 (1969): 165–185; William F. Holmes, “Moonshining and Collective Violence: Georgia, 1889–1905,” Journal of American History 67 (December 1980): 589–611. 9 http://newmexicohistory.org/people/las-gorras-blancas-of-san-miguel-county, accessed July 14, 2016; also Writers Program, Works Projects Administration in the State of New Mexico, in New Mexico: A Guide to the Colorful State (New York: Hastings House, 1940), p. 235. 10 The name “Ku Klux” has been explained as coming from the phrase “Kuklos Adelphon,” or circle of brothers, which is the full name of the popular Kappa Alpha fraternity, founded at the University of North Carolina in 1812 to which many Southern college students had belonged. See Allen W. Trelease, White Terror: The Ku Klux Klan Conspiracy and Southern Reconstruction (New York: Harper Torchbooks, c. 1971), p. 5. 11 Brown, Strain, pp. 276–277. 12 Brown, Strain, Appendix 4, pp. 323–324. 13 See Albert D. Kirwan, Revolt of the Rednecks: Mississippi Politics 1876–1925 (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, reprint 2011). 14 Brown, Strain, Appendix 4, p. 324. 15 Edward Ayers, The Promise of the New South: Life after Reconstruction (New York: Oxford, 1992), pp. 156–158. The areas were the Gulf plain from Florida to Texas and the cotton uplands of Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas, and Texas. 16 Charles C. Butler, “Lynching,” American Law Review 44 (1910): 217–219 cited Brown, Strain, pp. 161–162. 17 David M. Chalmers, Hooded Americanism: The History of the Ku Klux Klan (New York: Franklin Watts, 1976), p. 33. The latest study of the second Klan is Linda Gordon, The Second Coming of the KKK: The Ku Klux Klan of the 1920s and the American Political Tradition (New York: Liveright, 2017). 2

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18 Chalmers, Hooded Americanism, p. 297. 19 http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/disp_textbook.cfm?smtID=2&psid=3386, accessed August 4, 2016. 20 Linda Gordon, The Second Coming of the KKK: The Ku Klux Klan of the 1920s and the American Political Tradition (New York: Liveright, 2017). 21 Lisa McGurr, The War on Alcohol: Prohibition and the Rise of the American State (New York: W.W. Norton, 2016), pp. 121–141 (for the general information in this paragraph). 22 Chalmers, Hooded Americanism, p. 298. 23 McGurr, The War, pp. 142–155. 24 Chalmers, Hooded Americanism, p. 189. Chalmers’s account, based mainly on Paul M. Angle’s 1952 Bloody Williamson, differs in that Thomas is not named but called “the sheriff ’s hired gunman” (p. 188). 25 Stephen H. Norwood, Strike-breaking and Intimidation: Mercenaries and Masculinity in Twentieth-century America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002), pp. 196–200. For the subject of anti-labor policing and violence, see Ch. 6. 26 Joan Jensen, The Price of Vigilance (Chicago: Rand McNally Co., 1968), p. 289. 27 Jennifer Fronc, New York Undercover: Private Surveillance in the Progressive Era (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009), Ch. 6. 28 Jensen, Vigilance, pp. 17–25, quote at 25. 29 Jensen, Vigilance, pp. 188–218. 30 Jensen, Vigilance, pp. 180–185, quotes at 185. 31 Fronc, Undercover, Ch. 3 and pp. 150–154. 32 Fronc, Undercover, pp. 155–173. 33 Richard Gid Powers, Not without Honor: The History of American Anticommunism (New York: The Free Press, 1995), pp. 81–91. 34 Christopher Capozzola, “The Only Badge Needed Is Your Patriotic Fervor,” Journal of American History 88, no. 4 (March 2002): 1354–1382. 35 Brown, Strain, Appendix 4, p. 325. 36 Fronc, Undercover, pp. 173–175, 178–181. 37 Fronc, Undercover, p. 179. 38 Ellen Shrecker, Many Are the Crimes: McCarthyism in America (Boston, MA: Little, Brown, 1998), pp. 61–63. 39 Chalmers, Hooded Americanism, Chs. 42–43. 40 Douglas Martin, “Virgil Lee Griffen, Klan Leader, Dies at 64,” New York Times (hereafter NYT), February 17, 2009. 41 “Around the Nation: Jury Award to 5 Blacks Hailed as Blow to Klan,” NYT, February 28, 1982. 42 “Klan Member Put to Death in Race Death,” NYT, June 6, 1997. 43 “Southern Poverty Law Center,” https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremistfiles/ideology/ku-klux-klan, accessed March 10, 2018.

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Chapter 4 1

Barry Godfrey and David J. Cox, “Policing the Industrial North of England, 1787–1877: The Control of Labour at Work and in the Streets,” Crime, History & Societies 20, no. 1 (2016): 129–148. 2 James McKay, Allan Pinkerton, the First Private Eye (New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1997), p. 71. 3 Sam Mitrani, The Rise of the Chicago Police Department: Class and Conflict, 1850–1894 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2013), p. 7. 4 Elizabeth Joh, “The Forgotten Threat: Private Police and the State,” Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies 13, no. 2 (Summer 2006): 363 (Wentworth quotation); Frank Morn, “The Eye That Never Sleeps”: A History of the Pinkerton National Detective Agency (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1982), pp. 29–30; US Senate, 52nd Congress, 2nd Session, 1892–93, Committee on the Employment of Armed Bodies of Men for Private Purposes, Report 1280 (hereafter Senate 93), p. 12, test. Frank Murray, Supt. Pinkerton National Detective Agency, p. 12. 5 Senate 93, test. Murray, p. 12; test. Robert W. McClaughry, General Superintendent of Police, Chicago, p. 121. 6 “Private Police Equals McAdoo Force in Numbers,” New York Times (hereafter NYT), January 22, 1905. 7 “Training the ‘Ignorant’ How to Use a Park” (by Elizabeth Blackmar and Roy Rosensweig), Central Park History, http://www.centralparkhistory.com/timeline/ timeline_1860_ignorant.html, accessed March 14, 2017; “The Central Park Police,” NYT, September 17, 1859; “‘Sparrow Cops’ Are Restored to Central Park after 34 Years to Enforce Its Many Rules,” NYT, August 29, 1932. 8 “The New York City Parks Enforcement Mounted Auxiliary Unit,” http://www. auxparksmtd.org/faqs.html, accessed March 14, 2017. 9 “Parks Enforcement Patrol,” https://www.nycgovparks.org/about/urban-parkservice/park-enforcement-patrol, accessed March 14, 2017; “New York City Parks Enforcement Patrol,” Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_City_ Parks_Enforcement_Patrol#History, accessed March 14, 2017. This was the only source I found on the early history. 10 Susan J. Pearson, “The Arm of the Law: Anticruelty Organizations and Statebuilding in Gilded Age America,” The American Historian 14 (November 2017): 39–45. 11 Judi Daily, “The Anti-horse Thief Association: ‘Protect the Innocent; Bring the Guilty to Justice’,” The Long Riders Guild Academic Foundation, http://www. lrgaf.org/articles/ahta.htm, accessed March 10, 2018; Kathy Weiser, “The Antihorse Thief Association of the American West,” Legends of America, https:// www.legendsofamerica.com/we-atha/, accessed March 10, 2018; McGurr, The War, p. 121.

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12 Sally E. Hadden, Slave Patrols: Law and Violence in Virginia and the Carolinas (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001). 13 David Amsden, “Who Runs the Streets of New Orleans: How a Rich Entrepreneur Persuaded the City to Let Him Create His Own High-tech Police Force,” New York Times Magazine, July 30, 2015, n.p., https://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/02/ magazine/who-runs-the-streets-of-new-orleans.html?_r=0, accessed April 5, 2016. 14 Theodore M. Becker, “The Place of Private Police in Society: An Area of Research for the Social Sciences,” Social Problems 21, no. 3 (February 1974): 441. 15 Amy Goldstein, “More Security Firms Getting Police Powers: Some See Benefit to Public Safety, but Others Are Wary,” Washington Post, January 7, 2007, http:// www.sfgate.com/news/article/More-security-firms-getting-police-powersSome-2625549.php, accessed January 14, 2017. 16 U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics, “Occupational Employment and Wages, 33-9032, Security Guards,” https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes339032. htm, accessed January 14, 2017. 17 Jenni Bergal, “In Many States, Security Guards Get Scant Training, Oversight,” Pew Charitable Trusts, “Stateline,” November 10, 2015, http://www.pewtrusts.org/en/ research-and-analysis/blogs/stateline/2015/11/10/in-many-states-security-guardsget-scant-training-oversight, accessed January 15, 2017. 18 James D. Calder, “Policing and the Private Security Option: Functional Transparency, Re-privatization, and Implications in Law,” in David Shichor and Michael J. Gilbert, eds., Privatization in Criminal Justice: Past, Present and Future (Cincinnati, OH: Anderson Publishing Co., 2001), pp. 101–107. 19 Philip E. Fixler, Jr., and Robert W. Poole, Jr., “Can Police Services Be Privatized,” Annals of the American Association for Political and Social Science 498 (July 1988): 113–114. 20 “Texas Town Gets Rid of Police Dept.; Hires ‘Seal Security’: Guess What Reportedly Happened to Crime?” http://www.theblaze.com/news/2015/03/03/texas-city-getsrid-of-police-dept-hires-seal-security-guess-what-reportedly-happened-to-crime/, accessed January 30, 2017; John Nova Lomax, “No, Sharpstown, Texas Did Not Fire Its Police Force and Bring about a Huge Drop in Crime,” Texas Monthly, March 5, 2015, http://www.texasmonthly.com/the-daily-post/no-sharpstown-texas-did-notfire-its-police-force-and-bring-about-a-huge-drop-in-crime/, accessed January 30, 2017; W. Gardner Selby, “Not So Fast: Cops Fired, Private Security Hired, Crime Plummets in Sharpstown?” PolitiFact Texas, March 8, 2015, http://www.politifact. com/texas/article/2015/mar/08/not-so-fast-cops-fired-private-security-hiredcrim/, accessed January 30, 2017; “Crime Data for Sharpstown,” https://www.trulia. com/real_estate/Sharpstown-Texas/crime/, accessed January 30, 2017 (this is a website for prospective home buyers); http://ktrh.iheart.com/articles/houstonnews-121300/sharpstown-crime-drops-61-under-private-13375286/, accessed January 30, 2017.

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21 http://www.sharpstowncivic.org/history/, accessed January 30, 2017. 22 Stacy Cowley, “How Wayne State Police Helped Breathe Life into a Blighted Detroit Strip,” NYT, February 25, 2015. 23 Goldstein, “More Security Firms Getting Police Powers.” 24 Rachel Swan, “The Right to Remain Special: The City’s Other Police Force Struggles against Extinction,” SF Weekly, September 28, 2013, http://archives.sfweekly.com/ sanfrancisco/the-right-to-remain-special-the-citys-other-police-force-strugglesagainst-extinction/Content?o, accessed January 17, 2017; Jonah Owen Lamb, “Two Resignations Further Reduce a More than 150-year Security Body from the City,” San Francisco Examiner, May 4, 2014, http://archives.sfexaminer.com/sanfrancisco/ two-resignations-further-reduce-a-more-than-150-year-security-body-from-thecity/Content?oid=2787383, accessed January 17, 2017. The two men resigned to protest police commission charges of administrative misconduct. 25 United States District Court, ND California, Byard vs. City and County of San Francisco No. C-16 00691 WHA, April 4, 2016, http://www.leagle.com/decision/In/ Bayard/v./City/and/County/of/San/Francisco/, accessed January 17, 2017. 26 Justin Juvenal, “Private Police Carry Guns and Make Arrests, and Their Ranks Are Swelling,” Washington Post, February 28, 2015, https://www.washingtonpost. com/local/crime/private-police-carry-guns-and-make-arrests-and-theirranks-are-swelling/2015/02/28/29f6e02e-8f79-11e4-a900-9960214d4cd7_story. html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.40c56aabaede, accessed April 21, 2015. 27 Griff White, “Private Security Contractors Head to the Gulf,” Washington Post, September 8, 2005; Jeremy Scahill, “Blackwater Down,” The Nation, September 22, 2005, reprinted in http://www.cbsnews.com/news/blackwater-down/, accessed April 22, 2015. 28 Scott Shane and Ron Nixon, “In Washington, Contractors Take on Biggest Role Ever,” NYT, February 4, 2007. 29 Richard M. Brown, “The American Vigilante Tradition,” in Hugh Davis Graham and Ted Robert Gurr, eds., Violence in America: Historical and Comparative Perspectives, Report to the National Commission on the Causes and Prevention of Violence (New York: Signet Books, 1969), pp. 187–192; Malcolm W. Browne, “Pastor Organizes Militia to Combat Crime in Harlem,” NYT, October 21, 1967; Mary Grabar, “The Forgotten History of the Black Silent Majority,” The Federalist, May 5, 2016, http://thefederalist.com/2016/05/05/the-forgotten-history-of-theblack-silent-majority/, accessed May 20, 2017. Fortner’s book is Black Silent Majority: The Rockefeller Drug Laws and the Politics of Punishment (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2015). 30 Glen Young, “The Rise of the Guardian Angels,” http://1981.nyc/rise-guardianangels/, accessed July 31, 2016. 31 Vanasree Samant, “‘Return of the Guardian Angels’ Metropolitan Diary,” NYT, October 17, 2013; Nicole Hensley, “Guardian Angels Patrol NYC Subways after

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Notes Uptick in Slashing Attacks,” New York Daily News, February 22, 2016; 0:02 / 14:02 “Guardian Angels New York City Curtis Sliwa History from 1979–1999,” https:// www.youtube.com/watch?v=1MWJbmeV6JQ, accessed July 31, 2016. Ronald Sullivan, “Newark’s White Vigilante Group, Opposed by Governor, Sees Itself as Antidote to Riots,” NYT, June 24, 1968; David M. Halbfinger, “Anthony Imperiale, 68, Dies: Polarizing Force in Newark,” NYT, December 28, 1999. Matthew Shaer, “Tough Jews,” The Tablet, December 14, 2011, http://www. tabletmag.com/jewish-news-and-politics/86067/tough-jews, accessed December 23, 2017; Alan Feur, “Brooklyn’s Private Jewish Patrols Wield Power; Some Call Them Bullies,” NYT, June 17, 2016. Werner J. Einstater, “Citizen Patrols: Prevention or Control?” Crime and Social Justice, no. 21/22 (1984): 205, 207; Gary T. Marx, “Commentary: Some Trends and Issues in Citizen Involvement in the Law Enforcement Process,” Crime and Delinquency 35 (July 3 1989): 500–519. Jean-Paul Brodeur, The Policing Web (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), pp. 273–274, table 8.3. Estimates of private security forces are not easily obtainable and vary according to the sources used in the table. For example, two of three sources on the UK have more public than private police; one shows more private. Throughout Europe, the growth rate of private forces is greater than for public police (p. 275). UN News Centre, “Number of Private Security Guards Booming Worldwide, UN Survey Shows,” http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=38957#. WHpX9LkYEm4, accessed January 14, 2017. Nigel South, “Privatizing Policing in the European Market: Some Issues for Theory, Policy, and Research,” European Sociological Review 10, no. 3 (December 1994): 225. “First Private Police Force Unveiled,” BBC News, May 10, 1999, http://news. bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/339667.stm; Luke Traynor, “Former Detectives Set up First Private Police Force—Costing Residents £1 per Week,” The Mirror, January 16, 2015, http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/former-detectives-set-upbritains-4992372, both accessed March 18, 2017. “Private Police Provoke Concern,” BBC News, November 14, 2009, http://news. bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/8359948.stm, accessed March 18, 2017; “What Liberal Firearms Policies Could Mean for UK Security Guards,” Get Licensed Blog, https:// www.get-licensed.co.uk/sia-training-blog/what-liberal-firearms-policies-couldmean-for-uk-security-guards/, accessed December 27, 2017. After the costly failure of a major private security firm to meet its contract to provide crowd control at the 2012 London Olympics, the British army took over and with the regular police did a good job of managing the huge crowds. The firm had to pay back money already received and lost several contracts as a result but is still operating various types of private policing in the UK. The Conservative

