Police officer

Although both police officers and bounty hunters apprehend criminals, the two professions have many other similarities and differences. For centuries the profession of the law enforcement officer has been a standard all around the world in some way. Not always being called a peace officer or police officer, they have played a major role in preventing criminal activity. It became imminent to law enforcement officials that they were becoming very busy with the normal day to day activities and made a critical decision to hire civilian personnel to retrieve the fugitives for a bounty. Today, the laws for the Fugitive Recovery Agent (Bounty Hunter) have changed. In this essay, the Police Officer and the Bounty Hunter will be compared.

A police officer is a person who is sworn to uphold law and order in a community. These officers are sworn on a local, state, or federal government level. However, on a federal level they are given the title of agent. The history of the police officer in America dates back to the foundation of the United States. The first city police department was formed in Philadelphia in 1751 however; in 1663 Hans Block created the first city patrol in the Swedish District (Bowdren, 2012). The US Marshals Service was founded in 1789 which became the first federal law enforcement agency ("Us Marshals Service", 2012). After the creation of the US Marshals, other federal agencies began to form.

The US Marshals carried out policing duties when new territories began to develop throughout the mid west ("Us Marshals Service", 2012). In the American Old West policing policies were very poor in nature due to very limited resources and no formal training. Sheriffs, along with organized posies, were often aided by the Army to hunt and search for wanted suspects who allegedly committed criminal activity. Quite often, sheriffs hired the Pinkerton National Detective Agency to carry out certain duties that the sheriff could not handle. At its prime, the Pinkerton Agency employed more citizens than the Army ("Pinkerton National Detective Agency", 2012).

In 1865, President Abraham Lincoln created a new federal agency known as the Secret Service. The Secret Service served as the country’s main investigative agency due to the fact that the US Marshals did not have the manpower to carry out investigations under the federal jurisdiction ("United States Secret Service", 2012). There were some lawmen who were naturals at police work. Wyatt Earp was to this day the most famous lawman of the old west. Wyatt worked for various cities as a lawman beginning in Wichita, Kansas. He then left Wichita taking a job in Dodge City, Kansas. Released of his city contract from Dodge City, Wyatt began working for the railroad and would soon meet the infamous John “Doc” Holiday. In 1881, Wyatt, along with his brothers, Virgil and Morgan Earp, and with the assistance of Doc Holiday, the four