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he VoluntaryisWhole Number 123 If one takes care of the means, the end will take care ofitself 4th Q uarter 2004 Call th e COP S Bu t No t the Police:Voluntaryism and ProtectiveAg encies in Historical Persp ective
By Car l Watne r"[T]he question arose of how to handle aggressorswithin the com munity.. .. [W]hat about robbers, rapists,or murderers ... ? ...To deal with violent aggressionwithin the city, associations sprangup in each place.Ours is named the Committee for Peace and Safety, buteveryone callsitby its initials, CO PS.. . ."COPSiscareful touse force only agains t hosewho hav e initia ted t he u se of force.Amurdererii ma te sthe use of force. So doesarobber, orarap ist. [Our] phi-losophy ...allowsforthe useofforce ag ain st aggres-sors,in reaction to their initiation of force. COPSrnever initiatethe use offorce ... against people` uhaven't themselves used force. ..."J im P a y n e , P R I N C E S S N A V iN A V I S I T SVOLUNTARIA (2002), pp. 63 - 64.Introduction: Government Police or PrivateProtect ive AgenciesTo voluntaryists, the history of government institutionsis only important as they shed light on how private organi-zation s migh t evolve if no gove rnment coercionwerepresent.The historica l record with respect to "private" police is veryspotty (and only cursory mention of it will be made here),since government monopolization ha s been the norm throug h-out the ages. Understand ing the history of modern govern-ment policing is doubly important becauseitnot only sh edslight on how a voluntary society might rely on private agen-cies,butalso illustrate s th e degreetowhich governmentsdepend on legitimacy, rat he r th an force, as the ma in prop totheir existence.Paraphrasinga definition from the ENCYCLOPEDIABRITANNICA, the term "police" denotesabodyofpeopleorganized to maintain civil order and public safety, andtoinvestigate and rectify breaches of the peace. [1] Neverthe-less, the w ord "police" was unknow n to the English langua geuntil two hundred andfiftyyearsago.AFrenchm an a rrivingin London in the early part of the 18th Century observed agreat deal of dirt and disorderinthe stree ts. Asking aboutthe police, butfindinghat none understood the term,hecriedout, "Good Lord how can one expect Order among th esepeople,whohave not suchawordas olicein their language?"[2] John Hasnasin his seminal article on "The Myth of theRule of Law" has noted th at for hu ndred s of years "most peoplehave been [taught] to identify law with the state." Tothem,itseems like there must beasingle, monopolistic g overnm ent,and that the police are the coercive functionaries of the state.The idea of a free-market approach to peacekeep ing is simplyimpossible for them to imag ine. Thus, despite the "remark ablehistorical, geographical, and organizational diversityin theactivities of persons who are, or have been, counted as police"the common thread that links them together across time andspace is the fact th at they have been or are agents of the state"endowed with the exclusive monopoly of using force." [3]
The ideas that a) protective agencies should not be tax-supported; b) customers contractually payfor the levelofservice th at they d esire; c) competition among agencies pro-viding protective services will enhance the quality and tendto lower the price of the services they offer; d) employees ofcunp eting protective agencies or insuranc e companies derivetheir rig ht to use force from th e the ir custom ers' right ofself-defense and self-protection; and e) might act as a gents of in-dividuals to settle dispu tes or repair brea ches of the peace issimply unthinkable to most people. Hence the distinction inmy title: wheneve r you call the police, you are calling uponan age nt of the state to assistyou -a distinctly unvo luntaryistaction. TheCOPS,on the oth er hand , as the fictional accountin Voluntaria describes them , are strictly volunteerswhohelpmain tain th e social peace.The purpose of this article is to present a brief overviewof the history and evolution of policing, and to show tha t theonly legitimate police function (keeping the peace)ismadeimpossible when the police are a gen ts of the coercive sta te.Just becauseIam opposed toaparticular state activity(provision of the social order by the police) does not implythatIam ag ainst the activity 'per se'.The re a re other, non-state ways to "police" society tha t a re more m oral and morepractical than governmental methods.Inaddition,Ido notwishtoimply tha t free m arke t protection agencies wouldoperate without problems, or tha t the re wouldbeno crime ina voluntaryistsociety.However,Ibelieve the re wouldbefewerof these kindsofissues becau se free m ark et protectionagencies are a) entirely consistent with our commonly heldmoral practices that inculcate respect for private property;an db)wouldbemore efficient and less likely to tu rn venalbecause they must competeforthe customer's