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Defence Secretary declared that while there were some areas where private police were more efficient, public agencies like the police or army were more flexible in dealing with unexpected contingencies. See Adam Taylor, “How the Plan to Privatize London’s Olympic Security Turned into a Disaster,” Business Insider International, July 18, 2012, http://www.businessinsider.com/g4s-olympic-securitydisaster-2012-17, and “Private Police + G4S = Hot Mess of Olympian Proportions,” Catfish for Lunch, July 25, 2012, https://catfishforlunch.wordpress.com/2012/07/26/ private-police-g4s-hot-mess-of-olympian-proportions, both accessed March 24, 2017. Jacqueline E. Ross, “Undercover Tactics, Private Detectives and State-building in the Nineteenth-century United States and France,” unpublished paper presented to conference on Private Security and the State, Leeds University Law School, July 10–11, 2017, cited with author’s permission. “Guns in France: Now Security Guards Could Be Armed,” The Local Fr., March 4, 2016, https://www.thelocal.fr/20160304/even-more-guns-on-frances-streetsfollowing-terror-attacks, accessed April 22, 2016. “Private Security Sector Booms on Terrorism Fears,” The Local De., August 1, 2016, https://www.thelocal.de/20160801/private-security-sector-booms-on-terrorismfears, accessed September 3, 2016. Alain Bauer, “La Securite’ Prive’e: Un Realite’ Francaise,” Le Figaro, October 7, 2015, FIGAROVOX, http://www.lefigaro.fr/vox/societe’/2015/07/10/3100320150710ARTFIG00053-alain-bauer-la-securite’-prive’e-une-realite’-francaise. php, accessed April 22, 2015; Francois Bonnet, Jacques De Maillard, and Sebastien Roche, “Plural Policing of Public Places in France: Between Private and Local Policing,” European Journal of Policing Studies 2, no. 3 (March 2015): 285–303. Tim Murphy, “The Meltdown of the Anti-immigration Minute Men Militia,” Mother Jones, August 4, 2014, http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2014/08/ minuteman-movement-border-crisis-simcox/, accessed August 4, 2016; “Masked, Armed Militias Patrolling Texas Border Draw Scrutiny,” Dallas Morning News, August 1, 2014, https://www.dallasnews.com/news/news/2014/08/01/maskedarmed-militias-patrolling-texas-side-of-border-draw-scrutiny, accessed August 4, 2016; Bill Morlin, “Arizona Sheriff Warns Border Vigilantes after Confrontation in the Desert,” August 21, 2013, https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/2013/08/21/ arizona-sheriff-warns-border-vigilantes-after-confrontation-desert, accessed August 4, 2016; “Minutemen May Be Gone, But Border Militiamen Are Still on the Prowl,” http://crooksandliars.com/david-neiwert/minutemen-may-be-gone-bordermilitia, accessed July 31, 2016. Fernanda Santos, “A Do-It-Yourself Tack on Border Patrol,” NYT, December 22, 2016, https://www.arizonaborderrecon.org/, accessed December 24, 2016. Murphy, “Meltdown.”

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48 Seth W. Stoughton, “Moonlighting, the Private Employment of Public Officers,” University of Illinois Law Review, no. 5 (2017): 1848–1900; Daniel B. Moskowitz, “Police Officers’ Moonlighting Raises Tough Policy Questions,” Washington Post, February 20, 1989, https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/business/1989/02/20/ police-officers-moonlighting-raises-tough-policy-questions/18283d2a-d167-4fb59ebb-b86cc65fa306/?utm_term=.daaed8169eb5, accessed January 16, 2017. See also Andrew H. Malcolm, “When Private Employers Hire Public Police,” NYT, February 26, 1989. Both these articles are based on the work of police sociologist Albert J. Reiss, Jr., Private Employment of Public Police (University of Michigan Library reprint, 1988). 49 Elizabeth Kolbert, “Metro Matters; Rent-a-Cop Program: The Best Protection Money Can Buy,” NYT, June 29, 1998. 50 Naomi Wolff, “NYPD for Hire: How Uniformed New York Cops Moonlight for Banks,” The Guardian, December 21, 2012, https://www.theguardian.com/ commentisfree/2012/dec/17/nypd-for-hire-cops-moonlighting-banks, accessed January 16, 2017. Hiring of public police by private individuals or organizations is not new, nor uniquely American. Ever since establishment of the first modern police force (London’s “New Police”) in 1829, heads of police departments have provided private parties, for a fee, “additional constables” to protect property and maintain order. These constables appear to have been specially appointed for each request for protection, but they had all the powers of regular police. They were neither “rent a cops” nor moonlighters. See Chris A. Williams, “Constables for Hire: The History of ‘Public’ Policing in the UK,” Policing and Society: An International Journal of Research and Policy 18, no. 2 (2008): 190–205. In 1994, the British government formally authorized police to “contract out officer time.” Dominic Casciani, “Private ‘Police’ Confuse Public,” BBC News, April 28, 2004, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/3664365.stm, accessed March 23, 2017. 51 Donovan X. Ramsey, “The Big, Shady (But Legal) Business of Secondary Policing,” Gawker, November 13, 2014, http://gawker.com/rent-a-cop-the-big-shady-butlegal-business-of-seco-1657458697, accessed January 16, 2017. 52 Pam Martens, “Financial Giants Put New York City Cops on Their Payroll,” October 10, 2011, http://www.counterpunch.org/2011/10/10/financial-giants-putnew-york-city-cops-on-their-payroll/, accessed January 16, 2017. 53 Melissa Kline, “Cops Doubling as Venue Security Sidelined after Contracts Expire,” New York Post, October 2, 2016, http://nypost.com/2016/10/02/cops-doubling-asvenue-security-sidelined-after-contracts-expire/, accessed January 16, 2017. 54 Amsden, “Who Runs the Streets,” n.p. 55 Calder, “Policing and the Private Security Option,” pp. 101–107, 111. 56 John S. Dempsey, Introduction to Private Security (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 2008), pp. 94–95; Melissa G. Davis, Richard J. Lundman, and Ramiro Martinez,

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Jr., “Private Corporate Justice, Store Police, Shop lifters and Civil Recovery,” Social Problems 38, no. 3 (August 1991): 395–411. 57 Dempsey, Introduction, p. 302. 58 “William Glaberson, The Mall as Cocoon: Safety, Both Real and Imagined, Is All,” NYT, April 21, 1992; Neal Karlandec, “Tapping ‘Mom Power’ to Police a Huge Mall,” NYT, December 19, 1996; Michael Wilson, “Protecting Cinnabon and the Gap, and Still Getting No Respect,” Region, Crime Scene, NYT, May 10, 2013. 59 Antoinette Martin, “The ‘Security’ of a Gated Community,” NYT, June 11, 2006; Rich Benjamin, “The Gated Community Mentality,” NYT, March 30, 2012; Timothy Eagan, “The Serene Fortress: A Special Report; Many Seek Security in a Private Community,” NYT, September 30, 1995. For a general discussion of the attitudes of residents, see Edward W. Blakely and Mary Gail Snyder, Fortress America: Gated Communities in the United States (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 1997). For the young man’s experience, Keith C. Veal, “The Gating of America: The Political and Social Consequences of Gated Communities on the Body Politic,” Ph.D. dissertation, University of Michigan, 2013, pp. 1–2, https://deepblue.lib. umich.edu/bitstream/handle/2027.42/99909/kveal_1.pdf;sequence=1, accessed January 17, 2017. 60 http://www.125thstreetbid.com/real-estate-development/pedestrian-count, accessed January 17, 2017. 61 Patricia E. Matson, “Online Exclusive: Wilmington’s Downtown Hopes to Emulate Big Easy’s Success,” Lumina News, February 17, 2011, http://archive.luminanews. com/article.asp?aid=7741&iid=260&sud=30, accessed January 17, 2017. 62 Themis Chronopolis, Spatial Regulation in New York City: From Urban Renewal to Zero Tolerance (New York and London: Routledge, 2011), pp. 170–175. 63 http://www.citadelsecurityagency.com/new-york-bodyguards/, accessed January 15, 2017. 64 “Female Close Protection Operatives Information,” https://femalebodyguards. info/2016/10/21/women-in-the-executive-protection-industry/, accessed August 2, 2017. 65 Andrews International Training Center, “Security Guard Licensing Requirements,” http://www.ussecurityassociates.com/ai-training/statereq.html, accessed August 2, 2017. Seventeen states as of writing do not have licensing requirements, most of those requiring that the security company providing the guards register them. 66 “Bouncer (Doorman),” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bouncer_(doorman), accessed August 11, 2017. This Wikipedia article demonstrates thorough research with full references and bibliography. 67 Edward Adams, “What I’ve Noticed from Being a Bouncer at an American Club,” Return of Kings, March 14, 2014, http://www.returnofkings.com/30488/what-ivenoticed-from-being-a-bouncer-at-an-american-club, accessed August 11, 2017. This website is dedicated to promoting in-your-face hyper-masculinity.

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68 Charles E. McGoey, “Nightclub and Bar Security: Bouncers Doormen Need Training,” http://www.crimedoctor.com/nightclub-security-3.htm, accessed August 11, 2017. 69 “Bouncer (Doorman)”; Divina Sengupta and Divya Sathyanarayanan, “Women Bouncers Rapidly Grow in Numbers, Earn More than Male Counterparts,” Economic Times: Panache, March 14, 2015, http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/ magazines/panache/women-bouncers-rapidly-grow-in-numbers-earn-morethan-male-counterparts/articleshow/46559414.cms, accessed August 11, 2017; Marie Solis, “Meet the Female Bouncer Who Had a Man Arrested for Assaulting a Woman Outside Her Bar,” SLAY, https://mic.com/articles/174396/meet-the-femalebouncer-who-had-a-man-arrested-for-assaulting-a-woman-outside-her-bar#. iuT0W2HQP, accessed August 11, 2017. 70 Robert C. Smith, “California Security Guard Licensing Law,” Nightclub Security Consultants, http://blog.nightclubsecurity.com/california-security-guard-licensinglaw/, accessed August 11, 2017. 71 LIB Security, “CT Security Guard License: Do Bouncers Need It?” https://www. ljbsecuritytraining.com/ct-security-guard-license-bouncers/, accessed August 11, 2017. 72 Information and quotations on railroad police history are from “The Railroad Police,” http://www.therailroadpolice.com/history.htm, accessed April 21, 2017. 73 Ron Nixon, “Complaints Rise against Nation’s Railroad Police,” NYT, May 28, 2015. 74 Lizette Alvarez, “A Nation Challenged: Airport Security; White House Battles Plan on Airports,” NYT, October 13, 2001. 75 Mark A. Hewitt, “So You Want to Privatize the T.S.A.?” American Thinker, March 28, 2016, http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2016/03/so_you_want_to_ privatize_the_tsa.html, accessed April 22, 2017. Hopkins still believes that “any private airport security provider would be worse than the heavily regulated T.S.A.” because they are subject to infiltration by the very people they are supposed to keep out. 76 David Olive, “The TSA Blame Game Runs Wild, But Effective Solutions Are Scarce,” Security Debrief, May 25, 2016, http://securitydebrief.com/2016/05/25/tsablame-game-runs-wild-but-effective-solutions-are-scarce/, accessed April 22, 2017. 77 Matthew L. Wald, “At Airports, a New Watchdog Is Taking Over,” NYT, January 27, 2002; Julliet Lapidos, “Is This the Pose of a Free Man?” NYT, September 11, 2012, Taking Note: the Editors’ Editorial Blog; Justus Bachman (Bloomberg News), “More Airports May Ditch the TSA and Use Private Security Instead,” May 27, 2016, https://skift.com/2016/05/27/more-airports-may-ditch-the-tsa-and-use-privatesecurity-instead/; Matthew Jancer, “Airports Turn to Private Contractors to Handle Long Lines,” Popular Science, September 25, 2016, http://www.popsci.com/someairports-are-turning-to-private-industry-to-help-fix-airport-security, all accessed April 22, 2017.

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78 Robert McCrie, “The Development of the U.S. Security Industry,” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 498 (July 1988): 31–32. 79 Justin Quesinberry, “Company Police Chief Facing Multiple Charges in Wake County,” CBS North Carolina WNCN. Com, April 5, 2015, http://wncn. com/2016/04/05/company-police-chief-facing-multiple-charges-in-wake-county/ and CBS North Carolina, “Wake County Private Police Chief Found Guilty of Felony Charges,” February 3, 2017, http://wncn.com/2017/02/03/wake-countyprivate-police-chief-found-guilty-of-felony-charges/, both accessed April 5, 2017. 80 Same sources as in note 71. 81 See Kathleen Teltsch, “Private Guard Forces Seen as Drain on the Police,” NYT, January 29, 1984.

Chapter 5 Edward Crapsey, The Netherside of New York: Or the Vice, Crime, and Poverty of the Great Metropolis (New York: Sheldon and Co., 1872), pp. 66–67. 2 Allan Pinkerton, Thirty Years a Detective: A Thorough and Comprehensive Expose of Criminal Practices of All Grades and Classes (New York: G.W. Carleton and Co., 1884), pp. 16–17. 3 Quoted by Morn, Eye, p. 59. 4 See my “From Old Cap Collier to Nick Carter: Images of Crime and Criminal Justice in American Dime Novel Detective Stories 1880–1920,” in Amy Gilman Srebnick and Rene Levy, eds., Crime and Culture (London: Ashgate, 2005). 5 David R. Johnson, Policing the Urban Underworld: The Impact of Crime on the Development of the American Police (Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 1979), pp. 59–60. 6 Johnson, Underworld, pp. 61–65. 7 Morn, Eye, pp. 76–77. 8 Morn, Eye, p. 183. 9 Morn, Eye, p. 237, note 97; p. 182. 10 “Arrest 8 Sleuths in a Big Crusade,” New York Times (hereafter NYT), September 5, 1915. 11 “Wants Detectives Better Educated,” NYT, December 16, 1927. 12 “Private Agents in State to Face Wiretap Inquiry,” NYT, December 12, 1955; “Sleuths Give Up Wiretap Records,” NYT, January 7, 1956; “New Law Sought to Curb Sleuths,” NYT, January 21, 1956; “A Blow Is Dealt to Private Eyes,” NYT, March 26, 1959; “The Case of the Private Eye,” NYT, November 15, 1959; “New Rule for Guards,” NYT, January 25, 1961; “State Bills Bar Union Coercion,” NYT, February 11, 1960. 1

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13 http://www.thepigroup.com/new_york_pi_test.htm, accessed June 5, 2016. 14 http://pursuitmag.com/resources/investigator-licensing/, accessed June 2, 2016. 15 http://www.sia.homeoffice.gov.uk/Pages/licensing-private-investigations.aspx, accessed June 2, 2016. 16 Morn, Eye, pp. 68–69. 17 http://www.ric.edu/faculty/rpotter/chasfield.html, accessed February 8, 2016. 18 Mark Jones, Criminal Justice Pioneers in U.S. History (Boston, MA: Pearson, c. 2005), Ch. 5. 19 Charles Siringo, A Cowboy Detective: The True Story of Twenty-two Years with a Famous Detective Agency (New York: Charles B. Conkey Co., 1912), throughout. 20 Thomas Reppetto, American Mafia: A History of Its Rise to Power (New York: Henry Holt, 2004), pp. 11–16, 41–45. 21 Actually, the US Secret Service, a civilian agency created after the Civil War, was a federal police force, but it concentrated on counterfeiting and postal fraud. Later, it provided presidential protection. Likewise the postal inspectors, specializing in fraud and later obscenity sent through the mail, and the Bureau of Internal Revenue agents, specializing in violations of the federal liquor tax, were federal police. 22 The classic account of the Pinkertons is Morn, Eye; the latest is S. Paul O’Hara, Inventing the Pinkertons: or, Spies. Sleuths, Mercenaries, and Thugs (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2016). 23 O’Hara, Inventing the Pinkertons, pp. 26–37. 24 Jones, Pioneers, p. 19. 25 Charles Siringo, Two Evil Isms: Anarchism and Pinkertonism (New York: SteckVaughn Co., 1915), p. 105. 26 William R. Hunt, Front Page Detective: William J. Burns and the Detective Profession, 1880–1930 (New York: Popular Press, 1990), Ch. 10. 27 Hunt, Burns, pp. 104–110. 28 Hunt, Burns, throughout; Jones, Pioneers, pp. 41–46. 29 John Walton, The Legendary Detective: The Private Eye in Fact and Fiction (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2015), pp. 46–47. 30 Maggie Mclean, “Kate Warne,” Civil War Women, March 22, 2011, https://www. civilwarwomenblog.com/kate-warne/, accessed September, 2017. 31 Morn, Eye, pp. 54–55. 32 Walton, Legendary Detective, pp. 48–50, 90–91. 33 Below, pp. 118. 34 Walton, Legendary Detective, pp. 51–52. 35 “Remarkable Detective,” NYT, September 15, 1883. 36 US Senate, 52nd Congress, 2nd Session (1892–93), Committee on the Employment of Armed Bodies of Men for Private Purposes, Report 1280 (hereafter Senate 93), pp. 6, 12, testimony of Frank Murray.

