police
A
police force is a constituted body of persons empowered by the
state to enforce the law, protect property, and limit civil disorder. Their powers include the legitimized use of force. The term is most commonly associated with police services of a state that are authorized to exercise the police power
of that state within a defined legal or territorial area of
responsibility. Police forces are often defined as being separate from military or other organizations involved in the defense of the state against foreign aggressors; however, gendarmerie are military units charged with civil policing.
Law enforcement, however, constitutes only part of policing activity.
Policing has included an array of activities in different situations,
but the predominant ones are concerned with the preservation of order.
In some societies, in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, these developed within the context of maintaining the
class system and the protection of private property. Many police forces suffer from police corruption to a greater or lesser degree. The police force is usually a public sector service, meaning they are paid through taxes.
Alternative names for police force include
constabulary, gendarmerie, police department, police service, crime prevention, protective services, law enforcement agency, civil guard or civic guard. Members may be referred to as police officers, troopers, sheriffs, constables, rangers, peace officers or civic/civil guards.
As police are often interacting with individuals, slang terms are numerous. Many
slang terms for police officers are decades or centuries old with lost etymology.
Etymology
First attested in English in the early 15th century, initially in a
range of senses ecompassing '(public) policy; state; public order', the
word
police comes from
Middle French police ('public order, administration, government'),
[5] in turn from Latin
politia,
[6] which is the Latinisation of the Greek πολιτεία (
politeia), "citizenship, administration, civil polity".
[7] This is derived from πόλις (
polis), "city"
Etymology
First attested in English in the early 15th century, initially in a
range of senses ecompassing '(public) policy; state; public order', the
word
police comes from
Middle French police ('public order, administration, government'),
[5] in turn from Latin
politia,
[6] which is the Latinisation of the Greek πολιτεία (
politeia), "citizenship, administration, civil polity".
[7] This is derived from πόλις (
polis), "city".
[8]
History
Ancient policing
Law enforcement in
Ancient China was carried out by "prefects" for thousands of years since it developed in both the
Chu and
Jin kingdoms of the
Spring and Autumn period.
In Jin, dozens of prefects were spread across the state, each having
limited authority and employment period. They were appointed by local
magistrates, who reported to higher authorities such as governors, who
in turn were appointed by the emperor, and they oversaw the civil
administration of their "prefecture", or jurisdiction. Under each
prefect were "subprefects" who helped collectively with law enforcement
of the area. Some prefects were responsible for handling investigations,
much like modern police detectives. Prefects could also be women.
[9] The concept of the "prefecture system" would spread to other cultures such as Korea and Japan.
In
Ancient Greece, publicly owned slaves were used by magistrates as police. In
Athens, a group of 300
Scythian slaves (the
ῥαβδοῦχοι, "rod-bearers") was used to guard public meetings to keep order and for
crowd control, and also assisted with dealing with
criminals,
handling prisoners, and making arrests. Other duties associated with
modern policing, such as investigating crimes, were left to the citizens
themselves.
[10]
In the
Roman Empire,
the Army, rather than a dedicated police organization, provided
security. Local watchmen were hired by cities to provide some extra
security. Magistrates such as
procurators fiscal and
quaestors
investigated crimes. There was no concept of public prosecution, so
victims of crime or their families had to organize and manage the
prosecution themselves.
Under the reign of
Augustus, when the capital had grown to almost one million inhabitants, 14
wards were created; the wards were protected by seven squads of 1,000 men called
"vigiles",
who acted as firemen and nightwatchmen. Their duties included
apprehending thieves and robbers and capturing runaway slaves. The
vigiles were supported by the
Urban Cohorts who acted as a heavy-duty anti-riot force and even the
Praetorian Guard if necessary.
Medieval policing
In Medieval
Spain,
hermandades, or "brotherhoods", peacekeeping associations of armed individuals, were a characteristic of municipal life, especially in
Castile.
As medieval Spanish kings often could not offer adequate protection,
protective municipal leagues began to emerge in the 12th century against
bandits and other rural criminals, and against the lawless
nobility or to support one or another claimant to a crown.
These organizations were intended to be temporary, but became a
long-standing fixture of Spain. The first recorded case of the formation
of an
hermandad occurred when the towns and the peasantry of the north united to police the pilgrim road to
Santiago de Compostela in
Galicia, and protect the pilgrims against robber knights.