patronage.Using t he police to "police" society introdu ces a whole hostofunsolvable problem s: a) who"polices"the police (to see tha tthey do not themselves violate the rights of individuals); b)wha t happe ns to the pacifistswho donot want the ir tax mon-ies used to fund the police;c) whoprotects us wh en the policeturn criminal themselves;d) how do you protect innocentpeople and opponents of the state from persecution by thepolice? Customary Law and Po l icingSome of the ear liest forms of police discovered by histo ri-ans date back to the time of Babylon and involve religious,political,ormilitary personne l wielding forcetokeepthepublic order and enforce the mandatesofthoseinpower.Emperor Augustus in 6A.D.created te n cohorts of1000freed-men each to provide fire and police protection for th e city ofRome. "These cohorts could, in tur n, call upon th e emperor'sown bodyguard (the Praetorian Guard)forassistance."[4]The Rom an form of police became th e m odel for ma ny coun-tries of the world, where t he police evolved out of military orsemi-m ilitary forces. Once the governm ent of a country wasrelatively free from the thr ea t of outside invasion, it was ableto use its m ilitary forces to furthe r pacify, control, and policeits internal population. As we shall see, the police becamelikeadomestic garrison force d esigned to restr ain , not onlyforceful activities detrimental to the wider society, but alsothose threaten ing the government's own existence.continued on page2
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he VoluntaryistEditor: Carl W atnerSubscription InformationPublished by The Voluntaryists, P.O. Box 275, Gramling,SC 29348.A six-issue subscription is $20 or .07 ounceof finegold. For overseas postage, please add $5 orof the regu larsubscription price. Single back issues are $4 each orof theregula r subscription price. Please check the nu mb er on yourm a i l i n g l a b e l to see w h e n you sh o u ld r e n e w .THEVOLUNTARYIST is online at http://members.aol.com/vlntrystand voluntaryist.com.
Call th e COPS Bu t Not the Police:continued from page1Historians have observed tha tincountries where therewas notastrong centralized milita ry force "citizens band edtogethe r for mu tua l protection" from crimina ls. [5] This isanat ural reaction, for wherever the government cannotorwillnot providea service that people desire, the people them-selves will organize volu ntarilytoprovideit.This is be st evi-denced by reviewing the history of customary law and pro-tectioninearly England, where "kinship was the basisforreciprocal recognition an d enforcement of law."[6]As Bruce
Benson notes:The Anglo-Saxons carried their customary legalsystemtoBritain beginninginabout 450 A.D. Bythe tenth century, there wasa clearly recognizedAnglo-Saxon legal institution calledthehundred[basedonkinship groupsofone hundred menorhouseholds]. The primary purposes of the hund redswere rounding up stray cattle and dispensing jus-tice, .... Whenatheft occurred, the men of the sev-eral tithings [groups often men or households] t ha tmade upahundred were informed and they hadareciprocal duty to pursue thethief.Atithing appar-ently consisted of a group of neighbo rs, many of whomwere probablykin.These volu ntary grou ps provided"the police system of the country", but theirrolewentwell beyond policing: they also "made everyone ac-countable for a ll his neighbo rs." Indeed, social rela-tions were generally maintained only with peoplewho shared surety protection through associationwith a tithing an d a hund red. [7]The Norman Conquestof1066 resulte dinmany struc-tural changesto theprovisionof traditional Anglo-Saxonprotection. Unde r William of Normandy, a feudal system wasestablished and the N orman institution of frankpledge wasimposed. Frankpledgewasmuch like the customarily-evolvedAnglo-Saxon system of hund reds in th atitobligated t he lo-cal populace to pur sue a nd ca pture criminals. The differencewas th at "[f]rankpledge was a police system invented by theconquering Norman monarchyas aninstrum ent of centralgovernment control." [8] The Norman kings usedthelaw
enforcement system of the frankpledge togenerate revenuesneeded to finance their m ilitary operations, to enhance theirownwea lth, and to buy suppo rt of powerful groups."[9]Finesor restitution collected from criminals no longer went to thevictimorlocal tithing b ut ra the r into the king's treasury.Reeves were appointed by the k ing to supervise th e shires,or counties, the area occupied by a hundred (hence the termshire-reeve, from which the word 'sheriff was derived). Tith-ing mem bers who violated their obligations were no longerbrought before local manorial courts but rather before "cen-tral courts whose justices were the king's appointees." [10]Every effort w as mad e to expand the king's jurisdiction . Vio-