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37 Mitrani, Chicago Police, p. 30. 38 George O’Toole, The Private Sector: Private Spies, Rent-a-Cops, and the PoliceIndustrial Complex (New York: Norton, 1972), p. 121. 39 “Fields an Ingenious Swindler,” NYT, June 25, 1904. 40 “Four Burglars Identified,” NYT, August 13, 1878. 41 “A Forger’s Gang Caught,” NYT, August 17, 1880. 42 Elizabeth Dale, Robert Nixon and Police Torture in Chicago, 1887–1977 (De Kalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2016), pp. 8–11. 43 Senate 93, test. Murray, p. 7; Mckay, Allan Pinkerton, p. 93. 44 “Capture of a Notorious Forger,” NYT, January 28, 1877. 45 “More Forgeries Exposed,” NYT, October 5, 1877; “After a Gang of Forgers,” NYT, January 12, 1880. 46 “Fraud in Registration,” NYT, October 31, 1884. 47 “Buckholtz’s False Friend,” NYT, September 12, 1879. 48 “Public and Private Detectives,” NYT, November 14, 1873. 49 “A Huge Evil Attacked,” NYT, August 9, 1882; Morn, Eye, p. 112. 50 Rona L. Holub, “Fredericka ‘Marm’ Mandelbaum, ‘Queen of Fences’: The Rise and Fall of a Female Immigrant Criminal Entrepreneur in Nineteenth-century New York City” (Ph.D. dissertation, Columbia University, 2007), pp. 143–164. 51 “Gen. Greene after Central Office Men,” NYT, March 9, 1903. 52 “A Police Captain in Disgrace,” NYT, November 13, 1883. 53 Atherton and Dunn Investigations, “Report to the 1937 Grand Jury on Graft in the Police Department,” March 17, 1937, transcribed by Frank Chapot, 2011. https:// www.smashwords.com/books/view/131865, accessed December 11, 2017. 54 NYT, December 24, 1935; December 16, 1927. 55 Siringo, Cowboy Detective, pp. 25–33. 56 Siringo, Cowboy Detective, pp. 114–133. 57 David A. Norris, “Black Bart: The Bandit Bard of the Old West,” History Magazine, February/March 2016, 40–41. 58 See Morn, Eye and the other sources on Pinkerton for this story. 59 Homer Cummings and Carl McFarland, Federal Justice: Chapters in the History of Justice and the Federal Executive (New York, Macmillan, 1937), pp. 371–373. 60 Stephen Cresswell, Mormons and Moonshiners; Cowboys and Klansmen: Federal Law Enforcement in the South and West, 1870–1893 (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1991), pp. 47–48, 111–112, 204, 211. 61 Heywood Broun and Margaret Leech, Anthony Comstock: Roundsman of the Lord (New York: Albert and Charles Boni, 1927), pp. 81–82. The writer was not able to use Amy Werbel, Lust on Trial: Censorship and the Rise of American Obscenity in the Age of Anthony Comstock (New York: Columbia University Press, 2018).

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62 Scott Matthew Dix, ed., Charles Gallaudet Trumbull, Outlawed! How Anthony Comstock Fought and Won the Purity of a Nation (No place: no publisher, c. 2013), pp. 91–98, quotation at 98. This is a reprint of Trumbull’s 1913 Anthony Comstock, Fighter by modern-day supporters of Comstock who oppose birth control. 63 Dix, ed., Outlawed! pp. 151–165, quotation at 165. 64 Broun and Leech, Roundsman, p. 153. 65 Broun and Leech, Roundsman, pp. 224–228, 238–240, 216–219. 66 Broun and Leech, Roundsman, pp. 155–159. Comstock was not all that successful in prosecuting abortion and birth control providers: he seems to have been too ready to include many reputable physicians among his targets (p. 160). 67 In French, “la puce” is a flea; “la pute” a prostitute. 68 Timothy Gilfoyle, City of Eros: New York City, Prostitution, and the Commercialization of Sex, 1790–1920 (New York: W.W. Norton Co., 1992), pp. 161–163, 165. 69 Nicola Beisel, Imperiled Innocents: Anthony Comstock and Family Reproduction in America (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997) develops this point in Chapter 3. 70 Broun and Leech, Roundsman, pp. 194–203; Morn, Eye, p. 112. 71 Nicola Beisel, “Class, Culture, and Campaigns against Vice in Three American Cities,” American Sociological Review 55 (February 1990): 44–62. 72 Beisel, “Class, Culture,” pp. 56–58. 73 Neil Miller, Banned in Boston: The Watch and Ward Society’s Crusade against Books, Burlesque, and the Social Evil (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 2010), pp. 3–7, 55–59, 65–67, 171, 173–174, and throughout. 74 Frank Moss, The American Metropolis: from Knickerbocker Days to the Present Time; New York City Life in All Its Various Phases, 3 vols. (New York: Peter Fenelon Collier, 1897), III, pp. 237–239. 75 Jennifer Fronc, New York Undercover: Private Surveillance in the Progressive Era (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012), pp. 19–24; Warren Sloat, A Battle for the Soul of New York: Tammany Hall, Police Corruption, Vice, and Reverend Charles Parkhurst’s Crusade against Them, 1892–1895 (New York: Cooper Square Press, 2002), pp. 41, 51–58, 123–124, 171 (it is not clear whether Gardiner actually demanded payoffs, but Sloat narrates the story as truth); Charles W. Gardner, The Doctor and the Devil: Or Midnight Adventures with Dr. Parkhurst (New York: Vanguard Press, 1931 [orig. 1894]), https://archive.org/stream/ doctordevilormid00gard#page/38/mode/2up, accessed July 26, 2016. 76 Fronc, NY Undercover, Ch. 2. 77 Fronc, NY Undercover, pp. 66, 72–73. 78 Fronc, NY Undercover, Ch. 4.

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79 http://www.encyclopedia.chicagohistory.org/pages/1303.html, accessed July 26, 2016; George J. Kneeland, Commercialized Prostitution in New York City (New York: Century Co., 1913). 80 Albert Fried, The Rise and Fall of the Jewish Gangster in America, revised ed., (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993), pp. 60, 68, 1–6, 79–80. 81 David Caute, The Great Fear, the Anti-Communist Purge under Truman and Eisenhower (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1978) and Shrecker, Many Are the Crimes, survey post–First World War I red hunting government and private groups. 82 Athan Theoharis, “The FBI and the American Legion Contact Program,” Political Science Quarterly 100, no. 1 (Summer 1985): 271–286. 83 Richard Gid Powers, Secrecy and Power: The Life of J. Edgar Hoover (New York: The Free Press, 1987), pp. 398, 350. 84 Caute, Great Fear, pp. 521–523; Shrecker, Many Are the Crimes, pp. 217–218. 85 George O’Toole, The Private Sector: Private Spies, Rent-a-Cops and the PoliceIndustrial Complex (New York: Norton, c. 1978), pp. 31–32. 86 I am greatly indebted to Prof. Dolores Janewski, who read the manuscript, for providing correct information about this group, which she obtained from the Washington Post, January 9, 1978, and other sources. 87 O’Toole, Private Sector, pp. 160–166. 88 Caute, Great Fear, p. 530. 89 Caute, Great Fear, Ch. 26; Powers, Not Without Honor, pp. 245–249. 90 “Paging Sherlock Holmes,” NYT, April 1, 1945. 91 O’Toole, Private Sector, c. 1978, p. 99. 92 Edward Levine, “The Life under Investigation May Be Your Own,” NYT, August 27, 1995. 93 Kim Clark and Eileen Gunn, “The Detectives,” Fortune 135, no. 7 (April 14, 1997), http://archive.fortune.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/1997/04/14/224959/ index.htm, accessed June 12, 2016. 94 http://www.bls.gov/ooh/protective-service/private-detectives-and-investigators. htm#tab-2, accessed June 12, 2016; Scott Christianson, “Public Detectives,” NYT, June 3, 2007. 95 “Art Crimes Investigator, Then and Now Retired FBI Agent Robert Witman,” Arts and Antiques, May 5, 2009, https://www.antiquesandthearts.com/art-crimesinvestigator-then-and-now-retired-fbi-agent-robert-k-wittman/, accessed June 8, 2016; Brett Nelson, “Cartier Cop,” Forbes Global 6, no. 9 (April 28, 2003), https:// www.forbes.com/global/2003/0428/036.html#d22d03c56ffa, accessed June 8, 2016; Jed Lipinski, “Hasidic Sleuth’s Beat: Mean Streets of Brooklyn,” NYT, July 8, 2001; Jessica Anderson and Jane Bennett Clark, “The Search for Lifesaving Answers,” Kiplinger’s Personal Finance 58, no. 5 (May 5, 2004): 77–80.

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Larry Reibstein and Jeanne Gordon, “The Prying Game under New Rules,” Newsweek 124, no. 10 (September 5, 1994), http://www.newsweek.com/pryinggame-under-new-rules-188218, accessed June 8, 2016. 97 http://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes339021.htm, accessed June 8, 2016. 98 Warren St. John, “Here Come the Glamour Gumshoes,” NYT, October 19, 2003. 99 Warren Berger, “What’s New in the Private Eye Business: High Heels and Gumshoes,” NYT, August 9, 1987. 100 Andrea Kannapell, “A Snooper’s Story: The Confessions of a Private Eye,” NYT, August 27, 1995. 101 Bill Surface, “Keen Private Eye,” NYT, December 11, 1966. 102 See “The Boring Life of a Private Investigator,” NYT, March 7, 2015. 103 Clark and Gunn, “The Detectives.” 104 http://courtroomcast.lexisnexis.com/acf_cases/9243-nader-v-general-motorscorp-; http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,902654,00.html, accessed June 12, 2016. 105 Bill Surface, “Keen Private Eye”; “Investigations: The Spies Who Were Caught Cold,” Time Magazine, April 1, 1966, http://content.time.com/time/magazine/ article/0,9171,840645,00.html, accessed June 12, 2016. 106 Douglas Frantz, “Law Confronts Peddler of Private Data,” NYT, July 1, 1999. 107 Stephen Labaton, “Data ‘Brokers’ Battle Critics of Deceptive Practices,” NYT, June 14, 1999. 108 Colleen Collins, “P.I.s, Pretexting, and the Law, Tips for Crime Writers,” https:/ www.pursuitmag.com/pretexting-law-tips-for-detective-writers/, accessed June 2, 2016; https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/press-releases/1999/04/consumersprivate-financial-information-obtained-and-sold; https://www.ftc.gov/sites/ default/files/documents/cases/2000/06/ftc.gov-touchtoneorder.htm, accessed June 2, 2016. 109 http://www.corporatesecretary.com/articles/regulation-and-legal/11295/new-lawpretexting/, accessed June 11, 2016. 110 http://allthingsd.com/20121214/seven-years-later-hps-pretexting-scandal-isfinally-over/, accessed June 11, 2016. 111 Matthew Goldstein and William K. Rashbaum, “Sleuths for Weinstein Push Limits of Tradecraft,” NYT, November 16, 2017. 112 John Hawkins, “Hillary Clinton and Her Former Employee, Anthony Pellicano,” December 2008, http://rightwingnews.com/top-news/hillary-clinton-and-herformer-employee-anthony-pellicano/, accessed June 11, 2016; Josh Gerstein, “A Clinton Canard Recycled,” http://www.politico.com/blogs/under-theradar/2009/04/a-clinton-canard-recycled-017650, accessed June 11, 2016. 113 Dan Glaister, “The Pelicano Files,” The Guardian, April 19, 2006, https://www. theguardian.com/film/2006/apr/19/usa.world, accessed June 11, 2016; Christine Pelisek, “Anthony Pellicano, the Hollywood Phone Hacker, Breaks His Silence,”

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Newsweek, August 7, 2011, http://www.newsweek.com/anthony-pellicanohollywood-phone-hacker-breaks-his-silence-67115, accessed June 11, 2016. 114 Anthony Van Der Brug, “Anthony Pellicano, Former Celebrity Private Eye, Loses Bulk of His Appeal,” Los Angeles Times, August 25, 2015, http://www.latimes.com/ local/lanow/la-me-ln-pellicano-20150825-story.html, accessed June 11, 2016. 115 O’Toole, Private Sector, pp. 222–224, 154–156. 116 Peter Y. Hong, “The Pellicano Case Shines Spotlight on Private Eyes,” Los Angeles Times, February 12, 2006, http://www.latimes.com/local/la-me-pellicano12feb12story.html, accessed June 11, 2016. 117 Greg Krikorian, “A Plea of Not Guilty in Wiretapping,” Los Angeles Times, February 22, 2006, http://articles.latimes.com/2006/feb/22/local/me-pellicano22, accessed June 11, 2016. 118 Peter Y. Hong, “LAPD Has No Curbs on Officers Working as PIs,” Los Angeles Times, February 19, 2006, http://articles.latimes.com/2006/feb/19/local/mepellicano19, accessed June 11, 2016. 119 NYT, November 16, 1934. 120 Larry Reibstein, Jeanne Gordon, “The Prying Game under New Rules,” Newsweek 124, no. 10 (September 5, 1994): 72–74. 121 O’Toole, Private Sector, pp. 222–224. 122 “U.S. Hires Private Concerns to Check Job Seekers,” NYT, February 1, 1986. 123 Diane Cardwell, “New York City Sues 15 Gun Dealers in 5 States, Charging Illegal Sales,” NYT, May 16, 2006; Cardwell, “Bloomberg Went Too Far in Gun Sting, Dealers Say,” NYT, December 9, 2007. 124 “Judge Rules for the City in Gun Sting of Dealers,” NYT, January 26, 2008; Alan Feuer, “Bloomberg Claims Victory as Georgia Gun Dealer Withdraws from Trial,” NYT, June 3, 2008. 125 “Combating Illegal Guns,” NYT, June 6, 2008. 126 “Not Your ‘Bud’, or Ours,” NYT, October 11, 2009. 127 This is still done: parents of 1960s demonstrators who were arrested often posted bail for their children and their friends and sometimes volunteered as general bail providers. 128 Merrit Barnes, “Corruption Central: Peter P. McDonough,” Found SF, http:// www.foundsf.org/index.php?title=CORRUPTION_CENTRAL:_PETER_P._ McDONOUGH, accessed December 9, 2017; Atherton and Dunn, “Report to the Grand Jury on Graft in the Police Department”, included. 129 Taylor vs. Taintor, 1872: http://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/83/366/case. html#F15, accessed November 23, 2012. 130 Lund v. Clyde Police Department, FED App. 0368P (6th Circuit, 2000), cited Dempsey, Introduction, p. 323. 131 Newark Star Ledger, August 8, 2010, p. 24.

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132 Todd S. Purdum, “Bungling Bounty Hunters,” NYT, September 27, 1997; David Stout, “Victim of Bounty Hunters Wins $1 Million,” NYT, September 13, 1996; Franklin Foer, “Bounty Hunters,” The Slate Gist, September 28, 1997, http://www. slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/the_gist/1997/09/bounty_hunters.html, accessed November 18, 2012. 133 Jim Martin, “Creating a New Breed of Bounty Hunters,” Letter to NYT, June 5, 1986. 134 Hauser Christine, “Scrutiny for Bounty Hunters after Shootout in Texas Leaves Three Dead,” NYT, June 12, 2017. 135 Samuel G. Friedman, “Bounty Hunters Collect Critics as Well as Taxes,” NYT, April 3, 1983. Private individuals collecting taxes for fees goes back at least to the publicans of the Bible, who served the Roman Empire, and the tax farmers of ancien regime France. 136 Robert Kenney, “The Dark Side of Privatization: The Tax Bounty Hunters,” Letter to NYT, June 25, 1995. 137 Adam Liptak, “Environmental Bounty Hunters, on Trail of Cash, Are in California’s Official’s Sights,” NYT, June 11, 2007. 138 Bryce Covert, “The Injustice of Cash Bail,” The Nation 305, no. 12 (November 6, 2017): 14. 139 de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, I, pp. 55–56 at 56. 140 Ashley Southall, “Comptroller Calls for Removing Profit from City’s Bail Equation,” NYT, January 16, 2018. 141 Nick Pinto, “The Bail Trap,” New York Times Magazine, August 13, 2015. 142 Jamiles Lartey, “New Legislation Encourages States to End Discriminatory ‘Money Bail’ Practice,” The Guardian, July 20, 2017, https://www.theguardian.com/ us-news/2017/jul/20/bail-reform-legislation-money-bail-incarceration-us-jail, accessed August 21, 2017. 143 Alan Feuer, “In National Battle over Bail Bond Industry, New Jersey Is on the Front Line,” NYT, August 22, 2017. 144 Tim Shorrock, “Put the Spies Back under One Roof,” opinion, NYT, June 17, 2013. For more, his book, Spies for Hire: The Secret World of Intelligence Outsourcing (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2008). 145 Charles Mahoney, “Private Defense Companies Are Here to Stay—Here’s What That Could Mean for National Security,” Business Insider, http://www. businessinsider.com/private-defense-companies-and-trump-presidency-2017-6, accessed December 3, 2017. 146 Diana Priest and William Arlen, “Top Secret America,” Washington Post, July 18–20, 2010, a series of investigative reports, http://projects.washingtonpost.com/ top-secret-america/articles/, accessed August 13, 2016. 147 “The Digital Penetration of American National Security: How a Coordinated Government Response That Emphasizes Private Ownership and Private Lawyers

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Will Strengthen America,” Dunlap, Bennet & Ludwig, https://www.dbllawyers. com/business-law/digital-penetration-american-national-security-coordinatedgovernment-response-emphasizes-private-ownership-private-lawyers-willstrengthen-america/, accessed December 3, 2017. This is a law firm’s website.

