History of Urban Police

American police grew in per capita strength from the mid-nineteenth century until the first decade of the twentieth when they reached their present strength. Their hierarchical organization, communication capacity, and uniformed visibility made them civil servants of general resort, called on to run soup kitchens, inspect boilers, standardize weights and measures, and recover lost children. Not until the end of the nineteenth century did they begin to focus more narrowly on crime control; in so doing they diminished their varied range of social services, which included the overnight housing of thousands of homeless people. The broad range of police activities and their complex relationship to cities in their formative era has made them the subject of increasing historical research.