lations of the king's peace became known as crimes (in trast to civil wrongs, known as torts), and these criminafenses "generated re venue s for the king or the sheriffs rathan paym ent to avictim,"as had been customary undelier Anglo-Saxon tribal law. [11]Over the next five hundred years, the monarchy couedtobroadenitslaw enforcement activitiestothe dme nt of custom-based law enforcement.Theconcept of fwas broug ht to Englan d, "making it a feudal crime for asal tobetray"his lord. Eve ntually any crime deemed a fmeant thataconvicted felon's possessions escheated tking. [12] Royal laws eventually "declared that the vi[became]acriminal if he obtained restitu tion prior to bing the offender before a king's justice wh ere th e king cget his profits." The crime of theftbote was crea ted "m aitamisdemeanor foravictim to accept the return of sproperty or to make other arrangements withafelon ichange for an agreeme nt nottoprosecute" in the king's c[13]The earliest justices of thepeace wereappointed in and th eir role in keeping the peace and generating bothsonal and monarchical revenues was expanded over mcenturies. As Bruce Benson concludes, "The evolutioEngland's criminal law system was altered by a long hiof direct comm ands to serve th e self-interestedgoalsof ktheir bureaucrats, and politically powerful individualsgroups. These changes su bstantially w eakened privatezens'incentives to participate in voluntary law enforcearrangem ents," ultimately giving the government bo thsons and excusesforproviding "bureaucratic alternatThe fact that the state has taken suchaprominent rocriminal law is nota reflection of the superior efficienstate institutions, but [ratherthe]result of the state's umining the incentivesforprivate participationincrimlaw." [14]
He who strik es t he first blow confesses has ru n out ofideas.This brief review of Eng lish crim inal law does not dotice to the sweeping changesitunderwent over hund reyears.However,itsrootsintraditional k inship and n
borly reciprocity mirror the two basic principles of alltoma ry law. These operative principles are t ha t a) therepaid (standing) police force, and b) judges do not enjoy nopoly over judicial activities. Under Anglo-Saxon, Norand English customary law until the 19th Century 1)ieveryone's dutytomainta in th e king's peace, and an y ccould arrest an offender; 2) the unpaid, part-time conshada special dutytodo so, andintownshewould bsisted by his inferior officer, the w atchm an;3)if the offwas not caught red-handed,ahue and cry must be ra[and] 4) everyone was obliged to keep arm s an d to followcry, when required;...." [15]The Evolution of the Modern PoliceBeginning in the 18th Century, as England evolveda modern n ation-state, criminal law took on a new formcreasing urbanization, industrialization, and politicalizresulted in the decline of the constabularysystem.Astdiary police system evolved und er which it was nec essapay the justices of the peace, the constables, and their watchmen feesforthe services they rendered. O therwere passed w hich allowed persons to hire replacem enserve their termsasconstables.In1735, "two Westmparishes obtained parliamentary sanction for the substion of a new system financed by money collected by mof a" tax on the inhabitants. [16] The system was soonbraced by King Georgein1737, who "initiated action low city councils to levy taxes to pay nightwatchmen."Page2 4th Quarter 2
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was the first instance in the English-speaking world that tax money was usedtopa ypolicesalaries. [17] The systemsoon spread to the re st of London, where a m ixed system ofpolicing evolved. There existed, side by side, watchmen whowere paid with p ublic monies, but supervised by con stablesreceiving no public sa laries (although some constables wereprivately paid by those who engaged them as substitutes).Leon Radinowicz, author ofAHISTORY OF THE EN-GLISH CRIMINAL LAW AND ITS ADMINISTRATIONFROM 1750, noted that the word "police" was "suggestive ofterr or and oppression" to all common law loving people. [18]As we have seen, the traditional English policing until the18th Century was provided by individuals who were not: tithe pay of the go vernment.TI 3idea of "tax-paid police offi
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ing for them . ... [Cobbett] believed the Governm enthad th e project in contemplation to govern En gland,as Ireland had been long governed [withpolice].