Chapter 6 Melvyn Dubofsky, The State and Labor in Modern America, new ed. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1994), pp. 24–26. 2 Sidney L Harring, Policing a Class Society: The Experience of American Cities, 1865–1915 (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1983), p. 136. 3 Report of operative no. 18-Marshall [detective] Service, July 9, 1921, q. in Jean E. Spielman, The Stool Pigeon and the Open Shop Movement (Minneapolis, MN: American Publishing Co., 1923), p. 77. 4 Mitrani, Chicago Police, Ch. 6. 5 McCrie, “The Development of the U.S. Security Industry,” p. 29. 6 Charles K. Hyde “Undercover and Underground: Labor Spies and Mine Management in the Early Twentieth Century,” Business History Review 60 (Spring 1986): 9. 7 Spencer J. Sadler, Pennsylvania’s Coal and Iron Police (Charleston, SC: Arcadia Publishing, c. 2009), p. 41. 8 Siringo, Cowboy Detective, p. 493 for “secured”; Siringo, who worked under McParland, never doubted that Orchard was sincere in his confession, even though he was a severe critic of many Pinkerton methods: Siringo, Evil Isms, p. 96. 9 Hunt, Burns, Chs. 5–6. 10 Contract, original capitals, Spielman, Stool Pigeon, p. 111. 11 Leo Huberman, The Labor Spy Racket (New York: Modern Age Books, c. 1937), Ch. III and pp. 53–59. 12 GT-99, Labor Spy (Indianapolis, IN: Bobbs-Merrill Co., 1937), pp. 248–249. 13 See Marshall Service-R.S. Hurd, Red Star Milling Co., Wichita, Kansas, July 1, 1919, Spielman, Stool Pigeon, p. 39. 14 Spielman, Stool Pigeon, p. 39. 15 Marshall Service—J.P. Devlin, November 1, 1919; Marshall Service—F.L. Allen, March /5, 1920, repro. Spielman, Stool Pigeon, pp. 40, 41. 16 Robert M. Smith, From Blackjacks to Briefcases: A History of Commercialized Strikebreaking and Union Busting (Athens: Ohio University Press, c. 2003), p. 80. 17 Hunt, Burns, p. 103. 18 Operative no. 14-Marshall Service, October 27, 1920; Marshall Service-Clients, May 18, 1921, Spielman, Stool Pigeon, pp. 159, 186. 1

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19 Operative no. 14-Marshall Service, November 3, 1920; May 10, 1921, Spielman, Stool Pigeon, pp. 164, 182. 20 Marshall Service-A.C. Loring, August 1, 1921; Loring-Marshall, August 4, 1921; Marshall-Loring, August 6, 1921 (reproduced Spielman, Stool Pigeon, pp. 186–190). For local’s collapse, Spielman, pp. 191–193, reproducing documentation of the sale of office furniture and supplies. 21 Deposition of Albert Bailin, alias Bolanow, February 23, 1923, quoted Spielman, Stool Pigeon, p. 195. 22 Report Operative 14-Marshall, October 18, 1920; October 22, 1920, Spielman, Stool Pigeon, p. 202. 23 Spielman, Stool Pigeon, p. 154. 24 Marshall Service Prospectus May 18, 1921; National Cereal Mills Service (Marshall)—W.L.A. Johnson, Southwestern Interstate Coal Operating Association, June 13, 1922, Spielman, Stool Pigeon, pp. 185, 46. 25 Marshall-Hoffman, November 11, 1920, Spielman, Stool Pigeon, p. 142. 26 They may have been only boasting since Melvyn Dubovsky’s classic history of the IWW, We Shall Be All: The History of the Industrial Workers of the World (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1969), does not contain any reference to such extensive infiltration, indeed few to labor spies at all, except in Coeur d’Alenes and the WFM leaders cases. 27 quoted Spielman, Stool Pigeon, pp. 49–50. 28 Morris Friedman, The Pinkerton Labor Spy (New York: Wilshire Book Co., 1907), pp. 22–23. 29 GT-99, Labor Spy, pp. 170–176. 30 Hyde, “Undercover and Underground,” pp. 25, 21–22, 24. 31 GT-99, Labor Spy, p. 181. 32 Friedman, Pinkerton Labor Spy, pp. 15, 16–17; US Senate, 52nd Congress, 2nd Session (1892–93), Committee on the Employment of Armed Bodies of Men for Private Purposes, Report 1280 (hereafter Senate 93), p. 18, Testimony of Charles M. French, mgr. Thiel’s Detective Agency. 33 Quoted in Sidney Howard, “The Labor Spy: A Survey of Industrial Espionage: Industrial Harmony,” The New Republic, February 23, 1921, Victor Heritage Society, http://www.rebelgraphics.org/wfmhall/sidneyhowardsthelaborspy02.html, accessed September 29, 2017. 34 GT 99, Labor Spy, p. 109. 35 Marshall Service—Chas. Wolff, Jr., Wolff Packing co., July 25, 1921, Spielman, Stool Pigeon, p. 22. 36 Huberman, Spy Racket, pp. 73, 76. 37 Babson 1923, Q. Huberman, Spy Racket, p. 98; Hyde, “Undercover and Underground,” p. 19.

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38 O.C. general letter to operatives, American Efficiency Bureau, December 10, 1919, reproduced Spielman, Stool Pigeon, p. 27. 39 Marshall Service—A.C. Loring, September 17, 1920, Spielman, Stool Pigeon, pp. 125–126. 40 United States Senate, 75th Congress, 2nd Session (1937), “Violations of Free Speech and the Rights of Labor,” Hearings before the subcommittee of the Committee on Education and Labor: Industrial Espionage (hereafter cited as, e.g., Senate 37, “Violations.…, Industrial Espionage”), Report no. 46, part 3, p. 71; The Commission of Inquiry, Interchurch World Movement, Report on the Steel Strike of 1919 (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Howe, 1920), p. 28. The case had not come to trial at the time of the strike report. 41 United States Senate 78th Congress, 1st Session (1943) “Violations … the Organization of Resistance to Collective Bargaining in California,” Report no. 398, Part V, p. 804. 42 GT-99, Labor Spy, p. 286. 43 Smith, Blackjacks to Briefcases, pp. 95–96. 44 The correspondence is found in Spielman, Stool Pigeon, as previous notes indicate. 45 GT-99, Labor Spy, p. 287. 46 O’Hara, Inventing the Pinkertons, p. 76. 47 United States Senate, 76th Congress, 1st Session (1939), “Violations …, Strikebreaking Services,” Report no. 6, p. 34. 48 Senate 93, p. 162, Testimony of H.C. Frick. 49 Senate 93, p. 161, Testimony of H.C. Frick. 50 Senate 93, pp. 4, 261, Testimony of Robert A. Pinkerton; Frank Murray, Supt. Pinkerton National Detective Agency (hereafter PNDA). 51 Senate 93, Testimony of Frederick H. Heinde, commander of force at Homestead. 52 Jeremy Brecher, Strike! (San Francisco: Straight Arrow Books, 1972), pp. 56–60; Senate 93, pp. 68–79, Testimony of John W. Holway, “student” guard at Homestead. 53 Brecher, Strike! is most sympathetic to the workers; the most recent account is in O’Hara, Inventing the Pinkertons. 54 Smith, Blackjacks to Briefcases, pp. 10–11. 55 Senate 93, p. 140, Testimony of E.S. Parker. 56 Huberman, Spy Racket, pp. 91–92. 57 Senate 39, “Violations …, Strikebreaking Services,” Report no. 6, p. 13. 58 Senate 39, “Violations …, Strikebreaking Services,” pp. 6, 8, 20, 23–24. 59 Smith, Blackjacks to Briefcases, pp. 21–37. Felts quotation from Senate 39, “Violations …, Strikebreaking Services,” Report, p. 9, fn. 4, citing 63rd Cong. 1st Sess., Senate Subcommittee of Committee on Education and Labor, “Conditions in the Paint Creek District, West Virginia,” p. 877. 60 Senate 39, “Violations …, Strikebreaking,” Report, pp. 14–16.

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61 Senate 39, “Violations …, Strikebreaking,” pp. 130–131. 62 Senate 93, p. 14, Testimony of David Robertson, Asst. Gen. Supt. PNDA; p. 2, Testimony of Frank Murray, Supt. PNDA. 63 Senate 93, p. 150, Testimony of Chas. Nordrum, 2nd in command of guards at Homestead. 64 Senate 39, “Violations …, Strikebreaking,” Rpt. p. 17. 65 Senate 93, pp. 89–90, Testimony of Wm. J. Sutherland, Mooney & Boland D.A.; Smith, Blackjacks to Briefcases, p. 12; Senate 93, p. 137, Testimony of Edward E. Parker, Pinkerton guard, Siringo, Evil Isms, p. 41; United States Senate 77th Congress, 1st Session (1941), “Violations … Labor Policies of Employer Associations,” Report 151, part V, Report, p. 42. 66 United States Senate 76 Congress (1939), “Violations …, Labor Policies of Employer Associations,” Report, pp. 128–129, 6. 67 Senate 43, “Violations …, Resistance to Collective Bargaining,” pp. 756, 763. 68 Senate 39, “Violations, Strikebreaking,” pp. 26, 47, 61, and fn. 5. 69 GT-99, Labor Spy, pp. 152–153. 70 Schrecker, Many Are the Crimes, p. 50, citing Frank Donner, Protectors of Privilege: Red Squads and Police Repression in Urban America (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1990), pp. 7–43. 71 Mitrani, Chicago Police, pp. 194, 203. 72 Harring, Policing a Class Society, p. 144. 73 Mitrani, Chicago Police, p. 207; Smith, Blackjacks to Briefcases; Senate 43, “Violations …, Resistance to Collective Bargaining,” pt. 2, pp. 768, 735, 815. 74 Senate 43, “Violations …, Resistance to Collective Bargaining,” pt. 2, p. 760. 75 Brecher, Strike!, p. 133. 76 Senate 39, “Violations …, Strikebreaking,” pp. 36–38. 77 United States Senate, 75th Congress, 1st Session (1937), “Violations …, Industrial Munitions.” pt. 15D, p. 713, Testimony of J.M. Roush, Federal Labs salesman; Affidavit of Adolph Warshal, February 5, 1937, Exhibit 3581-A; Donald J. Wright, salesman, Federal Labs, May 15, 1934, exhibit 3579, p. 6998; test. Roush, p. 7099; B.H. Barker-Rex Coal Co., October 13, 1933, and October 24, 1933, Exhibits 3585,3587, pp. 7006–7007. 78 Senate 37, pt. 15D, “Violations …, Industrial Munitions,” C.S. Merrill—George F. Cake December 18, 1934, Exhibit 3577, p. 6995. 79 Mitrani, Chicago Police, p. 131. 80 Senate 43, “Violations …, Resistance to Collective Bargaining,” pt. 2, p. 815. 81 See Sadler, Coal and Iron Police. 82 Michael Balaban, “When Henry Ford’s Benevolent Secret Police Ruled His World,” http://jalopnik.com/when-henry-fords-benevolent-secret-police-ruled-hiswo-154962573, accessed August 31, 2017.

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Ann Fagan Ginger, ed. The Ford Hunger March (Berkeley, CA: Meiklejohn Civil Liberties Institute, 1980), throughout. 84 Huberman, Spy Racket, pp. 146–147 and photos between pp. 106–107. 85 Senate 41, “Violations …, Resistance to Collective Bargaining,” Report, pp. 73, 91. 86 Huberman, Spy Racket, pp. 152–153. 87 Senate 37, “Violations …, Industrial Espionage,” Report, pp. 19–20. 88 Hyde, “Undercover and Underground,” pp. 105–106. 89 Smith, Blackjacks to Briefcases, pp. 104–105. 90 https://www.gsaadvantage.gov/ref_text/GS07F0064M/GS07F0064M_online.htm, accessed July 16, 2016. 91 http://www.specialresponse.com/, accessed July 16, 2016. 92 Smith, Blackjacks to Briefcases, Illustration at p. 129. 93 Smith, Blackjacks to Briefcases, pp. 122–128. 94 Norwood, Strikebreaking, Ch. 3. 95 Norwood, Strikebreaking, pp. 86–106. 96 Senate 39, “Violations …, Strikebreaking,” p. 127. 97 For Farley, Whitehead and Bergoff, Smith, Blackjacks to Briefcases, pp. 40–73. 98 Senate 39, “Violation …, Strikebreaking,” Report, p. 32, quoting testimony of William F. Long, general manager of Associated Industries of Cleveland. 99 Senate 39, “Violations …, Strikebreakers,” Report, pp. 33, 65, Appendix C, pp. 184–185. 100 GT 99, Labor Spy, p. 153. 101 Senate 39, “Violations …, Strikebreaking,” Appendix C, p. 188. 102 Norwood, Strikebreaking, Ch. 1 and p. 11. 103 Mike Wallace, Greater Gotham: A History of New York City from 1898 to 1910 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017), pp. 709–711. 104 Fried, Rise and Fall of the Jewish Gangster, p. 35; David Yee, “Shtarker: The Convergence of Organized Crime and Organized Labor in New York Garment Industry, 1920–1940” (M.A. thesis, History Department, City University of New York Graduate Center, 2014), pp. 46–48; CUNY Academic Works, https:// academicworks.cuny.edu/cc_etds_theses/280. 105 Fried, Rise and Fall of the Jewish Gangster, pp. 82–83. 106 Wallace, Gotham, pp. 588–589; Jenna Weissman Joselit, Our Gang: Jewish Crime and the New York Jewish Community, 1900–1940 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1983), pp. 107–117. 107 Ira Henry Freeman, “Anastasia Rose through Stormy Ranks,” New York Times, October 26, 1957; Reppetto, American Mafia, p. 223. 108 Joselit, Our Gang, pp. 122–129; Fried, Rise and Fall of the Jewish Gangster, Ch. 4. 83

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Notes

Chapter 7 1

Michelle Alexander argues that prisons are part of a new Jim Crow apparatus in which young black men are incarcerated at disproportionately high rates and as ex-convicts lose civil rights such as voting, jury service, denial of housing and educational benefits, and entitlement payments. The new system reproduces one of America's most intrusive and elaborate policing systems, segregation as practiced in the South between the 1890s and 1970s. Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness (New York: The New Press, 2012). 2 Lawrence M. Friedman, Crime and Punishment in American History (New York: Basic Books, 1993), chs 1–2. 3 A former Indiana convict said that prisoners were paid an average of 44 cents per day for work that outside would pay $2.00 daily in 1871. Anon., State Prison Life: By One Who Has Been There (Cincinnati, OH: C.F. Vent, 1871), p. 410. 4 Dan Robbins, “Flashback: The History of Ossining's Sing Sing Prison,” Westchester, May 12, 2014, http://www.westchestermagazine.com/Flashback-The-History-OfOssinings-Sing-Sing-Prison/, accessed August 21, 2017. 5 David J. Rothman, Conscience and Convenience: The Asylum and Its Alternatives in Progressive America (Boston, MA: Little, Brown, 1980), pp. 1141–1142. 6 John H. Miskell, “Why Auburn? The Relation between the Prison and the Community,” Parts I–III, http://www.correctionhistory.org/auburn&osborne/ miskell/html/whyauburn_changes.html, accessed August 20, 2017. 7 “About Us: Corcraft,” http://www.corcraft.org/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/ WhoWeAreView?langId=-1&storeId=10001&catalogId=10051, accessed August 20, 2017. 8 “History of Michigan Prison Industries,” http://www.michigan.gov/msi/0,4642,7– 174-23878–65447–,00.html, https://westegg.com/inflation/infl.cgi, both accessed August 20, 2017. 9 Paul M. Lucko, “Prison System,” Texas State Historical Association, https:// tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/jjp03, accessed August 21, 2017. 10 Rothman, Conscience and Convenience, pp. 141–143. 11 Mitchel P. Roth, Crime and Punishment: A History of the Criminal Justice System (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth/Cengage, 2011), pp. 319–320. 12 UNICOR, “Factories with Fences,” https://unicor.gov/publications/corporate/ CATMC1101_C.pdf, accessed August 20, 2017. 13 William Andrew Todd, “Convict Lease System,” New Georgia Encyclopedia, http:// www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/articles/history-archaeology/convict-lease-system, accessed August 22, 2017. 14 Edward Ayers, Vengeance and Justice: Crime and Punishment in the 19th Century South (New York: Oxford, 1984), p. 196 and fn. 23; p. 201.

