Public policing as an institution emerged only in the mid-1800s

Evidence

In a fascinating paper, “On the Demand for Order in Civil Society” (1967), Allan Silver has pointed out that the modern police organization goes back only to the middle of the nineteenth century. Prior to that time, police functions were generally handled by “ordinary, respectable citizens,” or, for purposes of internal peace-keeping, by the military. With increasing concentration of large populations in small areas, neither proved very efficient. But with the creation of the police, it became possible to exercise potentially violent supervision over the population by bureaucratic means widely diffused throughout civil society in small and discretionary operations that [were] capable of rapid concentration. — Lyn H. Lofland, World of Strangers_ Order and Action in…, 527