[34]Cobbett's predictionwascorrect:by 1856, the C ounty andBorough Police Act of that year required the creation of afull-time police force in every town and county of England."The central government was empowered to inspect eachforce, and, if found up to the mark, to support them with agrant am ountingtoone-fourth of the ir tota lcost. [35]Cobbettwas also right in referring to the Irish precedent: "[T]he ex-perience of organizing and recruiting th e Irish policeundoubt-edly informed a cen tral E nglish political elite of the feasibil-ity of police, their usefulness in tim es of disorder, the advan-tages of disciplined professionalism, and th e desirab ility (inthe midst of religious conflicts of Ireland ) of an appeara nceof strict ne utra lity if they [thepolice]w ere notto bedestroyedby the hostilities of the community." [36]The New Police in the United StatesEven though m any Americans shared the common law'straditional antipa thy toward "state-directed police,"[37]Peel'sMetropolitan Police force for greater London "was to becomethe model for th e U nited Sta tes ' police system." [38] The ab-sence of political centraliz ation predisposed early A mericansto carry the English attitudes towards the police "to the ex-treme," and has resulted in the extensive decentralization ofAmerican police forces today (estimates range from 20,000to 36,000 public police agencies in the US). [39] One of thedom inant them es in the history of police in the United Stat esha s been th e strug gle over which political faction w ould con-trol the police. [40] Un der th eU.S.C onstitution, police powerwas not a federal responsibility, but rather an obligation ofeither the state, county, or local governments. Since controlover the police was a local responsibility, it had to vacillate"between city or sta te electiveauthorities.Thus, nowhere wasthe embrace of police and politics tighter than in the UnitedStates." [41]
Legal immunity does not confer moralimmunity.Originally the municipal policing in the United Stateswas based on the customary English system. The amount ofmanpower devoted to protective services in early Americawas extremelysmall. For twocenturies Boston's policing wasconducted by a handful of am ateur, part-tim e constables andwatchmen; as late as1832th e c ity of 65,000gotby with aboutfifty of these early patro lman ." When the Boston Police De-par tm ent was officially b egun in 1855 it was staffed by 200police. Until 1820,NewYork,a city of 125,000, was patrolledby a night watch of100men. The G reat F ire of1835,causedthe city authorities to increase the nightwatch patrol to 250men. Ten years later, the official New York City Police De-par tm ent had some 800 men, headed by a chief of police. [42]The historian providing these num bers points out tha t NewYork City m ust "have been relatively free of crime and disor-der" for so few police to have been successful in their jobs.[43]The first paid, professional police forces were formed inthe larger American cities, sometimes in reaction to the de-mands of each city's elite to control the poor and the immi-gra nts , and sometimes simply in reaction to the desire of citybureaucrats to better "control and manage" their cities. [44]New York City created its first police department, modeledafter the Peelian force of London, in 1844. [45] Other citiessoon followed suit: "New Orleans and Cincinnati in 1852;Boston, Philadelphia, and Chicago in 1855; Baltimore andNew ark in 1857; and P rovidence in 1864." [46]Statewide police, paid by state governments, rather tha n
individual cities, followed somewhat later. Apart froTexas Rangers, which began operations as a frontier patrol in 1835, the first tru e state-wid e and sta te-paidforce was established in M assac husetts in1865.A rurof 130 men, the Massachusetts State Police was m"[c]harged with enforcing liquor prohibition laws," anso controversial that it was "reorganized into a smaldetective squad" ten yea rs later. [47] No further sta teforces were organized until the 20th Century. Pennsycreated a state constabulary in 1905;followed by N eand California in 1917, and 1929, respectively. Thesewere established to deal with industrial unrest, crimthe problems gener ated by the grow th of automobile "The men's uniforms reflected th e public's significant cin attitud e toward police: The state troopers with theimilitary belts, tailored (and oft-striped) trouser'battled ress style of jacket,' would have shocked earlyteenth-centuryAm ericans."[48]A Dom estic Army:Police Penetration of Civil SocietyAlthough it has been a rgued th at th e prevalence oin modern cities required the creation of modernpolicesome historians have pointed out tha t th ere is no reship between increasing urban populations, the amocrime, and th e c reation of mun icipal police. Roger Lathor of POLICING THE CITY: BOSTON, 1822-1855cluded that theexisting historical evidence suggest[s]over [the] long-term urbanization has had a settlingally a civilizing, effect on the p opula tion involved."[49Bayley, in his article on "The Police and Political Deme nt in Europe," observed th at th ereis nothresho ld olation size which seems to compel development of a system." [50] Paris had a population of 540,000 in th17th Century when the Lieutenant-GeneralwasestabLondon had nearly1,500,000people in 1829 when thPolice were founded. Acomparison of events in LondParis strongly suggests that insecurity is not sufficcreate a police force. ... In short, development of policnot be unde rstood in ter m s of crime." [51]
