It is a little known fact that West Indians founded the first modern police force in London. The Thames River Police: Forefathers of Modern Policing tells the story of the oldest continuously serving police force in the world, founded by the West India Committee in 1798.

Written by David Wells, the West India Committee's Resident Research Fellow, with a foreword by Metropolitan Police Commissioner Cressida Dick, the book recounts the story of about London's West Indian community in the eighteenth century, the crime that gripped the River Thames and how policing at the time differed from today, until the revolutionary founding of the Thames River Police, whose successes led to the creation of the Metropolitan Police. Follow the story through the dangers of the Wapping Coal Riot, the horrors of the Ratcliffe Highway Murders and the Princess Alice Disaster, the trials of the two world wars and the Marchioness Disaster to their efforts to protect the river today.

152 page in total, it contains copies of original documents, a timeline, a full index and bibliography.