The United States had a large population growth between 1880
and 1920. Urbanization was a large result of this population growth. People
moved to cities and new inventions were being created but there were also
several side effects to urbanization. Cities that were quickly populated had
growing crime rates and the citizens became very concerned. The rates of fires
were also increasing in the cities and because of this police and fire
departments became professionalized.
As the city
grew in population the number of police officers grew as well and their roles
were quickly changing. Up until the early 19th century police were
called on to run soup kitchens, inspect boilers, standardize weights and
measures, and recover lost children. Police officers were seen as social
workers and the received pay by the number of arrests made. Before official
police departments, officers were loosely organized and worked for the courts
and made arrests based on the fee reward of the arrests. This way of loosely
policing the community changed as urbanization was happening and new inventions
were being created.
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There were
several key factors and changes that helped police officers become more
efficient on patrol and allowed the creation of having organized station
houses. The first key change was the change to hierarchical organization and
communication that closely resembled like the military. This allowed for
superiority throughout department. In other words this means that there was a
station house that an officer would report to and that the station could
communicate to the officer on patrol. Communication was now possible due to the
invention of the telegraph and the telephone. Officers were now under the
executive branch instead of the judicial branch and were free from civil
courts. Police officers were being more proactive on the streets rather than
sitting in court for a civil case. The second factor was the creation of
uniforms. Policemen were now visible and accessible to all people. This allowed
parents to locate and officer from the large crowds on the streets if their
child was lost. Lastly was the invention of the automobile. Automobile
significantly increased the activity of police officers because there were able
to be more mobile and independent. Motorcycles were used to chase traffic
violators and officers now obtained radio cars to receive a report on while
patrolling the streets for illegal activity. Police departments were only one
part of a city’s community service that was professionalized.
Fire
departments played a large role in the period of urbanization. People were
quickly moving into the cities and space for housing became limited, the only
option was to build up instead of out. So contractors started doing that,
buildings were being built taller but there was a lack of cooling and heating
so centralized heating units were invented. Imagine you are living in a small
little apartment with five people and have a heating unit on. Space is tight
and you’re not the only apartment suffering. After the combination of heating
units and skyscrapers combined fire rates went up really fast. This caused the
creation of professional fire departments.
Benjamin
Franklin had started fire stations, but they were mainly volunteer stations,
and though there still are many professional stations there are still some that
are volunteer based. Franklin believed that everyone should carry around a
leather bucket so that if the occasion did arise they had the proper materials
to put out a fire. This belief led to the creation of volunteer fire station
but this idea was not favored as urbanization came along. Just like the police
officers there were many key factor that made volunteers undesirable. First was
the refusal of internal change. New technology was being developed and new
inventions were created for the stations as well, for example like the steam
fire engine. The New York City fire station was built a new steam fire engine
but they refused to take it because the volunteers that would then be needed
were reduced. Secondly the firehouses were seen as meeting places that would
corrupt younger kids. Citizens of the city feared this and wanted the have
professional fire departments. Third was the amount of rivalries between
stations got out of hand and so there needed to be some organization. Each
firehouse decided to make a private enterprise but this was impossible because the
government had already given volunteers a fixed salary and invested into some
fire departments so that they remained stable. By the government investing in
some departments it took out the competition of others but there were still
some town that were able to keep volunteer departments because the city
government did not have enough money to fund them.
Urbanization
had many effects on cities across the United States. The amount of people that
were moving into the country during 1880 to 1920 was tremendous and a lot of
problems were created. As a result crime rates went up and so did the frequency
of fires. Professional police departments were created and fire departments as
well. Today some us believe that the way we see policing hasn’t changed a while
to be honest it was just about one hundred years ago that the standards were
changed. We take for granted police departments, professional fire departments,
and volunteer fire departments because we cannot imagine life without all the
technology and with it present the world could spin out of control without and
public services to ix our dumb mistakes.
Sources:
History of Urban Police
I used this source to help me get a better understanding of the history of policing.
Reform- Professionalism
This reform article helped me specifically see how reform and professionalism was created with police departments.
Deployment Changes
The article on deployment changes allowed me to understand the changes of deployment and to see if there were different views of how deployment changed.
History of Policing
I used this link to teach myself the way policing has changed and why. This article made me come up with my own inferences about urbanization.