If the development of modern police, either in AmBritain, or other part s of Europe cannotbefully ex plaia response to the amount ofcrimeprese nt in any giveety, then we m ust look elsewhere forexplanations.Almany historian s and political theorists disagree, it apto this author at least - that the new, modern police lished on the London model of 1829 were purely a podevelopment broug ht on by the evolution of the natioduring the 19th Century. Modern nation-building apolice forces h ave gone hand-in-h and, unt il today, thehave become the most visible representatives of the mstate. [52] The police are the state's "prime instrumpower" and t he m ost "obvious physical ma nifestation"litical governance and law-enforcement activities. [5problem of rulership has always been to create theamount of governance at the least amount of cost, acreation of the "new"police was envisioned as at leastial solution to this perennial problem.British statesmen in their approach to controllinunrest and dissent in Ireland realized thatmorethan aing army w as needed to subdue the native populationrealized th e ineffectiveness of a continual harsh militarence, and saw the need for a softer means of social c[54]The police, as we know it today, grew out of the ir ences in Ireland. The centra l feature of this new ordergarrison force, present at all times," personnel knowable of and living in close proximity to those to be rforce which could efficiently arrest criminals, "and acapable of graduated responses to rioting, able to ant
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violence and break it up before it grew to serious propor-tions, and able to respond in measured proportions to thesize and character of the danger, rather than unleashing amilitary charge. [55] Such a police force achieved legitimacybecause it was able to impose "law and order" and was, atleast sometimes, helpful to those being forced to pay for itsservices.Alan Silver has pointed out that modern police person-nel serve as "the agent [s] of legitimate coercion and as a per-sonification of the values of the" political government thatthey serve. [56]The police were designed to penetrate civil societyin a way impossible for military formations and byso doing to preven t crime and violence and to detectand apprehend criminals. ... The police penetrationof civil society, however, lay not only in its narrowapplication to crime andviolence.In a broader sense,it represented the penetration and continual pres-ence of political authority throughout daily life. [57]... Police forces c[a]me to be seen as the y w ere in thetime of their creation-as a soph isticated and conve-nient form of garrison force against an internalenemy. [58]The "modern preventative police established in Londonand New York repres ented an unp recedented , highly visibleincrease of the state's power over the lives of ordinary citi-zens." [59] No wonder tha t m any Eng lishmen at first consid-ered the Peelian police as "a government army." [60]Legitimacy a nd the Role of PoliceSilver and other historians of the police have repeatedlypointed out th at in order for the policetobe effective in "keep-ing order" there must be a general agreement among thepopulace a t large "tha t the power they exercise is legitimate."[61] The replacement of intermitt[e]nt military interven-tion in a largely unpoliced society by continuous pro-fessional bureaucratic policing meant that the ben-efits of police organizationcontinual, pervasive,moral display and lower long-term costs of officialcoercion for the stat e and p ropertied classes - abso-lutely requ ired the cooperation of civilsociety.Thus,the extension of moral consensus and of the policeas an instrument of legitimate coercion go hand inhand.Alongwith other ramifying bureau cratic agen-cies of the center, the police link daily life to centralauthority. The police, however, rely not only on...co-ercion but also on a new and unprecedentedly ex-tensive form of moral consensus. The center is ableto supervise daily life more closely and continuouslytha n ever before; butpoliceorganization also requirespervasive moral assent if it is to achieve the goalspeculiar to its techniqu e.... Without at least a m ini-mal level of such assent, coercive functions becomecostly in exactly the ways that those who created
the policed society in England sought to avoid. [62]Th e"new"policecontributed to 19th Centu ry state-build-ing by giving the citizenry a t least some reasons to voluntar-ily comply with t he dem ands of political au thority. The policesometimes did successfully provide essential services andtherefore earned the thanks of the population. However, themodern police were also par t of the n ationa l "extraction-co-ercion"and "extraction-persuasion" cycles.Theconstitutionaland legal obligation to pay taxes involved the police, not onlyas recipients of tax funds (the source of the ir s alaries beingtaxes),but also in their enforcement role, as the a rmed per-sonnel tha t exercised the thr ea t or actual use of force againstthose who refused to pay or were recalc itrant in paying. [63]The "new" modern police were designed to do more t ha n
