State police (United States)
The original ranger force consisted of ten men charged with protecting settlers from Native American attacks.
They continued to fill basic law enforcement and frontier protection roles until the close of the "wild west" era.
The passage of legislation on May 2, 1905, did not provoke controversy because it was quietly rushed through the mine-owner dominated legislature, but the strike-breaking role of the new police elicited strong opposition from organized labor, who likened them to the repressive Russian cossacks under the tsar.
... whenever the miners elected to go out on strike ... they invariably found the power of the State bought, paid for, and fighting as a partisan on their employers' side.
[2]Roosevelt's assertions notwithstanding, the Iron and Coal Police continued to operate in increasing numbers into the 1930s.
The formation of the New York State Police (NYSP) force on April 11, 1917, was done amidst controversy and public debate, and the legislation creating it passed by only one vote.
[4] Instead, they were to be more like the trooper police of Australia, both of which had a much more respectable reputation than the maligned forces evoked by trade unionists.
[4] Outside of Pennsylvania, the new state police were also established to free up the National Guard from strikebreaking duties, which was extensive in the later 19th century and early decades of the 20th.
The strikebreaking demands on the New York state police decreased over time and their mandate modernized with the creation of the inter-state highway system and proliferation of the automobile.
While the early "state troopers", as the name implies, were mounted troops, by mid-century they were fully motorized police forces.. Two years later on June 19, 1919 the newly formed West Virginia State Police (WVSP) was formed to combat and put down the rising violence of organized labor[dubious – discuss][neutrality is disputed] in the coal and mining industry.
Over time, these agencies were vested with general police powers, but remained focused primarily on highway and vehicular law enforcement.
North Carolina for example established a DMV motor vehicle theft investigations unit in 1921 to combat a rising problem with car theft, but the state realized a need for a larger, uniformed highway patrol agency to solely enforce traffic laws statewide.
Local NC sheriffs did not have the personnel, resources or training to do so during that era, but did not want their powers usurped by a per-se state police agency.
This was done at the request of the federal government, so that local states could assist the FBI during the rash of bank robberies in the gangster era of the Great Depression in the 1930s.
The expected scores of bank robberies never occurred in NC, instead being an epidemic confined to the sparsely-populated and vast areas of the Southwest, Midwest and Great Plains states from Texas to Minnesota.
It worked primarily against racially based crimes, and included black police officers, which caused howls of protest from former slave owners (and future segregationists).
In many places, it is a full-service law enforcement agency which responds to calls for service, investigates criminal activity, and regularly patrols high-crime areas.
Unlike the other 49 states and territories, Hawaii is not a contiguous area of land, but rather an archipelago, consisting primarily of eight major islands.
