Quote Originally Posted by slapout9 View Post
You may be right. A Marshall Service may be more appropriate than a Police Service. We talked about such a thing a while back. Jedburgh our master Intel guy found a Rand Study that suggested the same thing. Use the search option and you may be able to find it. How they survived (The Marshalls) was by raising Posses...instant militias. A power they still hold to this day,so do some County Sheriff's in some states.
Dangerous analogies in some ways. You're right, Slap, with the suggestion about a marshal service (it also gave the Federal government a "hand in the game" in the territories, but was also subject to patronage appointments), but the law enforcement situation in the West was much more complex than "Marshal Dillon outnumbered by gangs." Often the local lawman found himself torn between political poles in a particular town or region (Tombstone - the region, not the move - is especially, and exaggeratedly, instructional here), and even the marshals found themselves undermanned and underpaid in most cases.

The typical Western small town wasn't quite as violent as the movies hint, and there was also the "Miners' Council" aspect to most of them. Most mining towns were established under somewhat collectivist principles, and part of that was the formation of the Council (usually any able-bodied male resident in the area). Such Councils served as 'police' and court, and could order banishment, forfeiture of a claim, and so on. Some of them took on very vigilante overtones (Virginia City, MT, is one example). There were pockets of wanton lawlessness to be sure, but it tended to come in cycles and was often controlled by local interests.