just "chase" criminals. From helping to collect taxes, to taking lost children home, to directing traffic at funerals, thpolice perform a myriad of services. In fact, it has been estimate d t ha t th e percen tage of police effort actually devoted ttraditional criminal matters "does not exceed 10%."[64] Is iany wonder, then, that th ere is a demand on the free mark efor private police and private detectives to supplement thpublic police?"The foundation power of every g overnm ent
is its military power." Rick Maybury, EARLY WARNINGREPORT, July 2000, p. 8.Historically, there has been an ever-present demand fopolice services over and above those provided by the StateIn England, during the late 18th and 19th Centuries, ove400 neighborhood associations for protection a gains t felonand recovery of stolen property existed. These were privatsubscription organizations whose personnel specialized iprotection and restitution. In the U nited States, during thlate 19th and early 20th Century m any railroads employetheir own private police to protect travelers and th eir rollinstock and freight from thieves. [65] The Burns Internationa
Security Services, and Pinkerton's Inc., with historical rootback to the mid-19th and early 20th Centuries, rival or exceed in size some public law enforcement agenciestoday.Eveas early as1901,it was asserted th at "The Pinkerton Detective Agency ... could protect Chicago for less than two-thirdof what th e m unicipal police departm ent now costs the taxpayers, and the protection would be real and thorough" [66As late as 1978, the G eneral Motors Corporation had a forcof4200plant guards, "a body larger th an the municipal police forces of all bu t five Am erican cities." [67]Throughou t m uch of the 1980s, funding for priv ate security in the United Stat es exceeded the combined total of Federal, State, and local law enforcement expen ditures. The prvate security workforce outnum bered public law enforcemenpersonnel by a ratio of nearly 2:1.In 1982 there were morthan a million people employed in the United States by thprivate security industry, w hile publicly paid police employees numbered just over 500,000 people. [68]Free Market Protection A genciesSo the voluntaryist idea that protective agencies coulcompletely replace the public police is not such a far-fetcheidea. As Murray R othbard has w ritten, there is nothing dvinely ordained about hav ing onlyonepolice agency in a givegeographic area. [69] The two earliest advocates of a frema rket in police protection were Gustave de Molinari, a 19tCentury French economist, and Lysander Spooner, an Amercan lawyer. In his 1849 article, "The Production of Security,Molinari noted that "the production of security, like everything else [in the free m arket] should be subject to the law ofree competition."This option the consumer retains of being able tobuy security wherever he [the consumer] pleasesbrings about a constant emulation among all theproducers, each producer striving to maintain oraugment his clientele with the attraction of cheap-ness or of faster, m ore complete, and bett er justice.If, on the contrary, the consumer is not free to buysecurity wherever h e pleases, you forthwith see openup a large profession dedicated to arbitrariness andbad management. Justice becomes slow and costly,the police vexatious, individual liberty is no longerrespected, the price of security is abusively inflatedand inequitably apportioned .... [70]
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Three years later, in 1852, Lysander Spooner, an Ameri-can constitutional lawyer, argued tha t protection ought to beprivate and be provided by insurance organizations.All legitimate government is a mutual insurancecompany, voluntarily agreed upon by the parties toit, for the protection of their rights against wrong-doers.In its voluntary chara cter it is precisely simi-lar to an association for mutual protection againstfire or shipwreck. Before a m anwilljoin a n associa-tion for these latter purposes, and pay the premiumfor being insured, he will, if he be a man of sense,look at th e a rticles of the association; see what thecompany promises to do; wh at it is likely to do; andwh at ar e the ra tes of insuran ce. If he is satisfied onall these points, he will become a member, pay hispremium for a year, and then hold the company toits con tract. If the conduct of the company prove un-satisfactory, he will let his policy expire a t the end ofthe year for which he has paid; will decline to payany further premiums, and either seek insuranceelsewhere, or take his own risk without any insur-ance.And as men act in the insu rance of their shipsand dwellings, they would act in the insurance oftheir properties, liberties and lives,.... [71]Molinari and Spooner were individualist-anarchists, the
