I'll give this a shot.*

(Late 1600s-1830s) In America, policing started with groups of people known as "night watchmen." These were essentially men within the community who, either for profit or by public mandate, were entrusted with keeping the peace in growing towns. These groups were largely considered unprofessional. They'd often drink on the job, did not hold a high level of respect, and would mainly deal with problems created by "outsiders" to their respective towns.

1830s-1920s As industry, and cities, began to grow the amount of interaction between individuals began to call for more centralized police forces. The increase of industry was accompanied by more spending money for the average person. This lead to markets popping up for vices. Police during this period would often deal with public drunkeness and bar scuffles. This industry also brought disorder in other ways. As strikes became more common, so did strike busting. Police would be called in to break strikes, often times to protect financial and political interests. If you were in the South at this time, a large part of your job would have been slave hunting (until it was made illegal, obviously). Also, at this time, police began to grow more beauracratic. Where the night watchman may have been privately employed police in this time period were almost certainly subject to a central authority.

(1920s and beyond) Prohibition and the increase of organized crime caused the national government to look at policing techniques. You'd spend your time either fighting the mafia or rubbing your elbows with them. By the 1950s O.W. Wilson called for a professional overhaul in policing. Think of Joe Friday saying "Just the facts, ma'am." Policing took a more militaristic approach and some departments saw themselves as a separate entity from the community rather than a part of it. Crime prevention became more prevalent in this time and with it patrolling increased. This lead to more interaction between police and citizens, but, because of the "professionalism" techniques it also created tension between communities (stop and frisk became more common). This was especially true in the South, as the civil rights movement began to kickoff.

This is all very general. If there was a more specific time period or region you are interested in let me know. What I'm speaking of was mostly true for big cities.

Sources: http://plsonline.eku.edu/insidelook/history-policing-united-states-part-1

Won't be able to read it but this is a later edition of my old Policing America textbook

*Not a historian but did study criminal justice. If the answer was inappropriate feel free to remove it or expand upon it. I saw that most answers had been removed so I was trying to give an actual answer.

Writer's note: This post includes racially inflammatory language from source documents.

I'll give you a hand on this one, /u/Elemno_P, keeping in mind that this answer is going to be limited to the police department of Juneau, Alaska. Before we start, it's important to also state that I consider the War on Drugs to "officially" begin with the passage of the Comprehensive Drug Abuse Prevention and Control Act of 1970 by the U.S. Congress. That's a debatable start, and an expert in the War on Drugs may differ with me. I'm using it as a convenient boundary.

In any event, one of my friends on the Alaska Historical Society board, Averil Lerman, is putting together a history of Alaska's last two executions and the presumed errors that led to those two people being hanged from the steps of the federal building here in Juneau, Alaska's capital. So great was the perceived misconduct that it contributed to the Alaska Territorial Legislature banning the death penalty, and that ban has held up to this day.

During her research, Averil came up with a magnificent find in the state archives: The complete logs of the Juneau Police Department in the late 1940s and 1950s. They're wonderful artifacts (that unfortunately haven't been digitized yet) that really get to the heart of what you're asking. The Juneau Police Department from the end of WWII to 1970 is a small-town department. It has small-town problems, and although it's in Alaska and a territorial (or after 1959, state) capital, its problems are similar to those of any department in small-town America. There's a much-simplified outline of the department's 1940s and 1950s activities online here.

I don't think you'd be too surprised by what you'd find in these logs. There's a lot of drunk-and-disorderly calls, a lot of traffic tickets and parking violations, calls about children misbehaving, the occasional accidental death, the occasional traffic accident (there weren't and still aren't that many roads in Juneau), and so forth. In January 1953, for example, the city council asked the chief of police to make sure kids weren't sledding down the middle of one of the busier streets.

When I called Averil about this question, she was in San Francisco and didn't have access to her notes, but she said "They didn't do anything. They just busted drunks."

One crime that doesn't occur as much as it did in the 1950s was stealing a car for a joyride, then returning it or abandoning it along the side of the road after the joyride. In the 1950s, JPD considered hiring a policewoman specifically to deal with "juvenile delinquents" and youth curfew violators, as this was considered a significant problem by the city council. There was already a "jail matron" employed by the police department to keep track of female prisoners in the jail.

The logs are also incredibly illuminating about social mores. One instance in particular really sticks in my mind. In 1945, Alaska passed the Anti-Discrimination Act. Alaska was the first territory or state to pass a civil rights antidiscrimination law, but while that act changed the rules, it didn't change everyone's minds. In 1946, a log entry states that a hotel manager called the police because "the niggers wouldn't leave." The log states that an officer responded and informed the manager that "niggers (were) allowed to be there now."

The department had different responsibilities than it does today. For example, it hired a dog catcher in February 1955 who was paid $300 per month and $1 for each dog he killed. One month later, he left the job after accidentally killing someone's pet. Apparently, the $1 bounty was high enough that he had been too aggressive. The department was told to only kill a dog when a complaint had been made and the dog had been positively ID'ed.

The police department also kept a fire watch and oversaw the city's rat control program. In December 1952, a poisoning campaign counted more than 1,300 dead rats in Juneau, and the campaigners estimated 50 percent more dead in their holes. The department also was in charge of street signs and traffic signals; a new red-and-green stoplight installed at the end of 1952 could be turned off by police when streets got too icy and cars started sliding through the intersection.

The police department also oversaw the local jail, which I'm given to understand is somewhat atypical in various parts of the United States today. Even in Juneau, the police department doesn't have a jail anymore; the state prison in town handles matters.

By and large, however, Juneau had a much smaller department in the 1940s and 1950s, even adjusting for population growth and inflation. In the 1954-1955 fiscal year, the police department's budget was $65,233. According to territorial records, Juneau had a population of approximately 7,500 people in 1955.

Adjusted for inflation, Juneau's FY54 budget would be $574,526 today. But Juneau has a greater population, too. It had 33,277 people, according to state estimates, on July 1, 2015. That's 4.44 times as many people. So if Juneau today were to get the same level of police service as it had in FY54, its police department budget would be $2.55 million. Instead, it's $14.4 million.

I know the phrase dates back to the Nixon administration but does the war on drugs have a concrete start date? And was it a clearly defined program or a general policy of being strict on drug use and distribution?

Hi, everyone,

In the AskHistorians subreddit, the OP's inbox is protected by two separate yet equally important groups: (1) subreddit rules against posting based on firsthand or secondhand anecdotes and one-off jokes, and (2) the moderators who prosecute the offenders tirelessly delete those posts. This leaves a trail of frustrated users who see "160 comments" but an empty thread.

Please make sure your answers to OP's question have roots in the academic literature on the history of law enforcement/history of crime.

Thanks!