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15 Ayers, Vengeance, p. 203. 16 For general discussions of the convict lease system, Douglas A. Blackmon, Slavery by Another Name: The Re-enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II (New York: Doubleday, 2008); Alex Lichenstein, Twice the Work of Free Labor: The Political Economy of Convict Labor in the New South (London and New York: Verso, 1996), and many other sources. 17 Ayers, Vengeance, pp. 195–196. 18 Ayers, Vengeance, pp. 207–209. 19 Todd, “Convict Lease.” 20 Carl H. Moneyhan, “Convict Lease System,” The Encyclopedia of Arkansas History and Culture, http://www.encyclopediaofarkansas.net/encyclopedia/entry-detail. aspx?entryID=4153, accessed August 22, 2017. 21 Mary Ellen Curtin, “Convict Lease System,” Encyclopedia of Alabama, http://www. encyclopediaofalabama.org/article/h-1346, accessed August 22, 2017. 22 James B. Jones, Jr., “Convict Lease Wars,” The Tennessee Encyclopedia of History and Culture, http://tennesseeencyclopedia.net/entry.php?rec=306, accessed August 22, 2017. 23 Evan Sycammias, “All Prisons Should Be Managed by Private Enterprise: The Pros and Cons,” http://www.uplink.com.au/lawlibrary/Documents/Docs/Doc17.html, accessed September 10, 2017. 24 Malcolm M. Feely and Edward Rubin, “Prison Litigation and Bureaucratic Development,” Berkeley Law Scholarship Repository, January 1, 1992, http:// scholarship.law.berkeley.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1272&context=facpubs, accessed October 26, 2017. 25 “Federal Judge Rules Texas Prisons Still Unconstitutional …,” Prison Legal News, June 15, 1999, https://www.prisonlegalnews.org/news/2007/may/15/texas-prisonsystem-declared-unconstitutional-reforms-ordered/, accessed October 19, 2017. 26 West's Encyclopedia of American Law, 2nd ed., “Unconstitutional Prisons.” from https://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/Unconstitutional+Prisons, accessed October 19, 2017; Donna Selman and Paul Leighton, Punishment for Sale: Private Prisons, Big Business and the Incarceration Binge (Lanham, MD: Rowan and Littlefield, 2010), pp. 64, 63 (quotation). 27 Selman and Leighton, Punishment for Sale, p. 91. 28 Selman and Leighton, Punishment for Sale, p. 108. 29 Selman and Leighton, Punishment for Sale, pp. 121–122. 30 Douglas C. McDonald, “Private Penal Institutions,” Crime and Justice 16 (1992): 364–366. 31 Selman and Leighton, Punishment for Sale, pp. 58–59. 32 “About Our Facilities: Contract Prisons,” Federal Bureau of Prisons, https://www. bop.gov/about/facilities/contract_facilities.jsp, accessed October 19, 2017.

212

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33 Same as earlier, and CCA: About Us, Social Responsibility, http://www.cca.com/, accessed October 21, 2017. 34 Selman and Lieghton, Punishment for Sale, pp. 123–124. 35 Kate Linthicum, “Private Companies Profit from U.S. Immigrant Detention Boom,” Los Angeles Times, April 34, 2015, http://www.latimes.com/local/california/la-meimmigrant-detention-20150424-story.html, accessed August 18, 2017. 36 Eli Watkins and Sophie Tatum, “Private Prison Industry Sees Boom under Trump Administration,” CNN Politics, August 18, 2017, http://www.cnn.com/2017/08/18/ politics/private-prison-department-of-justice/index.html, accessed October 24, 2017. 37 Selman and Leighton, Punishment for Sale, pp. 61–62. 38 Curtis Blakely and Victor W. Bumphus, “Private and Public Sector Prisons: A Comparison of Select Characteristics,” Federal Probation 68, no. 1 (June 2004): 43–48. 39 Lucas Anderson, “Kicking the National Habit: The Legal and Policy Arguments for Abolishing Private Prison Contracts,” Public Contract Law Journal 39 (Fall 2009): 113–119. 40 New York Times, June 17, 18, 19, 2012, a series of articles in the “New York” section. 41 Cody Mason, “Too Good to Be True: Private Prisons in America,” The Sentencing Project, January 2012, http://sentencingproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/ Too-Good-to-be-True-Private-Prisons-in-America.pdf, accessed October 12, 2017. Connecticut, West Virginia, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Missouri, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New York, North Dakota, and Oregon had no private prisoners between 1999 and 2010. Arkansas, Maine, Minnesota, Mississippi, Nevada, Utah, and Washington abandoned private prisons between 1999 and 2010. 42 “Private Prisons in the United States,” The Sentencing Project, August 28, 2017, http://www.sentencingproject.org/publications/private-prisons-united-states/, accessed October 19, 2017. The statistics are somewhat different from the earlier version cited above: states with no private prisons in 2015 were Washington, Utah, Nebraska, Kansas, Minnesota, Iowa, Missouri, Arkansas, Michigan, Wisconsin, Illinois, Kentucky, West Virginia, New York, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Maine. 43 “Racial Makeup of Private Prisons Shows Disparities, New OSU Study Finds,” Oregon State University News and Research Communications, August 6, 2014, http://oregonstate.edu/ua/ncs/archives/2014/aug/racial-makeup-private-prisonsshows-disparities-new-osu-study-finds, accessed October 14, 2017. 44 E. Ann Carson, “Prisoners in 2103,” U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, Bureau of Justice Statistics, September 2014, p. 14. 45 Blakely and Bumphus, “Private and Public Sector Prisons,” p. 47.

Notes

213

46 Selman and Leighton, Punishment for Sale, p. 93. 47 Madison Pauly, “A Brief History of America's Private Prison Industry,” Mother Jones, July/August 2016, http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/06/historyof-americas-private-prison-industry-timeline/, accessed September 5, 2017; Andy Kroll, “Criminal: How Lockup Quotas and ‘Low Crime Taxes’ Guarantee Profits for Private Prison Corporations,” http://www.documentcloud.org/documents/798018in-the-public-interest-report-on-private-prison.html#document/p2 (reprinted from Mother Jones, September 19, 2013), accessed September 5, 2017. 48 Selman and Leighton, Punishment for Sale, p. 79. 49 David E. Pozen, “Managing a Correctional Marketplace: Prison Privatization in the United States and the United Kingdom,” Journal of Politics XIX (2003): 270, 278, 281 and throughout.

Chapter 8 1 Privatization became popular in Eastern Europe after the end of Communism, where vast state enterprises were privatized; Margaret Thatcher’s government privatized the state-owned railway and other industries in the UK. The ’80s and ’90s were decades of privatization globally. 2 Brodeur, Policing Web, pp. 263–265; Tate Fegley, “Private Policing Isn’t a Fantasy,” Mises Wire, July 12, 2015, https://mises.org/blog/private-policing-isnt-fantasy, accessed April 5, 2017. Competition, though, can lead to cost cutting to meet competitors’ prices, which can affect the quality of service. 3 Jeremiah P. Shaloo, “The Private Police of Pennsylvania,” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 146 (November 1929): 55. 4 James Kakalik and Sorrel Wildhorn, “Private Police in the United States: Findings and Recommendations,” RAND Report, January 1971, https://www.rand.org/pubs/ reports/R0869.html, accessed December 15, 2017; Elizabeth E. Joh, “The Paradox of Private Policing,” UC Davis Legal Studies Research Paper Series, University of California, Davis: School of Law, Research Paper 23, January 2009, 69. 5 Brodeur, Policing Web, pp. 263–265; David Bayley and Clifford Shearing, “The Future of Policing,” Law and Society Review 30, no. 3 (1996): 585–606, quotation at 588. 6 David Garland, “The Limits of the Sovereign State: Strategies of Crime Control in Contemporary Society,” The British Journal of Criminology 36, no. 4 (Autumn 1996): 445–471 (quotation at 453). 7 Malcolm Thorburn, “Reinventing the Night-Watchman State?” The University of Toronto Law Journal 60, no. 2 (Spring 2010): 425–443, 427. Quotations at 442, 427. 8 Joh, “The Forgotten Threat,” pp. 357–389. 9 Friedman, Crime and Punishment in American History, p. 174.

Selected Bibliography Since there are so many single-citation sources, listing them all would make this bibliography very long. Consequently, only the sources that were particularly important for the argument or information in each chapter are listed. Some sources were used in more than one chapter. Rather than repeating them, they are listed under the chapter for which they were most important. Although other newspapers are cited, the New York Times has been treated as “the Newspaper of Record,” all citations to www.nytimes.com/search. The citations are primarily for information. Editorials and letters are identified as such.

Chapter 1 Garland, David. “The Limits of the Sovereign State: Strategies of Crime Control in Contemporary Society,” The British Journal of Criminology 36, no. 4 (Autumn 1996), 445–471. Gerstle, Gary. Liberty and Coercion: The Paradox of American Government. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2015. Joh, Elizabeth. “The Forgotten Threat: Private Police and the State,” Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies 13, no. 2 (Summer 2006), 357–389. Mennell, Stephen. The American Civilizing Process. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 2007. Novak, William J. “The Myth of the ‘Weak’ American State,” American Historical Review 113, no. 3 (June 2008), 752–772. Smith, Beverly A. and Frank T. Morn. “The History of Privatization in Criminal Justice,” chapter I in David Shichor and Michael Gilbert, eds., Privatization in Criminal Justice, Past, Present and Future. Cincinnati, OH: Anderson Publishing Co., 2000. Spierenburg, Pieter. “Democracy Came Too Early: A Tentative Explanation for the Problem of American Homicide,” American Historical Review 111, no. 1 (February 2006), 104–114. Tocqueville, Alexis de. Democracy in America. Ed. Francis Bowen, 2 vols., 2nd ed. Cambridge, MA: Sever and Francis, 1863. First published 1831, 1835.

Chapter 2 Brown, Richard M. No Duty to Retreat: Violence and Values in American History and Society. New York: Oxford University Press, 1991.

Selected Bibliography

215

Cornell, Saul. A Well-regulated Militia: The Founding Fathers and the Origins of Gun Control in America. New York: Oxford University Press, 2006. Light, Caroline E. Stand Your Ground: A History of America’s Love Affair with Lethal Self-defense. New York: Oxford University Press, 2017.

Chapter 3 Ayers, Edward. The Promise of the New South: Life after Reconstruction. New York: Oxford University Press, 1992. Brown, Richard M. “The American Vigilante Tradition,” in Hugh Davis Graham and Ted Robert Gurr, eds., Violence in America: Historical and Comparative Perspectives, Report to the National Commission on the Causes and Prevention of Violence. New York: Signet Books, 1969. Brown, Richard M. Strain of Violence: Historical Studies of American Violence and Vigilantism. New York: Oxford University Press, 1977. Capozzola, Christopher. “The Only Badge Needed Is Your Patriotic Fervor,” Journal of American History 88, no. 4 (March 2002), 1354–1382. Caute, David. The Great Fear, the Anti-Communist Purge under Truman and Eisenhower. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1978. Chalmers, David M. Hooded Americanism: The History of the Ku Klux Klan. New York: Franklin Watts, 1976. Einstater, Werner J. “Citizen Patrols: Prevention or Control?” Crime and Social Justice 21/22 (1984), 200–212. Fronc, Jennifer. New York Undercover: Private Surveillance in the Progressive Era. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2009. Gordon, Linda. The Second Coming of the KKK: The Ku Klux Klan of the 1920s and the American Political Tradition. New York: Liveright, 2017. Jensen, Joan. The Price of Vigilance. Chicago, IL: Rand McNally Co., 1968. Junas, Daniel. “Rise of Citizen Militias, Angry White Guys with Guns,” Political Research Associates, Covert Action Quarterly, April 24, 1995. http://www.publiceye. org/rightist/dj_mili.html. McGirr, Lisa. The War on Alcohol: Prohibition and the Rise of the American State. New York: W.W. Norton, 2016. Powers, Richard Gid. Not without Honor: The History of American Anticommunism. New York: The Free Press, 1995. Shrecker, Ellen. Many Are the Crimes: McCarthyism in America. Boston, MA: Little, Brown, 1998. Theoharis, Athan. “The FBI and the American Legion Contact Program,” Political Science Quarterly 100, no. 1 (Summer 1985), 271–286. Trelease, Allen W. White Terror: The Ku Klux Klan Conspiracy and Southern Reconstruction. New York: Harper Torchbooks, c. 1971.

216

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Chapter 4 Anon. “Bouncer (doorman).” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bouncer_(doorman), accessed August 11, 2017. Becker, Theodore M. “The Place of Private Police in Society: An Area of Research for the Social Sciences,” Social Problems 21, no. 3 (February 1974), 438–453. Blackmar, Elizabeth and Roy Rosensweig. “Training the ‘Ignorant’ How to Use a Park,” Central Park History. http://www.centralparkhistory.com/timeline/timeline_1860_ ignorant.html. Blakely, Edward W. and Mary Gail Snyder. Fortress America: Gated Communities in the United States. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 1997. Brodeur, Jean-Paul. The Policing Web. New York: Oxford University Press, 2010. Calder, James D. “Policing and the Private Security Option: Functional Transparency, Re-privatization, and Implications in Law,” in David Shichor and Michael J. Gilbert, eds., Privatization in Criminal Justice: Past, Present and Future. Cincinnati, OH: Anderson Publishing Co., 2001, pp. 101–107. Chronopolis, Themis. Spatial Regulation in New York City: From Urban Renewal to Zero Tolerance. New York and London: Routledge, 2011. Depmsey, John S. Introduction to Private Security. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 2008. Fixler, Jr., Philip E. and Robert W. Poole, Jr. “Can Police Services Be Privatized?” Annals of the American Association for Political and Social Science 498 (July 1988), 108–118. Hadden, Sally E. Slave Patrols: Law and Violence in Virginia and the Carolinas. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001. Reiss, Jr., Albert J. Private Employment of Public Police. University of Michigan Library reprint, 1988. South, Nigel. “Privatizing Policing in the European Market: Some Issues for Theory, Policy, and Research,” European Sociological Review 10, no. 3 (December 1994), 219–233. Stoughton, Seth W. “Moonlighting, the Private Employment of Public Officers,” University of Illinois Law Review 2017, no. 5 (2017), 1848–1900.

Chapter 5 Beisel, Nicola. Imperiled Innocents: Anthony Comstock and Family Reproduction in America. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997. Broun, Heywood and Margaret Leech. Anthony Comstock: Roundsman of the Lord. New York: Albert and Charles Boni, 1927. Gilfoyle, Timothy. City of Eros: New York City, Prostitution, and the Commercialization of Sex, 1790–1920. New York: W.W. Norton Company, 1992. Hunt, William R. Front Page Detective: William J. Burns and the Detective Profession, 1880–1930. New York: Popular Press, 1990.