forerunners of thinkers like Murray Rothbard, David Fried-man, George H. Smith, Randy Barn ett, and M orris and L indaTanneh ill, all of whom advocated free m arke t defense agen-cies during th e late r half of the 2 0th C entury."You shall know the tr ut h, and it w ill makeyou mad."Jerry BrosilowProbably th e most frequent criticism of the concept of freemarket defense agencies has been: What would prevent thevarious p rivate protective com panies from going to war w ithone another? In other words, if there were more than onedefense agency in the same geographic area, wouldn't theyfight one another? The Tannehills indirectly answ er this ques-tion (in their extended discussion of private agencies andinsurance companies) by pointing out that private agenciesdepend on the patronage of their customers. Inter-agencywarring would antagonize customers, be costly, and therewould be no guarantee that one agency (even if successful)could automa tically assum e control over another agency's cus-tomers:In a laissez-faire society, there would be no govern-me ntal police forces, but this does not mean peoplewould be left without protection .... [P]rivate enter-prise defense agencies would ar ise, perhap s some ofthem out of the larger private detective agencies oftoday....The function of a privat e defense service company isto protect and defend th e persons and prop erty of itscustomers from initiated force or any s ubs titute forinitiated force. This is the service people are lookingfor when they p atronize [such anagency],and, if thedefense agency ca n' t provide this service as well orbette r th an its comp etitors, it will lose its customersan dgoout of bus iness . A priva te defense service com-pany,competing in an open m ark et, couldn't use forcetohold onto its customers-if it triedtocompel peopleto deal with it, it would [induce] them to buy protec-tion from i ts com petitors and drive itself out of bus i-ness....The superiority of a private enterprise defense ser-vice company springs from the fact th at its function
- itsonly function - is to protect its customers frocoercion and th at it m ust perform this function witexcellence or go out of business. ... [T]heir primarfocus would be [to protect customers and prevenaggression. [72]Warring Defense Age ncies: Public or PrivateWhile there can be no guarantees that there will nwarring defense agencies in a free market, the imppoint to remember is that "police protection is a servibasic and im porta nt it should not be left in the ha nds oone group [because] [i]nevitably such power will tempgroup to use it for their own benefit." [73] The questiwhe ther or not the police should have a monopolywaskto the an cient Rom ans who asked: "Quis custodiet ipsotodes?"[Who guards the guardians?] "The correct answof course: othe r agen ts of competing protective agencies.police are denied a monopoly there will be other inddent, competitive police. When th ere is competition bepolicemen an d th eir employers, no policeman will dareuse h is weapons, for if he didso,his company would loscustomers and money. It would lose customers to othe rforces, and money to its victim s who would find cou rts willing and able to condemn such misuse and award com pensation and fines accordingly." [74]The significant and historical fact is that there have"warring" police agencies in the United States, but theynot been private, but rather public institutions battlinpolitical control. Ten year s after the first city police forcbeen established in NewYorkCity, thecity'sDemocratic FernandoWood,was charged "w ith lax enforcement ofing and Sabbatarian laws and w ithfillinghe police withCatholics."[75]In1857,a law was passed transferring of the NewYorkCitypolice tothe Republican (Pro testanernor in Albany. It was hoped that the Democratic inflwithin the city would be weakened, since the police wolonger be able to help assure Democratic election vicMayor Wood refused to recognize the legality of the newropolitan Police," and "for three m onths in 1857 the citfered the dubious distinction of having twor ival police foAnarmed ba ttle tookplacebetween thetwodepartmentthe M etropolitan Police tried to arre st the mayor a t city[76]Therewereotherfightsbetweenthe twogroups:eachtrytocapture the other's prisoners. "In one riot,500m unpolice, assisted by what, one observer described as a "mineous assortment of suckers, soaplocks, Irishmen anduglies officiating in a guerrilla capacity" were thrashsmaller band of Metropolitans until the arrival of statetiamen turned the battle in favor of the [Albany] contpolice." The stalemate ended in July 1857,when M ayoracknowledged a court ruling that upheld the 1857 legisturning over control of the city police to the state's gov[77] A similar fight for political control over city forcesplace in Denver,CO.In th e City Hall War of1894,the Rlican Board of Commissioners refusedtoresigninfavor ofappointed police officials. "As the battle shaped up, themilitia supported thegovernor,whilethe police, sheriffsties,and strong a rm rep resentative s of Denver'svicebusibarricaded themselves in the city hall - armed with dynand whiskey.... For a short period after this, Denver hapolice boards and thre e chiefs, bu t ultimately, as inNewthe incumbents yieldedtoa court order and th e popu listtook office." [78]
