Watchman (law enforcement)

Watchmen were groups of men, usually authorised by a state, government, or society, to deter criminal activity and provide law enforcement. Watchmen have existed in various guises throughout the world and were generally succeeded by the emergence of formally organised policing.

Early origins

An early reference to a watch can be found in the Bible where the Prophet Ezekiel states that it was the duty of the watch to blow the horn and sound the alarm. (Ezekiel 33:1-6)

The existence of watchmen has also been found in the Ottoman, Greek and Egyptian Empires.

The Roman Empire turned the role of a watchman into a profession by creating two organizations:

Watchmen in England

The Problem of the Night

The streets in London were dark and had the shortage and poor quality of artificial light. It had been recognized for centuries that the coming of darkness to the unlit streets of a town brought a heightened threat of danger, that the night cover to the disorderly and immoral, and to those bent on robbery or burglary or who in other ways threatened physical harm to people in the streets and in their houses.

Municipal Guards

Municipal Guards (Portuguese: Guardas Municipais, singular: Guarda Municipal), also called the Municipal Civil Guards (Guardas Civis Municipais, singular: Guarda Civil Municipal), are the security forces of municipalities (cities) of Brazil. Created in the time of the Empire of Brazil, the guardsmen are subordinated to the municipality mayors (prefeitos). Trained as a civilian uniformed agency, the city guards are responsible to police the municipal parks, properties, installations and the interior of municipal councils and city halls, according to the Brazilian Federal Constitution.

Their patrols are called rondas ("rounds") and there are 1,200 municipalities with Municipal Guards with more than 120,000 operatives according with the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics. They are treated as police officers by the former president of the IPA (International Police Association) Brazilian section, Mr. George Henry Millard. The former Brazilian Minister of Justice and elected governor of the state of Rio Grande do Sul, Mr. Tarso Genro, asked for them to be given more jurisdiction for their operatives, and especially for their official recognition by Brazil as public safety workers.