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217

Johnson, David R. Policing the Urban Underworld: The Impact of Crime on the Development of the American Police. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 1979. Jones, Mark. Criminal Justice Pioneers in U.S. History. Boston, MA: Pearson, c. 2005. Mclean, Maggie. “Kate Warne,” Civil War Women, March 22, 2011. https://www. civilwarwomenblog.com/kate-warne/. Miller, Neil. Banned in Boston: The Watch and Ward Society’s Crusade against Books, Burlesque, and the Social Evil. Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 2010. Mitrani, Sam. The Rise of the Chicago Police Department: Class and Conflict, 1850–1894. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2013. Morn, Frank. “The Eye That Never Sleeps”: A History of the Pinkerton National Detective Agency. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1982. O’Hara, S. Paul. Inventing the Pinkertons: Or, Spies. Sleuths, Mercenaries, and Thugs. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2016. O’Toole, George. The Private Sector: Private Spies, Rent-a-Cops, and the Police-Industrial Complex. New York: W.W. Norton, 1972. Priest, Diana and William Arlen, “National Security Inc.,” Washington Post, July 18–20, 2010, series of investigative reports, “Top Secret America.” Siringo, Charles. A Cowboy Detective: The True Story of Twenty-two Years with a Famous Detective Agency. New York: Charles B. Conkey Co., 1912. Siringo, Charles. Two Evil Isms: Anarchism and Pinkertonism. New York: Steck-Vaughn Co., 1915. Sloat, Warren. A Battle for the Soul of New York: Tannany Hall, Police Corruption, Vice, and Reverend Charles Parkhurst’s Crusade against Them, 1892–1895. New York: Cooper Square Press, 2002. Walton, John. The Legendary Detective: The Private Eye in Fact and Fiction. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2015.

Chapter 6 Balaban, Michael. “When Henry Ford’s Benevolent Secret Police Ruled His World.” http://jalopnik.com/when-henry-fords-benevolent-secret-police-ruled-hiswo-154962573. Brecher, Jeremy. Strike! San Francisco, CA: Straight Arrow Books, 1972. Friedman, Morris. The Pinkerton Labor Spy. New York: Wilshire Book Co., 1907. GT-99. Labor Spy. Indianapolis, IN: Bobbs-Merrill Co., 1937. Harring, Sidney L. Policing a Class Society: The Experience of American Cities, 1865– 1915. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1983. Hyde, Charles K. “Undercover and Underground: Labor Spies and Mine Management in the Early Twentieth Century,” Business History Review 60 (Spring 1986), 1–27. Huberman, Leo. The Labor Spy Racket. New York: Modern Age Books, c. 1937.

218

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Norwood, Stephen J. Strikebreaking and Intimidation: Mercenaries and Masculinity in Twentieth-century America, 2nd ed. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002. Sadler, Spencer J. Pennsylvania’s Coal and Iron Police. Charleston, SC: Arcadia Publishing, c. 2009. Smith, Robert M. From Blackjacks to Briefcases: A History of Commercialized Strikebreaking and Union Busting. Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, c. 2003. Spielman, Jean E. The Stool Pigeon and the Open Shop Movement. Minneapolis, MI: American Publishing Co., 1923. United States Senate, 52nd Congress, 2nd Session (1892–1893). Committee on the Employment of Armed Bodies of Men for Private Purposes, Report 1280. United States Senate, 75th Congress, 1st Session (1937). “Violations …, Industrial Munitions.” pt. 15D. United States Senate, 75th Congress, 2nd Session (1937). “Violations of Free Speech and the Rights of Labor,” Hearings before the subcommittee of the Committee on Education and Labor: Industrial Espionage. United States Senate, 76 Congress, 1st Session (1939). “Violations …, Strikebreaking Services, Report no. 6. United States Senate, 76th Congress (1939). “Violations …, Labor Policies of Employer Associations,” Report. United States Senate, 77th Congress, 1st Session (1941). “Violations … Labor Policies of Employer Associations,” Report 151, part V, Report. United States Senate, 78th Congress, 1st Session (1943). “Violations … the Organization of Resistance to Collective Bargaining in California,” Report no. 398, Part V.

Chapter 7 Anderson, Lucas. “Kicking the National Habit: The Legal and Policy Arguments for Abolishing Private Prison Contracts,” Public Contract Law Journal 39 (Fall 2009), 113–119. Ayers, Edward. Vengeance and Justice: Crime and Punishment in the 19th Century South. New York: Oxford University Press, 1984. Blackmon, Douglas A. Slavery by Another Name: The Re-enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II. New York: Doubleday, 2008. Blakely, Curtis and Victor W. Bumphus. “Private and Public Sector Prisons: A Comparison of Select Characteristics,” Federal Probation 68 (June 2004), 27–31. Mason, Cody. “Too Good to Be True: Private Prisons in America,” The Sentencing Project, January 2012, http://sentencingproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/ Too-Good-to-be-True-Private-Prisons-in-America.pdf.

Selected Bibliography

219

McDonald, Douglas C. “Private Penal Institutions,” Crime and Justice 16 (1992), 361–419. Pauly, Madison. “A Brief History of America’s Private Prison Industry.” Mother Jones (July/August 2016). http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/06/history-ofamericas-private-prison-industry-timeline/. Roth, Mitchel P. Crime and Punishment: A History of the Criminal Justice System. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth/Cengage, 2011. Rothman, David J. Conscience and Convenience: The Asylum and Its Alternatives in Progressive America. Boston, MA: Little, Brown, 1980. Selman, Donna and Paul Leighton. Punishment for Sale: Private Prisons, Big Business and the Incarceration Binge. Lanham, MD: Rowan and Littlefield, 2010. The Sentencing Project. “Private Prisons in the United States,” August 28, 2017. http:// www.sentencingproject.org/publications/private-prisons-united-states/.

Chapter 8 Bayley, David, and Clifford Shearing. “The Future of Policing,” Law and Society Review 30, no. 3 (1996), 585–606. Garland, David. “The Limits of the Sovereign State: Strategies of Crime Control in Contemporary Society,” The British Journal of Criminology 36, no. 4 (Autumn 1996), 445–471. Joh, Elizabeth. “The Paradox of Private Policing,” UC Davis Legal Studies Research Paper Series 23 (January 2009). Thorburn, Malcolm. “Reinventing the Night-Watchman State?” The University of Toronto Law Journal 60, no. 2 (Spring 2010), 425–443.

Index Note: Page references with letter ‘n’ followed by locators denote note numbers Adams Express robbery 76, 77, 94 Adam Smith Institute 65, 173 African-Americans (includes Blacks) Alexander, Marissa 19 Black codes 15 Black Panthers 25, 28–9 Bruseaux, Sheridan 95 Chicago race riot 46 and Committee of Seven 110 Conley, Jim 92 control of 38 convict lease 165 Deacons of Defense and Justice 28 Dempsey, Rev. Oberia 61–2 denial of firearms to 15 execution for murder of 49 fear of as criminals 61 14th Amendment 35 Gilmore, Louis Q. J. 95 in Guardian Angels 62 gun owners 18 King, L.S. 95 leaders spied upon 47 lynchings of 37, 47, 49 Marlow, Samuel 95 Martin, Trayvon 19 in Michigan penitentiary 164 in New Orleans 69 Operation Interruption 61–2 patrol groups 61–2 private detectives 95–6 in public and private prisons 171 2nd KKK 25, 38, 39, 48 segregation 37 self-defense groups 47 self-defense pleas of 20 sharecropping 36 and Shomrim 63–4 slave patrols 55 in state militias 15

street vendors 6 strikebreakers 155 teenagers and Bernhard Goetz 14 3rd KKK 49 Thomas, Ora 40 vice among 110 voter registration 48 voting rights 15, 102 Agent provocateur 102, 134, 137 airport security, private 78–9 Alabama Adams Express Co. robbery 76–7 Birmingham steel industry 155 bounty hunters 125 Charlie Siringo in 101 execution of KKK member 49 gun ownership 18 gun permit policy 22 Ku Klux Klan violence 48 laws against cooperation with lynchers 38 lynching by KKK 49 Sheriff ’s attitude toward law 6 training of security guards 56 unconstitutional prisons 168 Alaska Charlie Siringo in 101 gun ownership 18 gun permit policy 22 training of security guards 56 unconstitutional prisons 168 Alexander, Marissa, self-defense plea 19–20 Altgeld, Gov. John P. 132 Amalgamated Association of Iron and steel workers 42, 144 Amateur detectives citizen’s arrest 24 in Committee of 15 109 in Committee of 14 109 in Committee of 7 110

Index early police 179 in Kehillah 111 American Business Consultants 113 American Defense Society 43, 46 American Federation of Labor 131, 135, 137–8, 141–2, 144 American Legion 41, 47, 113–15 American Protective League 39, 41–4 American Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals 54 Anastasia, Albert 158 Anti-Communists 112–16 Anti-Horse Thief Associations 40, 51, 54–5 “Anti-Pinkerton Law” 144 Anti-Saloon League 39 Arizona Federal District Attorney 102 Gun Permit policy 22, 185 n.40 Oro Valley private police 58 private prison contracts 172 costs 171 escapees 171 Arizona Border Recon 67 Arkansas gun permit policy 22 private police in 58 “Armed citizen” 11–30 Arms, right to bear 15–18, 25, 28 Army, British 192 n.40 Army, US 4, 14, 35–6, 44, 60, 102 Arpaio, Joe 67 Art Students’ League 104 Associated Farmers 147 Athena Academy 74 Atherton and Dunn detective agency 99–100 Auburn Prison 162–4 Austin, Benjamin 11 Austin, Charles 12 authority, of private police 3, 32, 49, 57, 70, 72, 104, 147, 175 Babson, Roger 140 background check 22, 57, 124 badge 77, 87, 105, 154 bail bondsmen 125, 127 bail reform 127- 128 Baldwin-Felts detective agency 145 Baltimore and Ohio railroad 76 Bangout, Yan 24

221

Bangs, George H. 97 Barney, Edward 52 Bates, Sanford 164–5 Beecher, Henry Ward 103 Bennett, Harry 152 Bergh, Henry 54 Bergoff, Pearl 155–7 Bielaski, A. Bruce 42 Black and Decker strike 147–8 Black Bart 101 Black Cube detective agency 120–1 Black Legion 41 blacklist 115 Black Panthers 25, 28–9 blacks. See African-Americans black self-defense groups 25, 28 Blackwater security corp. 61 Bloomberg, Michael 124 bodyguards 1, 56, 74–5 bombs, bombing in anti-bussing riots 49 fake, in airports 79 of Federal Building 148 Haymarket 133, 148 illegal possession of 148 KKK use of 48 of Los Angeles Times building 92, 121, 135 planted by spies? 45 Border Patrol, U.S. 66–7 bouncers 56, 74–6, 80 bounty hunters 124–7 as environmental law enforcers in California 126 as tax-collectors in Connecticut 126 “Boy Spies” 46 Bradley, Cyrus P. 85 Branch Davidian 27 Briggs, Albert 42 Brockway, William 97 Brown, Richard M., 32, 33 Bruseaux, Sheridan 95 Buchalter, Louis “Lepke” 158 Bugas, James J. 153 Bundy family 26 Burdeau v. McDowell (1921) 71 Bureau of Investigation, US 42–3, 45, 93, 101, 106 Colorado State 120 Bureau of Social Hygiene 110–11 Burkhart, Brett 171

222

Index

Burns, William 91–3 Director of F.B.I. 93 early detective work 91 founds detective agency 92 joins U.S. Secret Service 91 Leo Frank Case 92 Los Angeles Times bombing case 92, 121, 135 wiretapping 92–3, 121 as writer 92 Burns detective agency, agents absorbed into Securitas 93 control of I.W.W. in 20s 138 ex-FBI agents in 96 income from guards 142 Morris Lublin 137 planting Dictaphone by 92 Bush, Pres. G.W., 61 Business Improvement Districts (BIDs) 73–4 Byrnes Act, 1938 156 Byrnes, Thomas 88 California 2nd KKK in 40 ban on “open carry” 23 Black Panthers 28 bounty hunters 126 caseload of detectives in 123 deputization of strikebreakers 1930s 147 employers’ associations in 147–8 licensing bouncers 76 licensing of security companies 146 Logan Clark, private detective 117 moonlighting police in 122 police and agricultural strikers 149 private detectives in 1920s 94 private juvenile prison 169 salaries of private detectives 56 Supreme Court ruling on private police powers 70 Western Research Foundation 114 Campus police 56, 58–9 Canada bounty hunters kidnap from 126 citizen’s arrest 24 escape of “Marm” Mandelbaum to 99 private airport security 79 private police 64 Carry, concealed 21–3 Carry, open 23, 28

“Castle doctrine” 18 Catholic Legion of Decency 115 Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) 123 Central Park police 53–4 Chanler, Clifford A. 126–27 Chase, J. Frank 106 Chicago, Ill 1919 steel strike in 141 African-American strikebreakers in 155 Allan Pinkerton as police detective, 1849 8 Anthony Pellicano in 121 APL raids on I.W.W. 43 arguments about private police 8 black sox scandal 46 citizens’ Association of 150 Cora Strayer, private detective 95 creates police detectives, 1861 85 deputization of private guards in 146 guards from, in Homestead strike 143 I.W.W. convention 1920 and detectives 138 Meatpackers’ strike and Pinkertons 144 pay of private detectives 117 Pinkerton and Moore guards, 1857–58 52 police and garment strikers 148 police and strikers 133 police chief and Pinkerton guards 52 police moonlighting in 122 private police, 1851 52 private supply of arms to police 150 race riots 46–7 shared methods with Pinkertons 97 University of Chicago campus police 56 use of Pinkerton detectives 96 Vice Commission 110 Wm. Burns hides suspects in 135 Christian Identity 27 citizen’s arrest 24, 57, 83 citizens’ Association of Chicago 150 civil recovery 71 Civil War, US 4, 14, 15, 23, 35, 89, 101, 103, 131, 164 Clarke, Logan 117 class conflict 2, 131–2 Clinton, President Bill 61, 121, 154 Coal Creek War 167 Cohen, Sam “Chowderhead” 157 Cold War 47, 112, 165 college students as strikebreakers 157

Index Colorado Charlie Siringo in Archuleta County 100 coal strikes and Baldwin-Felts detectives 145 gun permit policy 22 licensing of private detectives 86 Ludlow strike 145 and “pretexting” 120 regulation of strike guards 146 Committee of Fifteen 109–10 Committee of Fourteen 109–10 Committee of Seven 110 Communism, Communists 29, 46–7, 49, 111–16, 157 communities, gated 1, 56, 72, 176 company police 41, 48, 80, 133, 147–8, 151–3, 158 compounding a felony 84 Comstock Act, 1873 103, 110 Comstock, Anthony 103–6 congregate prison system 162 Congress, US 14–16, 36, 78–9, 101–3, 105, 113, 120, 141, 156, 162, 164 Connor, Bull 48 Conover, Joseph 80 Conservative Party, UK 64–5 constables 51, 85, 133, 161, 194 n.50 Constitution, US 3, 14, 16, 25, 70, 168, 181 Constitutional rights 31, 113, 168, 178 contractors 3, 79, 123 national security 128 prison labor 162, 166, 179 Contract prisons 169 contracts, government 142, 162–5, 167, 169, 172 contributions to police by employers 148 convict lease 165–7 Corcraft 163 Corporations Auxiliary detective agency 141 Corrections Corporation of America (CoreCivic) 168–70, 172 Corrections corporations 167–73 corruption 91, 93, 99, 107–9, 111, 125, 192 Corvair 118 Cracraft, Jane 120 Crawford, Lynn T. 26 crime 1, 3, 16, 19, 21, 24, 26, 31, 32, 33, 38, 49, 52–4, 57–9, 61–70, 72, 74, 77, 84, 86, 91, 102, 107, 110–11, 118, 122, 125, 153, 167, 171–3, 175, 177–8

223

criminals 3, 16, 23, 29, 32, 34, 36, 46, 61, 64, 76–7, 83, 85, 88, 89, 96, 98, 100, 102, 122, 125, 148, 156, 157, 161, 178 Danbury Mall 71 Darrow, Clarence 135 Deacons of Defense and Justice 28 Delaware, gun ownership in 18 democracy 2, 4, 5, 64 Dempsey, Rev. Oberia 61–2 detective agencies 76, 85, 88, 94, 133, 136, 140, 141, 144, 146–8, 151, 157 Anthony Pellicano 121 Atherton and Dunn 99 Argenbright 78 Baldwin-Felts 145 Bergoff 155 Black Cube 120 Bodell 94 Booz Allen Hamilton 128–29 Burns 79, 92–3, 96, 137, 138 Corporations Auxiliary 141 Edward Hall 95 Furlong 91 James Mintz 124 Keystone 95 King 95 Marshall Service 136 Mooney and Boland 146, 148 National Negro 95 Northwestern Police 76 O’Neill Industrial Services 149 Pinkerton’s National 88 Railroad Audit 141 Sherman 140–1 Sherwood 147 T & M Protective Services 118 Thiel 138–9 Touch Tome Info. Inc. 119 detectives, corporate 116–17 detectives, fictional 83–4 detectives, private (includes detective, investigator) 4, 65, 85–8, 94, 99, 102, 107, 109, 118–19, 121–4, 129, 133, 138, 144, 175, 177 industrial espionage 133–42 detention, pre-trial 127 Dewey, Thomas 158 Diamond, Legs 157

