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AHC/ WI: American Gendarmerie

Polyphemus

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What if rather than the often labyrinthine system of municipal, county, and state police agencies the United States adopted a single federal service for policing? A designated uniformed branch responsible for everything from routine patrol and traffic all the way up to investigating serious corruption cases. A bit similar to Italy or Spain.

A few questions follow. What would be a possible POD to lead to this? What would such a uniquely American force look like?
 
America though not completely decentralized has always allowed more power to state and local governments than countries such as Italy and Spain, and furthermore is much bigger than those two countries. As such I don't really think this is possible unless you can get a POD that handwaves the Louisiana Purchase but then that does away with most of America's history, so, no I don't really see how you can get an American Gendarmarie
 
I could see state gendarmeries (basically the state police forces but bigger) happening more easily, though maybe only in some states

The New York State Polices catalyst was an incident where local police couldn't intervene in time in the 1910s. (The implication was that automobiles made such things far more likely).

The best way would probably be to combine something like that with a (however cynical) desire to break purportedly corrupt city machines by taking police out of their hands.
 
Broadly speaking, any POD that results in the US becoming a dictatorship would result in the necessary centralization of power to create a gendarmare, and an authoritarian regime would probably see a lot of upsides in having a military force with police powers.

Is that true though? The US feel like one of those countries that could pull off decentralized dictatorship, considering how a lot of the usual suspects for an abolition of democracy like to bring up state rights. I might be wrong though, if I remember correctly, the confederacy wasn't that big on the decentralization in practice, during its short existence.

Actually, that's a dark way to get there, a gendarmerie could evolve from a federal slave catcher agency. Maybe in the wake of non slave states' polices failing to offer support to slave catchers? Though that's more likely to prompt a civil war than to work out in the slavers' favour.
 
Actually, that's a dark way to get there, a gendarmerie could evolve from a federal slave catcher agency. Maybe in the wake of non slave states' polices failing to offer support to slave catchers? Though that's more likely to prompt a civil war than to work out in the slavers' favour.
Yeah, something like that could trigger Northern secession, in full or in part (particularly New England, as a major center of the anti-slavery movement), which would lead to a civil war. Would be more interesting if Northern secession, or at least the first part of a civil war, here coincided with 1848-50, which would certainly give it a different character than OTL based on what was happening in Europe around this time.
 
Yeah, something like that could trigger Northern secession, in full or in part (particularly New England, as a major center of the anti-slavery movement), which would lead to a civil war. Would be more interesting if Northern secession, or at least the first part of a civil war, here coincided with 1848-50, which would certainly give it a different character than OTL based on what was happening in Europe around this time.

Maybe smaller northern secession, which lead to an US minus its most abolitionist provinces maintaining a federal slave catcher gendarmerie? And generally ignoring states' rights since it's no longer needed as a justification for protecting slavery, the odious institution having been made hegemonic.

So you could get there by shrinking the US, but it's still the US, in name. It's also an awful dystopia.
 
Actually, that's a dark way to get there, a gendarmerie could evolve from a federal slave catcher agency.

As it stood, the Antebellum South was very eager to use existing federal law enforcement for that purpose. I can see them pushing through an expansion with some technical "interstate commerce patrol" or disguised/euphemistic name that's intended to be used as a slave catcher service and stocked with the "right" people for such a task.
 
As it stood, the Antebellum South was very eager to use existing federal law enforcement for that purpose. I can see them pushing through an expansion with some technical "interstate commerce patrol" or disguised/euphemistic name that's intended to be used as a slave catcher service and stocked with the "right" people for such a task.

Yeah it'd just be building up the enforcement arm of the fugitive slave act once it's clear the Northerners are quietly refusing to cooperate even once it was declared constitutional. And you're right that the interstate commerce clause is likely to come up.

So just like the OTL FBI, its range of cases is likely to be only what crosses state lines. It'd start with slave catching and expand to smuggling and the like, maybe?

I can also imagine the secessionist north serving as a destination for illegal action the truncated US disapprove of, which serves as a catalyst for expanding that force.

From there to an unified gendarmerie... The OTL slave catchers already had the power to deputize local law enforcement under the fugitive slave act. The new agency probably retains those powers, and they could evolve into a more or less permanent deal where local law enforcement is technically local but in practice the demands of an authoritarian slave state full of dissidents means they're more or less permanently federalized?
 
There was actually a lot of discussion in the US Army after the Civil War about how their primary role might, or in the minds of some, should become that of an American Gendarmerie. There's absolutely a chance that such a thing could have happened, possibly with the split of the Army into two services. Considering Reconstruction, Indian Wars and Military Deployments against Labor they were at least halfway there. Proposals like the 1890s Force Act would have further entrenched the role.
 
A US-wide federal gendarmerie can't happen without an America that scales back state powers, as @lerk says. I could see state gendarmeries (basically the state police forces but bigger) happening more easily, though maybe only in some states
I mean, aren't the Texas Rangers de facto with that function already? Then again, it is Texas.
 
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