Quote of the Day - Policing

1. To prevent crime and disorder, as an alternative to their repression by military force and severity of legal punishment.

2. To recognise always that the power of the police to fulfill their functions and duties is dependent on public approval of their existence, actions and behaviour, and on their ability to secure and maintain public respect.

3. To recognise always that to secure and maintain the respect and approval of the public means also the securing of the willing co-operation of the public in the task of securing observance of laws.

4. To recognise always that the extent to which the co-operation of the public can be secured diminishes proportionately the necessity of the use of physical force and compulsion for achieving police objectives.

5. To seek and preserve public favour, not by pandering to public opinion, but by constantly demonstrating absolutely impartial service to law, in complete independence of policy, and without regard to the justice or injustice of the substance of individual laws, by ready offering of individual service and friendship to all members of the public without regard to their wealth or social standing, by ready exercise of courtesy and friendly good humour, and by ready offering of individual sacrifice in protecting and preserving life.

6. To use physical force only when the exercise of persuasion, advice and warning is found to be insufficient to obtain public co-operation to an extent necessary to secure observance of law or to restore order, and to use only the minimum degree of physical force which is necessary on any particular occasion for achieving a police objective.

7. To maintain at all times a relationship with the public that gives reality to the historic tradition that the police are the public and that the public are the police, the police being only members of the public who are paid to give full-time attention to duties which are incumbent on every citizen in the interests of community welfare and existence.

8. To recognise always the need for strict adherence to police-executive functions, and to refrain from even seeming to usurp the powers of the judiciary of avenging individuals or the State, and of authoritatively judging guilt and punishing the guilty.

9. To recognise always that the test of police efficiency is the absence of crime and disorder, and not the visible evidence of police action in dealing with them.

- Robert Peel's Principles of Policing

Robert Peel was the man who created the modern concept of police and policing. Before then, laws were enforced by individuals acting to bring alleged lawbreakers before magistrates or the army. (It could be called out by a magistrate literally reading "The Riot Act" to an unruly crowd.) Some individuals were given the power to enforce court actions, such as bailiffs or sheriffs—or rather shire reeves—but these were not police in the modern sense of the word.

The Bow Street Runners, established in Westminster in 1749, are often called the first police force, but they were more focused on arrest powers than law enforcement. That took Robert Peel, who, as Home Secretary in 1829, established the Metropolitan Police Force for London based at Scotland Yard. He also developed a set of standards to define ethical policing—listed at the start of this piece.

As you read through each point, you probably nodded and thought, "Yep, that is how it should work." For the rest of the 19th century and into the 20th century that was how it worked in Britain, especially in London. Even in the United States of the period, while there were corrupt and venal police departments in some major cities, Americans viewed Peel's principles as how policing should work. In many towns and small cities throughout America that was how it did work.

Today? Not so much I fear. The police have been increasingly militarized in this century, behaving more and more like soldiers. (Why should any civilian police officer wear camo or even military-style BDUs while on duty? Yet many officers view this as cool.) Too many officers wish to enjoy the privileges of their position without embracing their corresponding responsibilities.

Renewed adherence to Peel's nine principles, especially the ninth point, would go a long way to reversing this trend. It would require active cooperation by the police, the magistrates (in the form of elected officials) and the judiciary. (The courts as well as the police need to embrace their responsibilities in law enforcement, instead of pandering to public opinion.) It would be worth it.