From the Foot Patrolman to the Motor-Mounted Policeman

Policing Everyman: How Cars Transformed American Freedom tells the story of how the mass adoption of cars transformed policing and, in the process, the idea of freedom itself. The first chapter begins by examining the role of traffic—which police chiefs throughout the country identified as the biggest police problem of their generation—in the transition from nineteenth-century self-regulation to twentieth-century policing as the predominant mode of governing American society. Chapter 2, which I will be workshopping, then explains how the police’s duty to manage traffic justified their increasing, and increasingly exclusive, authority to enforce criminal laws.

Note: This is a discussion based workshop of work-in-progress with the expectation that those attending have read the workshop materials. Please contact Jacquelyn E. Burt at ruppx077@umn.edu for a copy of the materials.