1. The alternative to the police is armed vigilantes. We've had that quite a few times in our history. It has not typically worked out well for black Americans in particular.
2. San Francisco was taken over by armed vigilantes in 1851 & 1856. In 1856, the forces of law & order turned to a banker & ex-Army officer running the state militia: William Tecumseh Sherman. He proposed an overwhelming show of force to back them down.
3. The War Department, then run by Jefferson Davis, refused to back Sherman up; they said the Army could only protect federal facilities (not Davis' stance 5 yrs later). Refused support, Sherman resigned in disgust, resolved to have nothing to do with politics again.
4. Without Sherman's militia, the California Governor ended up sending the state Chief Justice to parley with the vigilantes; he stabbed one of them nearly to death, & they held him hostage for months. Teetered on the bring of hanging him.
5. California would have been better off following Sherman's advice to let the legitimately constituted authorities maintain a monopoly of force. Vigilante justice cut a wide swath through the Old West, often with terrible consequences.
6. The creation of professional big-city police departments, originally a French legacy, was seen as a great progressive step forward when introduced by Robert Peel in London in 1829. We have apparently forgotten what the alternative was.
