Vollmer’s police school was actually part of a radical plan to dissolve the Berkeley Police Department and rebuild it as a better organization. It sounds like an uncontroversial suggestion. Vollmer co-wrote disparaged traditional police departments as corrupt, inept and violent, with officers chosen for their “political pull and brute strength.” His solution, which became a reality at the University of California, Berkeley, was “a school for the special training of police officers,” which would grant the equivalent of a bachelor’s degree in criminology. I’ll admire you more if in the first year you don’t make a single arrest.”Ī 1916 article that Mr. Vollmer saying in a speech to a group of officers. “You prevent people from doing wrong,” a protégé recalled Mr. Vollmer’s ideal world, cops would never have to bust heads instead, they would use their smarts to bring about social reforms that prevented people from becoming “crooks” in the first place. He eventually replaced them with college-educated people, hoping they would usher in a new, progressive era in policing.

What’s rarely talked about, however, is that he began his tenure as the head of the police department of Berkeley, Calif., in 1905 by forcing all of his deputies to resign - arguably a kind of early experiment in abolishing the police.

He has also been criticized for pioneering the militarization of the police and espousing the racist theories of eugenics. August Vollmer has been hailed by many in law enforcement as the father of modern American policing.

Four lost cities