224 DiMaio, Frank 89, 90 district attorneys 35, 60, 80, 91, 97–9, 102, 134, 149, 158 District of Columbia (D.C.) 17, 23, 39, 46, 56, 68, 79, 114, 123 District of Columbia v. Heller (2008) 17 domestic abuse 20, 61 Donaghey, George 166 Dukes, Nicholas 13 duty to retreat 11–14, 18–19, 29, 182 n.1 Dwyer, William 158 Easley, Ralph, 45–6 Eastman, Monk 157 Eisenhower, Pres. Dwight 112 Elias, Norbert 179, 180 embezzlement 116, 123 employers (includes bosses) 2, 4, 42, 43, 45, 52, 59, 67, 68–70, 74, 75, 80, 89, 114–15, 131–3, 135, 136, 139–42, 147–52, 154–5, 157–9, 164 employers’ associations 147–9 Erie Chemical Co. 149 Evans, Hiram 38 Farley, Jim 155 Farmers’ Transportation Association 147 farms, state 167 Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) 3, 4, 26, 28, 49, 90, 93, 96, 99, 101, 113–15, 119, 121, 122, 133, 148, 153 ex-agents in private police 96, 114–15, 119, 153 Federal Laboratories Corp. 149 Federal Prison Industries 164–5 Fein, “Dopey Benny” 157–8 Field, Charles 87, 113, 116, 118 fink (strikebreaker) 155–7 Fisher, John M. 114 Fisher, Shoshana 75 Florida bounty hunters 125 during Reconstruction 36 gun permit policy 22 KKK in 48 open carry 23 police moonlighting 68 private boy’s reformatory 169 private police 58

Index railroad police 78 stand your ground laws 18–21 “flying squadron” 153 Foley, Tim 67 Ford, Henry 152 Ford, Henry II 153 Forrest, Gen. Nathan B. 36 Fortner, Michael 62 France nature of the state 8 private police 65–6 Frank, Gustave 98–9 Frank, Leo 92ff Fraud charges of, against minutemen leaders 67 confessions obtained by 88 election 91, 97 insurance 1 land, in Oregon 92 postal 198 n.21 private detectives and 117, 125 “French flea circuses” 105 French Quarter Task Force 69 Frick, Henry C. 142–3 Friedman, Lawrence 179 furriers union 157 Gale, William 27 gambling 5, 99, 102, 105–7, 110–11 gangsters 48, 90, 157, 158 Gardiner, Charles 107–8 Garland, David 178 gated communities 1, 56, 72–3, 176 Gates, Darryl 122 General Motors 118–19, 153 GEO group 170 Georgia 1919 bombing in 47 Adams Express robbery 76 convict lease 165–6 George Simmons and KKK 38 gun dealers 124 gun permit policy 22 Leo Frank case 92 whitecappers in 34 Germans in World War I 43, 45–6 Germany, private security in 66 Gilcrist, Jim 66 Gillen, Vincent 118–19

Index Gilmore, Louis Q. J. 95 Giuliani, Rudolph 62, 73, 74 Goetz, Bernhard 14 Government, Federal 3, 15, 25–9, 39, 42–8, 60–1, 64, 101, 106, 132, 144, 156, 158, 164, 169, 170, 172 Greene, Francis 99 Greensboro, North Carolina 49 Gritz, Bo 29 guards body 1, 74–5 prison 161–2, 166–8, 170–1 security 1, 3, 24, 51–2, 56–7, 59–60, 63–9, 71–2, 79, 89, 93, 119, 175–6 strikebreaker 40, 76, 77, 133, 141, 142–9, 151, 154–9 gun culture 179 dealers 16, 24 ownership 16, 18 restriction, regulation, control 7, 16–18, 22–4, 28, 124 sales 16, 28, 150 use of 19, 24, 40, 60, 66–7, 77, 94, 145, 154, 181 n.13 Harding, Pres. Warren G. 93 Harrison, Carter 133 hate crime 19 Hawes-Cooper Act, 1929 163 Haymarket bombing 133, 148 Hays, Gil 85 Haywood, William 134 “Herrin massacre” 40 Hewlett-Packard 120 Hispanics gun ownership 18 in public and private prisons 171 Hochstim, Max 108 Holmes, Justice O.W. 14 Holmes, Sherlock 87, 92 Holway, John W. 143 Homeland Security, Department of 128 homeless 73 honor 12–13, 23, 32, 34, 179 “hooked men” 136 Hoover, J. Edgar 47, 113 Horn, Tom 34 Hospital Corp. of America 169 hospitals, privatization of 169

225

House Un-American Activities Committee 111, 114 Hume, James B. 101 Idaho 1905 murder of ex-governor 134 gun ownership 18 gun permit policy 22 Randy Weaver in 27 regulation of strike guards 145 ideology, American xi, 2, 7–8, 26–7, 57, 158, 179, 182 n.15 Illinois abolition of private prisons 171 Anthony Pellicano in 121 ban on open carry 23 Braidwood strike 142 early life of Allan Pinkerton in 88 Gov. J.P. Altgeld 132 gun permit policy 22 KKK in 40 O’Fallon as union town 133 private police 58 regulation of strike guards 141, 145–6 wildcat strike in 149 immigrants 25, 38, 40, 45, 66, 67, 155, 170 in private prisons 170 Imperiale, Anthony 63 incarceration, mass 1, 210 n.1 “independent police” 51 Indiana Anti-horse thief association in 55 D.C. Stephens and KKK 39–40 detectives from, in New York City 99 gun permit policy 22 killing at New Castle and self-defense 12 lynch mob 91 individualism 2, 7–8, 181 n.13, 182 n.15 industrial espionage 133–41 “industrial harmony” 140 industrial munitions billy clubs 143, 149 machine guns 150, 152 teargas 144, 148–50, 153 Industrial Workers of the World (I.W.W.) 43–5, 47, 137–8 industries, prison 161–5 insanity, temporary 13, 20 “inside man” 52 interstate sale of prison products 163

226 Iowa Anti-horse thief association in 54 gun permit policy 22 lack of private prisoners in 212 n.41 Jackson, Pres. Andrew, 4 jails, county 7, 127, 161 James, Jesse 90 Jim Crow (segregation, disenfranchisement) 25, 210 n.1 Joh, Elizabeth 178 jurisdiction 3, 4, 17, 90 Jury, jurors Art Students’ League case 104 Bergoff and Rand case 156 brothel owners’ case 108 Bundy family case 92 Burns charged with tampering 92 civil rights case 49 Darrow charged with tampering 135 Goetz case 14 judge’s charge in Philadelphia riots case 32 Nutt case 13–14 Parkhurst grand jury 107 Runyan case 12 in self-defense cases in UK. 182 n.1 Selfridge case 12 United Hebrew Trades case 158 Zimmerman case 19 Justice Department, US 19, 41, 92, 101–2, 138, 169, 177 Juvenile Delinquency Prevention Act, 1974 169 Kalamazoo, Michigan, private police 57 Kansas detective from 40 gun permit policy 22 Kansas Flour Mills Co. 138 regulation of strike guards 145 Sen. William A. Pfeffer 144 stand your ground in 19 violence in mid-19th century 23 Kehillah 111 Kentucky gun permit policy 22 Marion private prison 169 regulation of strike guards 145 stand your ground in 19

Index kidnapping bodyguard protection from 75 by bounty hunters 126 charge against J. Conover 80 by detectives 3, 90 investigation of 99 King, L.S. 95 Kneeland, George 110 Knights of the Flaming Circle 40 Kroll, Julius 116 Ku Klux Klan disarming of blacks by 15 during World War I 46–7 first 35ff opposition to 36, 40 and prohibition 25, 38–40, 48 as reactive vigilantes 34 as red hunters 111 second 38ff third 48ff labor consulting firms 153 labor, convict 161ff labor unions 65, 77, 88–90, 131–3, 137, 139–42, 147, 149, 153–5, 157–8, 164. See also detective agencies; strikebreakers, guards, for; industrial espionage; police, public; strikes and detectives 77, 89–90, 137 opposition to convict labor 162, 164 police 175 in UK 65 Lafollette, Sen. Robert, Committee 141, 147–50, 156–7 Lampley, Ray 26 Latrobe, Benjamin 76 Law Enforcement Assistance Administration 177 Law Enforcement League 40 Lawyers, Attorneys xi, 5, 13, 17, 20, 31, 104, 108, 114, 126, 156 legislature, state 16, 19, 21–2, 77, 151, 165–7, 170, 172 Lewis, John L 138–9 Lexow Committee 108 liability detectives and liability cases 117 of moonlighting police 68–70 Pinkertons and Homestead strike 146 for use of teargas 144

Index license plates 163, 164 licensing of bouncers 76 of detectives 3, 86–7 of firearms 22 of guards 3, 146 of liquor 99, 103 of private police 58, 177 Lincoln, Abraham, and Allan Pinkerton 89, 94, 101 Los Angeles Merchants’ and Manufacturers’ Association 141 Los Angeles police red squad 149 Los Angeles Times, bombing of 92, 121, 135 Louisiana black self-defense in 22 end of Reconstruction in 36 gun permit policy 22 lottery 105 number of private security firms 61 private prison contracts 172 Lublin, Morris 137 lynching 13, 32–3, 37, 48 Lynds, Elam 162 Maccabees 65 Maine abandonment of private prisons 212 n.41 gun permit policy 22 licensing of detectives 86 Mall of America 72 malls, security in 56, 66, 71–2 Mandelbaum, Fredericka “Marm” 98–9 manslaughter, and self-defense 12, 16, 21 Marlow, Samuel 95 Marshall Service detective agency 136, 137–8, 141 marshals, US 26, 35, 102, 106, 147 Martin, Trayvon 19 Mass private property 71 mass shooting 21, 23 Matewan, West Virginia 132, 145 Mazet investigation 1900 108 McCarthy, Joseph 112 McDonald, Michael 62 McDonald v. Chicago (2010) 17 McDonough, Peter 99, 125 McKee, David 54 McKees Rocks strike 156

227

McManigal, Ortie 135 McNamara brothers 135 McParland, James 134, 139 Metcalfe, Debi 55 Metropolitan Police, London 1, 6, 51, 87 Michigan deputizing of private detectives 146 Detroit, Black Legion in 41 gun permit policy 22 Kalamazoo, private police in 57 limitation of sale of prison products 164 Michigan State Industries 164 Pontiac, racial violence in 49 Quincy Iron mine 139 “Mighty Moms”, “Mighty Dads” 72 Military Intelligence 42–3, 45, 47, 89, 101 militia, state 14–16, 55, 66, 132, 143, 150, 167 militias, private 25–9, 61 Mill(s) flour 136–8, 141 iron 151, 155 lumber 165 textile 142 Minneapolis, Minn. 59, 137, 138 Minnesota abandonment of private prisons 212 Duluth Milling Co. 136 gun permit policy 22 Minneapolis, private police in 59 regulation of railroad police 78 regulation of strike guards 145 spying on detectives in 142 Minute Men 43, 65–7, 112 Mississippi armed citizen of 23 gun permit policy 22 Kate Warne in 95 “rifle clubs” in 36 third KKK violence in 95 unconstitutional state prisons 168 US marshal and detectives 102 whitecaps in 34 Missouri detectives from Kansas City 99 Foundation of Anti-Horse Thief association in 54 gun permit policy 22 private prisons 169

228

Index

Mollie Maguires 90 Montana gun ownership 22 gun permit policy 22 militia, private 25, 27 regulation of strike guards 145 strike guards in 144 Mooney and Boland detective agency 146, 148 moonlighting by public police 67–9, 122 Moore, G.T. 52 Morse, Harry 101 Moss, Frank 108 Motion Picture Alliance 115 Mounted Auxiliary Unit, Central Park 53 Moyer, Charles 134 murder by Black Legion 47 bounty hunters charged with 126 charge against Sherman detective agency 141 charges against Minute Men leaders 66 conviction of Klansmen 48 conviction of Leo Frank 92 by detectives 90 execution of Lepke Buchalter for 158 fabricated confession of, by detectives 139 failure to convict Klansmen 49 of Idaho ex-governor 134 in industrial espionage 135, 139 investigated by C. Siringo 89 investigated by detectives in Mississippi 102 investigated by Kate Warne 95 of Mary Phagan 92 Murder, Inc. 158 in Nutt case 12–13, 182–3 n.4 Murray, Frank 96 “My Local Bobby” 65 “mystery shoppers” 71 Nader, Ralph 118–19 National Civic Federation 45–6 National Guard 15–16, 40, 60, 67, 132 National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) 153 National Rifle Association (NRA) 16–18, 20–1, 23, 28 National security, private contractors 1, 43, 46, 113, 128–9

National Security League 46 Nebraska gun permit policy 22 licensing of private detectives 86 lynching in 32 private prisoners in 212 n.41, 212 n.42 regulation of strike guards 145 Nevada abandonment of private prisons 212 n.41 gun dealers 124 gun permit policy 22 railroad police 77 Newark, N.J. 63 New Deal 111, 132, 177, 182 n.15 New England Citizens’ Crime Commission 107 New Mexico gun permit policy 22 Hires C. Siringo 100 private prisoners in 171 whitecaps in 34–5, 100 New Orleans, Louisiana Business Improvement District 73 Comstock follows porn dealer to 104 detective in jail with accused murderers 89 French Quarter Task Force 69 Hurricane Katrina 60 lynching of Italians 32 moonlighting police 69 murder of police chief 89 private security companies in 60–1 New York (City) airport security 79 American Association for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA) 54 Anthony Comstock in 103–6 body guard company 74 bombs in harbor etc. 1915 45 Bureau of Social Hygiene 110 Burns arrest in 91 Business Improvement Districts (BIDs) 73 Central Park Police 53–4 Charles Parkhurst 107–8 CIA and private detectives 123 Civil Rights Law 1873 110 Committee of 14 109–10 Committee of 15 109–10

Index Committee of 7 110 controller criticizes bail system 127 Crime Commission 86 district attorney and detectives 97, 98–9 drop in crime 59 ex-N.Y. police in Pinkertons 96 Furrier’s union and gangsters 157 Garbage haulers’ strike 156 garment industry strikes 132 Guardian Angels 62 investigation of illegal gun sales 124 investigation of police 1894, 1900 108 investigation of private detectives 1950 121 investigation of “repeaters” in 97 Jim Farley opens agency in 155 Louisiana Lottery 105 Lower Eastside, vice and gangsters 110–11, 157–8 Maccabees 63 Mandelbaum, Fredericka “Marm” 98–9 moonlighting police 68, 122 police 1, 5–6, 52–3, 59, 62, 63–4, 68, 74, 98, 108–9, 122 police anarchist and bomb squad 45 Police Commissioner hires private Detectives 99 private detectives today 116 private police in 1905 52 Restell, Madam 104 Shomrim and Shmira 63 supervised release 127 teachers purged 112 Thomas Dewey 158 Trolley strike 1904 155 United Hebrew Trades and gangsters 158 “uprising of the 20,000” 157 women private detectives 117 YMCA 103 New York (state) abandonment of private prisons 171 abolition of prison labor contracts 163 ban on open carry 23 congregate prison system (Auburn) 162 duty to retreat 14 gun control laws 22 gun ownership 22

229

licensing of bounty hunters 76 licensing of detectives 86 licensing of security firms 146 requires deputy sheriffs to be citizens 146 right to bear arms 16 security guards, pay of 56 Sing-Sing prison 163 “state use” 163 Supreme Court 108 North Carolina Greensboro violence 49 Raleigh trial of J. Conover 80 regulation of strike guards 145 North Dakota abandons private prisons 212 n.41 gun permit policy 22 North Ward Citizens’ Committee 63 Northwestern Police and Detective Agency 76 “nothing works” 177 Nutt, Adam, Daisy, James 12–13, 182 n.4 Ohio American Legion attacks socialists 47 Black Legion in 41 Burns’ father Columbus police chief 91 gun dealers 124 gun permit policy 22 Ohio Rubber Co. strike 148 Pinkertons in, 145 private prisons 172 regulation of railroad police 77 Remindersville, private police 58 Toledo, police and strikebreakers in 132 women vigilantes in 33 Olney, Peter B. 98 Oregon armed militias 26 Burns investigates land fraud 91–2 gun permit policy 22 private prisons lacking 212 n.41 regulation of strike guards 146 Orgen, “Little Augie” 157 Oro Valley, Arizona, private police in 58 paid detail program 68 Panama-Pacific Exposition 1915 95 paramilitary groups 25, 41, 65

