City guard, city watch, town guard or town watch was a law enforcement formation found in some countries and historical periods, usually subordinate to the local municipal government. Historically many cities had their own guard formations, which doubled as police and military force in times of need.
With the unification of laws and centralization of state power (e.g. the Municipal Police Act of 1844 in New York City, United States), such formations became increasingly incorporated into state-run police force (see metropolitan police and municipal police).
Read more about City Guard: City Guard in Fiction
Famous quotes containing the words city and/or guard:
“All that a city will ever allow you is an angle on it—an oblique, indirect sample of what it contains, or what passes through it; a point of view.”
—Peter Conrad (b. 1948)
“Let us guard against saying that there are laws in nature. There are merely necessities: there is no one who commands, no one who obeys, no one who transgresses. Once you understand that there are no purposes, then you also understand that nothing is accidental: for it is only in a world of purposes that the word “accident” makes sense.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)