"Governments are like tara ntu las: put tof them together in a box, and onlyoneof thwill emerge alive."Dr. Lewis ColemanPage 6 4th Quarter
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Conclus ionAre the police as we know them today an essential p art ofmodern society? At least a few non-vo luntaryist thin ker s haveobserved tha t society would notgoto pieces even if the re w ereno police. [79] Pearl Buck, the famous novelist, noted in her1953book, THE MANWHOCHANGED CHINA, tha t the Chi-nese were [a]civilizedpeopleand they had through the centu-ries learned that if people live decently and work hard andrespect each other, then it is quite possible to live for a whilewithou t a government an d even withou t police. Policeman, af-ter all, are neededonly toprotectpeoplefromeachother,andifthere is mutu al respect and good behavior people can m anagethemselves.TheChinese hadlong agolearned this lesson." [80]So despite the complexity and seeming sophistication of our21st c entury society, itisqu ite possibletoimag ine society with-out police, or society with only the COPS."[I]n Volun taria... we goto grea t leng ths to avoidusing force, in order to establish th e idea tha t u singforce is wrong. Over the y ears, our people have gradu -ally absorbed th is message, and it h as now become abasic part of our cultural her itag e,... ."But didn't you just say that your COPS usesforce to apprehend wrongdoers? ....
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The Myth of Law a nd OrderMost people have been raisedtoidentify law w iththe sta te. They cannot even conceive of the idea of legalservices [or police] apa rt from the governm ent. The verynotion of a free market in [police] services conjuresupthe imag e of anarch ic gang warfare or rule by organizedcrime....The primary reason for this is that the public has beenpolitically indoctrinate d to fail to recognize the distinctionbetween order an d law. Order is wh at people need if theyare to live together in peace and security. Law, on the otherhand, isaparticular method of producing order. Asit ispresently constituted, law is the production of order by re-quiring all mem bers of societytolive under th e same setofstate-generated rules;itis order produced by centralizedplanning.... [F]rom childhood, citizens are taught to in-variably link th e words 'law' and order.' Political discourseconditions them to hear and use the term s as though theywere synonymous andtoexpress th e de sire for a safer, morepeaceful society asadesire for la w and order.'The state nurtures this confusion becauseit is the
public's inability to distingu ish order from law th at gener-ates its fundamental support for the state. As long as thepublic identifies order with law,itwill believe tha t a n or-derly society is impossible without the law the state pro-vides.And as long as the public believes this,itwill con-tinue to support the state almost without regard to howoppressive it may become.The public's identification of order with law makes i t impos-
sible for the public to ask for the one without asking for other. There i s clearlyapublic demand for an orderly sociOne of hum an beings' most fundamental desiresisforapeful existence securefromviolence. But beer ^se the public been conditionedtoexpressitsdesire for orderasone for lawcallsfor amoreorderly society are inte rpretedas callsfor mlaw.Andsince under our curren t political system, all lawisplied by the state, all such calls are interpreted as calls fomore active and powerfulstate.Theidentification of order wlaw e liminates from public consciousness the very concepdecentralized provision of order. With regardto legalservicerenders theclassical liberal idea of a market-generated, sponeous order incomprehensible.... [WhatI have described is] the most effective ctemporary examplewehave of Orwellian [doublethink a'newspeak,' the process by which words are redefinedrender certain thoughts u nthinkable. Were the distinctbetween order and law well-understood, the questionwhethera state monopoly of law [and police]isthe bway to ensu re a n orderly society could be intelligently dcussed. But this is precisely the qu estion the s tate does wish to see raised. By collapsing the concept of order ith at of law, the s tat e ... [has] effectively elim inated the iof a non-state g enera ted order from the public mind.-^Jo hn Ha snas, "The Myth of the R ule of Law," 1995WISCONSIN LAW REVIEWpp.199-233 at SectioXII.(Reprinted in Whole Num ber98 ,THE VOLUNTARYIST [June 1999] p. 3).El
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