230 Parkhurst, Rev. Charles 107–8 Parks Department Enforcement Patrol 53 patrols, citizen 61–4 patrols, neighbourhood 1, 34, 65, 66, 80, 173, 175, 178 Patrol Specials 59–60 pay (wages, salaries) of bodyguards 74 from fines and fees 52 of mall police 71 of private airport security 78 private and public police 79 of private detectives 117 of security guards 56 source of 133 of spies compared to guards 142 Pechanac, Stella 120 Peffer, Sen. William A. 144 Pellicano, Anthony 121–2 Pennsylvania Coal and Iron Police 77, 134, 151, 176 crime in mining areas 89 Federal contract prison 169 first private juvenile prison 169 gun dealers 124 Homestead strike 142–4 licensing of bouncers 76 licensing of detectives 86 McKees’ Rocks strike 156 Mollie Maguires 90, 134 Pinchot, Gifford 151 railroad police 77 solitary prison system 162 state police 90 Uniontown shooting case 12–13 People v. Zelinski (1979) 70 Permits, gun concealed carry 21, 22 for private detectives 100 open carry 23 Pettibone, George 134 Pierce, James H. 102 Pinchot, Gifford 151 Pinkerton Allan 52, 76, 83, 88–90, 96, 101 Robert 90, 94, 97–8 William 90, 92, 97 Pinkerton National Detective Agency (includes Pinkertons, Pinkerton men, Pinkerton Agency) 3, 77, 86,

Index 89–90, 93, 95–100, 102, 133–5, 142–7, 151, 176 Pinkerton’s Protective Police 52 “Plural Policing” 177–8 police, private. See also Table of Contents subheadings for specific types; individual states and cities, detectives, private; guards and American state 3–4 arguments against 53, 178 arguments for 79 definition 1 early development 2, 3, 5, 51–2, 84–6 in France 65–6 in Germany 66 numbers today 56, 64 regulation of 3, 57–8, 60, 79, 86–7, 146, 177 in UK 64–5 police, public. See also individual states and cities and democracy 5, 6 early, 5 in France 65 lack of resources 80, 123, 176 political control, corruption 2, 5, 105, 107–9, 111 powers 2, 3, 21–2, 57, 69–71 relation to private 4, 37–49, 51–2, 59–60, 67–8, 70, 73–4, 79, 85, 90, 96, 111–16, 132–3, 146–51, 175–9 strikes 46, 59 in UK 1, 6, 35, 51, 65, 68 police, state 3, 87, 90, 106, 151 “pool rooms” 105 pornography 103, 105–6 Posse Comitatus 27 post office, US 88, 101, 102, 103 Potter, Bp. Henry 109 power, diffusion of in the U.S. 3–4 Pressed Steel Car Co. strike 156 Pressnall, Charles 12 “pretexting” 119–20 prisoners, constitutional rights of 168, 178 prisoners, federal 164, 170 prison labor 162–5 prisons, federal 169–70 prisons, private 167–73 abandonment by states 171 African-Americans in 171

Index arguments against 171–2 arguments for 168 guards in 171 Hispanics in 171 types of 169 violence and escapes 171 in U.K. 172–3 private detectives. See detectives, private private prison corporations as lobbyists 172 private prosecution associations 4, 55 privatization 2, 57–8, 60, 65, 68, 73, 79, 128, 164, 168–9, 172, 179 “probable cause” in self-defense pleas 19 prosecutors, prosecution 19, 26, 29, 51, 117, 134, 158, 182 n.1 prostitution 5, 44, 99, 102, 105, 106, 109–11 punishments, public 7, 161 Quincy Iron mine, labor spies in 139 racketeers, labor 140, 157–8 Railroad Audit detective agency 141 railroad police arrest powers 77 complaints about 78 and hoboes 77 numbers today 78 origin 56, 76 and train robberies 77 RAND Corp. 177 Rapp, James T. 119–20 Raymond, Stephen 97 Reagan, Pres. Ronald 115, 123, 153, 175, 177 “reasonable man” in self-defense pleas 14 Reconstruction, in South 15, 17, 28, 35–6, 48, 101–2, 165 recording secretary, union 136 red hunters 111–16 red scare of 1919-20 46–7, 111, 138 red scare, second 113 Rees, John and Sheila 114 Remindersville, Ohio, private police in 58 Remington Rand Co. strike 156 “Rent-a-cop” 59, 68 “repeaters” 97 Republican, Republicans favor privatization 175, 181 n.13 as gun owners 18

231

and gun permits in Missouri 22 opposition to bail reform 127 in Reconstruction 15, 22, 36 Republic Steel 147 “responsibilization” 178 Restell, Madame 104 Retail Stores, security in 68–70, 117, 178 Revolution American 14 Black Panthers and 28 French 65 Russian 46 Rhode Island abandons private prisons 212 n.41 gun ownership in 18 police detectives and Pinkertons 97 regulation of private detectives 86 unconstitutional prisons 168 Woonsocket brothels raided 106 Ribicoff, Sen. Abraham 119 “risk assessment” 127–8 “rough shadowing” 153 Runyan, John 12 Sandy Hook, Connecticut school shooting 22 San Francisco Police 59, 99 scabs 59, 89, 142, 158 Seal Security Solutions 58 Second Amendment. See arms, right to bear Secret Service, US 42–3, 45, 89, 91, 101–2, 154, 198 n.21 security corporations American security 61 ArmorGroup 61 Blackwater 60–1 Burns 93 French Quarter Task Force 69 Intercon 61 Intertech 123 ISI 61 “My Local Bobby” 65 Pinkerton 90 SEAL Solutions 58 Securitas 90, 93 Special Response Corporation 154 Vance Asset Protection Team 154 Wackenhut 60, 71, 79, 96, 114, 170 Wells Fargo Guard Services 123

232

Index

security, private. See guards; labor, policing of; police, private self-defense black groups 25, 28–9 and bouncers 75 and bounty hunters 126 definition 2 duty to retreat 2, 11 and gun ownership 18 and honor 12–13 lenient interpretation, criticism of 179 organizations, paramilitary 25ff and private security 51 and right to bear arms 14ff stand your ground 18ff in UK 65 Selfridge, Thomas 11–12 Service Department, of Ford Motor Co. 152 “shall issue” gun permit policy 22 Shalloo, Jeremiah 176–77 Shapiro, Jake “Gurrah” 158 Sharpstown, Texas 58 sheriff Alabama, views of law 6 cooperation with private police 58, 67, 101, 105–6, 122, 146, 150 county jail 161 deputies in strikes 146, 147 Fort Lauderdale, Florida 21 at Homestead strike 143 militia ideology about 26 a Pinkerton as deputy 88 and vigilantes 31–2, 35, 37, 40 Sherman Anti-Trust Act 132 Sherman detective agency 140–1 Sherwood detective agency 147 Shmira 63–4 Shoenfeld, Abe 111 Shomrim 64–5 “shtarkers” 157 Simmons, George and KKK 38, 41 Sinclair, Harry 93 Sing-Sing prison 163 Siringo, Charles 89–90, 100–1, 147 Sirocco, Joe 158 Slave patrols 55 “Slacker raids” 44, 47 Sliwa, Curtis 62 Smith, Gov. Hoke 166 Snowden, Edward 128

Society for the Suppression of Vice 103–4, 106 Sociological Department of Ford Motor Co. 152 solitary prison system 162 South Carolina Gov. Blease and William Burns 92 gun dealers 124 and KKK 36 open carry ban 23 punishment of officials aiding lynchers 38 regulation of strike guards 145 regulators 33 unconstitutional prisons 168 South Dakota gun permit policy 22 regulation of strike guards 145 Southern Californians, Inc. 148 Special Conservator of the Peace (SCOP) 60 Special Response Corp. (SRC) 154 Spielman, Jean 137, 142 Spies, labor 41, 89, 94–5, 133–42 “spotters” 77, 133, 155 state, American xi, 2, 4, 7–8, 179 State police 3, 87, 90, 151 states. See individual names “state use” 164, 167 state, the xi, 1–5, 7–8, 31, 37–8, 42, 64–6, 70, 84, 116, 132–3, 161, 176–9 Stephenson, D.C. and KKK 39, 48 Stoughton, Seth 68 Strayer, Cora 95 Strikebreakers 40, 52, 65, 137, 149–50, 155, 157 boy scouts as 157 college students as 157 criminals as 156–7 guards for 133, 142ff “kings” of 155–6 and police 132 “professional” 133, 156 strikes 46, 59, 102, 132–3, 137–8, 140–5, 147–9, 151–7, 167. See also individual strikes Stringer, Scott 127 Sullivan Law 22 Supreme Court, US cases Beard v. U.S. (1895) 14 Boyd v. U.S. (1921) 70

Index Brown v. U.S. (1921) 14 Burdeau v. Maxwell (1921) 70 District of Columbia v. Heller (2008) 17 McDonald v. City of Chicago (2010) 17 Reversal of William Burns conviction 93 Slaughter House Cases (1873) 15 Taylor vs. Taintor (1872) 203 n.129 U.S. vs. Cruikshank (1875) 15 Weeks v. U.S. (1914) 70 And Constitutionality of American Correctional Association standards for prisons 168 Approval of wiretapping 93 in Leo Frank case 92 Reversal of William Burns conviction 93 and right to bear arms 15–17 Sweeney, John and Rheta 26 Taft, Pres. William H. 92 Tammany Hall 99, 107 Tea Pot Dome scandal 93 Tennessee bounty hunters 126 convict Lease 166–7 first KKK 36 gun dealers 124 gun permit policy 22 private bid for entire prison system 170 private county jail 170 third KKK 49 Tennessee Coal and Iron Co. 166–7 terrorism 26, 27, 48, 66, 76, 128 Texas “State use” 164 “Texas rule” 14 Bans open carry 23 bounty hunters 25–6 Branch Davidian 27 gun permit policy 21–3 licensing of bounty hunters 25–6 lynching 37 mass shooting 7 militias in 26 number of security guards today 56 private border patrols 67 private prisons 169–70

233

regulation of strike guards 145 right to bear arms 16 second KKK 38, 42 Sharpstown private police 58 state prison 165 Texas Rangers 34 unconstitutional prison system 168 Vigilantes 32–4 Texas State Prison 164 Thatcher, Margaret 65 Thiel detective agency 138–9 Thomas, Ora 40 Thorburn, Malcolm 178 Thurnaur, Clara 95 Tocqueville, Alexis de 6, 31, 127, 181 n.7, 182 n.15 Torres, Sydney 69 training of body guards 74 bouncers 76 bounty hunters 125 company police 153 detectives 3, 86 Guardian Angels 62 guards 3, 56–8, 177 gun permit applicants 22 Mall police 71 militia 14 “mystery shoppers” 71 Pennsylvania Coal and Iron Police 151 prisoners in World War II 165 private militias 27 private police, lack of 79 private prison guards 171 public police 70 SCOPS 60 terrorists 128 TSA employees 78 Vance guards 154 Training Camps and vice 27 train robberies 76–7, 145 Transportation Security Administration (TSA) 78–9 Trump, Pres. Donald J. 27–8, 170 Ulrich, Charles 91 UNICOR 165 uniforms of ASPCA officers 54 Central Park Police 53–4

234 early New York police 5 French Quarter Task Force 69 guards 56 KKK 39 moonlighting police 67–8 Patrol Specials 59–60 Pinkerton Patrols 52 Pinkerton strike guards 144 uniforms, made by prisoners 164 United Hebrew Trades union 158 United Kingdom body guards 74 bouncers 75–6 and duty to retreat 182 n.1 private police 65 private prisons 172–3 United Mine Workers 149 United States. See also individual agencies; state, American; individual states Congress 14–16, 36, 78–9, 101–3, 105, 113, 120, 141, 156, 162, 164 Constitution 3, 14, 16, 25, 70, 168, 181 constitutional rights 31, 113, 168, 178 democracy and police 4–5 development of class conflict 2, 131–2 diffuse state 4 divided jurisdictions 2, 3 federal government 3, 15, 25–9, 39, 42–8, 60–1, 64, 101, 106, 132, 144, 156, 158, 164, 169–70, 172 gun ownership 16–18 individualism 2, 7, 8, 181 n.13, 182 n.15 private preferred to public 2, 7 private-public partnerships 3 right to bear arms 15–18, 25, 28 self-defense 2, 11, 14ff, 18ff, 22, 25ff, 28–9, 51, 75, 126, 179 Supreme Court 14, 15–17, 70, 92–3, 203 n.129 “uprising of the 20,000” 157 Utah abandonment of private prisons 212 n.41, 212 n.42 gun permit policy 22 regulation of strike guards 145 US Marshal and detectives 102 Vance Asset Protection Team 154

Index Vermont favourable to gun owners 185 n.40 gun permit policy 22 vice 2, 4, 5, 40, 44, 102–11 Vidocq, Eugene 65 Vigilantes, vigilantism. See also Table of Contents subheads for types destructive and constructive 33–4 paramilitary groups 25–9 preventive and reactive 34 and public officials 32, 38, 41–8, 147 women 33 Virginia gun dealers 124 gun permit policy 22 private police 58 private prison contracts 172 Special Conservator of the Police (SCOP) 6 Wackenhut Corp. 60, 71, 79, 96, 114, 123, 170 Wagner Act, 1935 141, 147, 153 Walton, John 94 Wanrow, Yvonne 20 Warne, Kate 94–5, 101, 118 Washington (state) attacks on I.W.W. 43, 47 bail reform, 127 gun permit policy 22 self-defense, in domestic abuse 20 Watch and Ward Society 106ff Weaver, Randy 27 “wedge formation” 153 Wesler, William 20–1 Western Federation of Miners 134, 137, 139 Western Research Foundation 114 whitecaps, whitecappers 24–35, 100–1 Whitehead, Jack 155 white supremacists 25, 27–8, 36, 49. See also Ku Klux Klan; lynching Wild Bunch gang 77 Wild, Jonathan 84 Wilhite, Matthew 24 Wilson, Pres. Woodrow 46 wiretapping 42, 86, 92–3, 121–2 Wisconsin gun permit policy 22 lack of private prisons 212 n.42 regulation of strike guards 145–6

Index women Alexander, Marissa 19 APL rejects 42 bodyguards 74 bouncers 75 Committee for Protective Work for Girls 46 Cracraft, Jane 120 dance-hall customers 109 entrapment of Ralph Nader 119 Fisher, Shoshana 75 Guardian Angels members 62 gun ownership 18, 20 immigrants 67, 102 KKK members 39 Metcalfe, Debi 55 militia members 28 Nutt, Daisy 12–13 Phagan, Mary 92 private detectives 77, 84, 86, 93–5, 118 prostitutes 109 and railroad police 76 Rees, Sheila 114 reformers 102 Restell, Madam 104 self-defense 20–1 Strayer, Cora 95 strikebreakers 157 strikers 148, 153, 157 Sweeney, John and Rheta 26 Thatcher, Margaret 65 Thurnaur, Clara 95 with venereal disease and APL 44 victims of KKK 49 vigilantes 33 Wanrow, Yvonne 20 Warne, Kate 94–5, 101, 118 white, as rape victims 37 white, socializing with black men 110 Woodhull, Victoria C. and Tennessee Claflin 103 Wood, Robert 114 Workers. See also labor unions; strikes; Strikebreakers; class conflict in APL 42 black 95, 155

235

control of 133 coops 131 government 78–9, 128 hatred of Pinkertons 144, 146 immigrant 131, 156 loss of power 131 manipulation of 153 mine 134, 149 non-union 134 political support by 133 prison 162–7 right to bargain 141, 156 skilled 131–2, 162 slaves as 55 as spies 133, 136–7, 140 strikebreakers 147, 155 strikers 15, 40, 45, 48, 102, 137, 140, 142ff, 147, 156–8 surveillance of 152–3 as thieves of products 51 union 90, 132, 138, 157 use of laws against 44 as victims 41, 45, 112, 132, 135, 152 World War I 41–6, 106 World War II 51, 65, 112–13, 116, 153, 165, 182 n.15 Worsted Committee’s Inspectorate 51 Wyoming Cheyenne railroad strike 147 gun ownership 18 gun permit policy 22 regulation of strike guards 145 strike guards in144 Workman, James 19 “yellow dog” contract 145 Yerkes, Charles 148 Youlen, Michael 60 Young, Seth 40 Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA) 103 Zimmerman, George 19, 184 n.24