the original purpose of police was...

not to fight crime, but to crush labor protests ......

I heard that somewhere. is it true?

there have been police - or at least law enforcement - far longer than the modern labor movement.
http://realpolice.net/police_history.htm

However, many private security companies were initially used to deal with labor uprisings.

the link I posted shows that police forces have existed far longer than the labor movement.

tasers, tear gas, stun guns, pepper spray, and the like, along with military-style tactics?

I thought there was a time (mid-20th century?) when police agencies assumed a more para-military posturing but can't think of a specific year...

The first proper standing police forces were formed, I believe, in the 1700s. The notion of semi-armed men to keep law has been around in some form or another since antiquity, though. Think about that supposition--does that mean that before the labor movement, there was anarchy?

... police and detective agencies was to deter labor organizing. Pinkerton, Baldwin-Felts and their ilk.

Detectives have been around since the 18th century. Private detectives have existed almost as long, but I don't deny that they first found popularity with the labor movement. However, that was more a case of big money finding an existing service useful than big money creating a service.

If Howard Dean was the first Democrat to find the internet incredibly useful for fundraising and organization, it doesn't mean that the internet was created for liberals to run campaigns.

... yes, private detectives have been around for ages--but the big "agencies" came about and were created to service big industry--and big industry's principal problem was labor organizing.

Quelling labor unrest was the very biggest part of the business of the firms I mentioned.

Cheers.

:shrug:

... private. Hoover might have conceived of the FBI as a national police force along the lines of Pinkerton, and some Pinkerton employees certainly did join the early FBI, but one didn't evolve into the other.

Pinkerton took off financially as a guard force for the railroads, ostensibly to protect railroad shipments. But, they were used extensively early on in Texas to quash labor organizing among railroad employees, so it was natural that they would extend those services to the coal mine owners (the interests of the railroad owners and the coal company owners were intimately intertwined).

PART ZERO - Celebration With Rada Drums
see bolded text for answer

only ten blocks away
buildings burned - perhaps burning now
the august night broken by sniper fire
police men bleeding in the streets
a sniper surrenders (perhaps out of ammunition)
Gun Jammed?
someone sed he was framed in a doorway
like a picture - his hands in the air
when they shot him -

only ten blocks away
from my quiet apartment
with its green ceramic buddhas
& science fiction books
unread skin magazines to be cut up
for collages

only ten blocks away
from my total helplessness
from my boredom enforced by the state
they are looting stores
trying to get televisions
so they can watch the riots
on the 11 pm news

the national guard jeeps patrol
the streets again
the army-green trucks with the
giant white star on the side
moving in the summer lightning

i cd tell you partly
why it happened
but you wouldnt believe me

like in Milwaukee
during a reading
just after i said
"this is a paranoid poem - written when i was
experimenting with paranoid states of consciousness,
but im not there anymore"
& a young girl sat writing
"shows paranoid symptoms"
probably for her psychology class
not hearing me at all

i cld try to tell you
about the hopeless despair
ingrained in ghetto walls
& police brutality or police stupidity
or police reality is more than just words
to define situation
by students looking for a cause.
the situations exist & continue
quietly in the dark while the
protest goes on in daylight -
both unheard.

Really
the police try to protect
the banks - and everything else
is secondary

during the riots
i watched the news
& didnt pick sides for a change

i just sat wondering about all
the living room revolutionaries
safe in the suburbs
who cheered everytime someone
was shot or a building went up
in smoke

ten blocks away
it was real
thousands of tourists
arrived