The ‘Slave Patrols’ & Modern-Day Policing
The deep-rooted lack of accountability for crimes against Black communities, as described in Dr. Joy DeGruy’s Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome: America's Legacy of Enduring Injury and Healing.
By Ramon “Ben Khayil” Montague
When I see the phrase “to serve and protect” on police cars, I know it refers to white people and their property. The police have historically valued the well-being and property of white people over that of Black people.
Reading Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome: America's Legacy of Enduring Injury and Healing by Dr. Joy DeGruy left me thoroughly impressed. She provides a sharp and accurate assessment of the dire problems African Americans face when dealing with law enforcement. What struck me most was her historical research on policing and how, as she writes, “the similarities between the slave patrols and modern American policing are too salient to dismiss or ignore.”
DeGruy argues that slave patrols should be considered a forerunner of modern law enforcement. She cites the 1705 Virginia Slave Code, which removed criminal consequences for killing an enslaved person:
"...if any slave resists his master, or owner, or other person, by his or her order, correcting such slave, and shall happen to be killed in such correction, it shall not be accounted felony; but the master, owner, and every such other person so giving correction, shall be free and acquitted of all punishment and accusation for the same, as if such incident had never happened."
In her open letter “No Humans Involved,” Sylvia Wynter points to a similar mindset in modern law enforcement. She writes that the dehumanization of young, unemployed Black males has allowed them to be subjected to the “genocidal effects [of] incarceration and elimination ... by ostensibly normal, and everyday means.” The phrase no humans involved reflects law enforcement's attitude toward marginalized groups: Black people are seen as nonhuman. This dehumanization has paved the way for policies like qualified immunity, shielding officers from accountabily and minimizing the murders they commit.
After reading DeGruy’s analysis, I fully understood the connection between the Virginia Slave Code of 1705 and modern policing in America—the way police today can kill unarmed Black people and face no consequences, much as the slave patrol did in 1705.
I remember the assassinations of Fred Hampton and Mark Clark, leaders of the Black Panther Party, while they were still in their beds. Hampton was lying next to his pregnant fiancée when Chicago police and the FBI fired at least 100 rounds into their apartment, killing both Hampton and Clark.
These Black men were killed by Black and white officers simply because they had the audacity to stand up for Black people. No one was held accountable for these murders—an example of state-sponsored violence, ripped straight from the Virginia Slave Code of 1705.
Fast-forward to the murder of George Floyd, who was killed by police on camera. The world watched in horror. Protests erupted, and a unified voice demanded justice. This time, the officer who murdered Floyd was tried and convicted.
I am a 64-year-old Black man who had his first encounter with law enforcement at the age of 5. I had wandered off from my friend and gotten lost. After crying and rubbing a dirt ring around my right eye, I was found by a police officer who returned me to my family. That was my only positive experience with the police—perhaps because I was a child, the officer saw me as human. But once I became an adult, that changed. Every encounter since has been negative.
DeGruy’s analysis of post-traumatic slave syndrome has made one fact abundantly clear: the slave patrols were never eradicated.
Instead, they were camouflaged and modernized.
