The first link appears to have died, at least from my point of view, so I’ll just ask — what era was this early private police force from? In Rome for example it seems like a lot of state-like functions were performed by wealthy/prestigious patrons, right? So the line seems a little blurry there.
On the other hand, I wouldn’t be at all surprised to hear that bounty hunters and private security pre-date the police.
[0] See p. 1193 et seq. of this article: https://law.stanford.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/default/fi...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_firefighting#Early_...