Pants-of-dog wrote:@wat0n
If the bodycam footage is public, it is difficult to argue that we will be provided some new information that will justify the killing of Mr. McClain. I assumed they had not been released precisely because you said that there is still information to be made available. Other than that footage, what possible evidence could there be to justify his murder?
You should see the footage, I watched it for a while and the bodycam worn by the cop who was closest to the action dropped onto the floor, which is why it is not conclusive either way. Whether it was dropped in purpose or not is another matter - I don't know, but either way these things should be penalized.
Pants-of-dog wrote:Boston had a force of police called the Watch that opera5ed from 1631 to 1854.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boston_Watch
NYC had the rattle watchmen (the original Green Lanterns!) from 1658 onwards.
https://ephemeralnewyork.wordpress.com/ ... amsterdam/
These were organised and paid forces, though originally they were volunteer when the towns were first settled.
And they were not professional, usually members of the community would join them (as volunteers or even for pay) as a side activity to their usual ones. In that sense, they cannot be compared to present-day police forces - they were simply neighborhood watches, and they even operated along the PDs' precursors when the latter were being formed. If anything this was literally what community policing looks like in the most obvious sense of the term.
This paralleled the development of professional policing in the UK itself, where professional police forces were formed in the early 18th century (for roads, at first, and during the 19th century for policing cities themselves). In other European countries (e.g. France and Spain) this process began in the 13th and 14th centuries, where road police forces were a branch of the Crown's armies (e.g. the French Gendarmerie began like that in the early 14th century and they even fought in the Battle of Agincourt in 1415).