Night watch systems, constables, sheriffs, and slave patrols are predecessors of modern policing.

• A. Slave patrols
• B. Slave codes
• C. Predecessors of modern policing
• D. Black codes

Answer: (C)

The main idea here is that early local safety systems were the building blocks of policing as an institution. Night watch groups, constables, sheriffs, and slave patrols organized communities to enforce laws, patrol streets, and maintain order—laying the structural groundwork for what we now call modern policing. The best fit is that these are predecessors of modern policing because they represent the actual systems and practices that evolved into today’s police forces.

Other options point to things that aren’t the enforcement institutions themselves. Slave patrols are part of that historical lineage but focus on a specific practice rather than the broad set of institutions that became policing. Slave codes and Black codes describe laws controlling enslaved people and later freed people, which influence enforcement context but are not the policing bodies or organizations themselves.