How America Became a Police State – From the Peacekeeping Night Watch, to Militarized Pursuit of Victimless Crime

By Cassius Methyl

How did the United States grow a militarized police force that pursues people who commit victimless crimes, with incredibly elaborate and sophisticated means? This article summarizes the US’s transformation from a country with ideals based on liberty and prosperity, and freedom from unwarranted tax, to a society where militarized police enforce every single law that the out of control government wishes.

1625, the first organization resembling a police force was created in what is now New York, known as the “Night Watch”. The Night Watch had not many powers, other than to keep the peace, prevent violent crime, alert people if a fire was to break out, or do things that genuinely serve a community of people, and the Night Watch soon grew a presence in new American cities such as Boston, and Philadelphia.

After the American Revolution, for what one might call a brief period of time, it seems this new country was truly free. There were apparently no militarized police ensuring that no one smoke the cannabis everyone grew for hemp, there were no people forcing the will of a corrupt body of people down the throats of the masses, there was prosperity due to the free market, and one could see in hindsight that this form of self governance and philosophy of self ownership truly brought prosperity.

Many people grew cannabis, smoked and drank as they pleased, and enjoyed a variety of things a free life can bring, while enjoying peace, with the concept of self ownership breeding few criminals. Rather it seems, the state and the chains brought down on the people from a state, induce crime, poverty, and lack of happiness and prosperity, and analyzing this era of time definitely supports that idea.

Unfortunately, the “system”, the soon to be sheriffs and police, the federal government, and other powers would ruin this freedom and prosperity, and it slowly faded away. Today, we have some of our constitutional rights left, but many are gone, and are simply waiting to be taken back. One might say it began to change around 1833, when Philadelphia established its own 24 hour police force.

In 1935, the people claiming bureaucratic rule over Chicago did the same thing. In these early American cities, often the people ordering these new police departments around were groups of people who paid their way and began to infect the cities with corruption, using the new police for their own personal means and political agendas.

From the very beginning, the police in America were unnecessary, illegitimate, and often corrupt. Some cities  that are now a part of the modern US, had militarized, police-like rule before they officially became part of America, or when they were ruled before the American Revolution. For example, New Orleans, under the authority of Spanish Colonial Governor Baron De Carondelet, experienced its first police department in 1796. Six years later, the United States would buy this territory  under the Louisiana Purchase.  In the era following the 1830s and before the civil war, America began to lose its right to police itself. In 1845, the NYPD was created, and shortly after they tried to use their power to enforce city ordinances, requesting that some taverns be shut down due to non compliance with the ordinances, and riots broke out.

In 1875, after The Civil War, America saw its first hint of a war on drugs by the police, when a San Francisco city ordinance banned the smoking of opium in opium dens. Until the 1900s approximately, the only examples of a police force locking people in cages for victimless crimes in the United States, were instigated by city ordinances, many of which were influenced by corruption, or hugely protested, ignored, or not enforced. They were just about as ineffective ad the current war on drugs, though much, much less pursued by the enforcement arm of government. In the 1800s, the industrial revolution era spawned small towns known as “company towns”, owned by corporations. They resembled concentration camp blocks, yet they were voluntary to live in, as they were houses in a neighborhood entirely owned by the company. The company towns had company police policing the places where the workers lived, enforcing whatever rules the decision makers in the company wished, as terms of employment. It has been said that the company town model is what influenced the powers that be to make the entire United States patrolled by police, even in country and remote areas, as is the case today.

The bottom line is, arresting people for victimless crimes is tyranny, it is not warranted by the constitutional law of the republic of The United States of America, it does not function to prevent any violent crime or crime with victims, the drug war does not help anyone, and the era of time in which the people of the US were most free, proves that this is the formula for prosperity. Even given the vastly different technology and capabilities of today, it would seem that this formula of freedom for prosperity would add up. The police are not warranted to do what they do today, search through anything for any reason, monitor everything, the NSA has no right to record everything everyone does, and this whole entire system is unwarranted.

The system is just waiting to collapse at the hands of the righteous people demanding freedom, and a second American revolution, hopefully a peaceful one, is long overdue. The only pillars holding up this system are the pillars of media, government run schools and indoctrination, and whatever other means of control, which are many, the puppet masters at the top of the pyramid have at their disposal.