Throughout the Middle Ages such alliances were frequently formed by
combinations of towns to protect the roads connecting them, and were
occasionally extended to political purposes. Among the most powerful was
the league of North Castilian and Basque ports, the
Hermandad de las marismas:
Toledo,
Talavera, and
Villarreal.
As one of their first acts after end of the
War of the Castilian Succession in 1479,
Ferdinand and
Isabella established the centrally organized and efficient
Holy Brotherhood (
Santa Hermandad)
as a national police force. They adapted an existing brotherhood to the
purpose of a general police acting under officials appointed by
themselves, and endowed with great powers of summary jurisdiction even
in capital cases. The original brotherhoods continued to serve as modest
local police-units until their final suppression in 1835.
The
Fehmic courts of Germany provided some policing in the absence of strong state institutions.
In
France during the
Middle Ages, there were two
Great Officers of the Crown of France with police responsibilities: The
Marshal of France and the
Constable of France.
The military policing responsibilities of the Marshal of France were
delegated to the Marshal's provost, whose force was known as the
Marshalcy because its authority ultimately derived from the Marshal. The
marshalcy dates back to the
Hundred Years' 'War, and some historians trace it back to the early 12th century. Another organisation, the
Constabulary (French: Connétablie), was under the command of the
Constable of France. The constabulary was regularised as a military body in 1337. Under
King Francis I
(who reigned 1515–1547), the Maréchaussée was merged with the
Constabulary. The resulting force was also known as the Maréchaussée,
or, formally, the Constabulary and Marshalcy of France.
The
English system of maintaining public order since the Norman conquest was a private system of
tithings, led by a
constable,
which was based on a social obligation for the good conduct of the
others; more common was that local lords and nobles were responsible for
maintaining order in their lands, and often appointed a
constable, sometimes unpaid, to enforce the law. There was also a system investigative "
juries".
The
Assize of Arms of 1252, which required the appointment of
constables to summon men to arms, quell
breaches of the peace, and to deliver offenders to the
sheriffs or
reeves, is cited as one of the earliest creation of the English police.
[11] The
Statute of Winchester of 1285 is also cited as the primary legislation regulating the policing of the country between the
Norman Conquest and the
Metropolitan Police Act 1829.
[11][12]
From about 1500, private watchmen were funded by private individuals
and organisations to carry out police functions. They were later
nicknamed 'Charlies', probably after the reigning monarch King Charles
II.
Thief-takers were also rewarded for catching thieves and returning the stolen property.
The first use of the word police ("Polles") in English comes from the
book "The Second Part of the Institutes of the Lawes of England"
published in 1642.
[13]
Early Modern policing
The first centrally organised police force was created by the government of King
Louis XIV in 1667 to police the city of
Paris, then the largest city in Europe. The royal edict, registered by the
Parlement of Paris on March 15, 1667 created the office of
lieutenant général de police
("lieutenant general of police"), who was to be the head of the new
Paris police force, and defined the task of the police as "ensuring the
peace and quiet of the public and of private individuals, purging the
city of what may cause disturbances, procuring abundance, and having
each and everyone live according to their station and their duties".
This office was first held by
Gabriel Nicolas de la Reynie, who had 44
commissaires de police (police commissioners) under his authority. In 1709, these commissioners were assisted by
inspecteurs de police (police inspectors). The city of Paris was divided into 16 districts policed by the
commissaires,
each assigned to a particular district and assisted by a growing
bureaucracy. The scheme of the Paris police force was extended to the
rest of France by a royal edict of October 1699, resulting in the
creation of lieutenants general of police in all large French cities and
towns.
After the
French Revolution,
Napoléon I reorganized the police in Paris and other cities with more than 5,000 inhabitants on February 17, 1800 as the
Prefecture of Police. On March 12, 1829, a government decree created the first uniformed police in
France, known as
sergents de ville ("city sergeants"), which the Paris Prefecture of Police's website claims were the first uniformed policemen in the world.
[14]
In 1737,
George II began paying some London and Middlesex watchmen with tax monies, beginning the shift to government control. In 1749
Henry Fielding began organizing a force of quasi-professional constables known as the
Bow Street Runners. The
Macdaniel affair added further impetus for a publicly salaried police force that did not depend on rewards. Nonetheless, In 1828, there were
privately financed police units in no fewer than 45 parishes within a 10-mile radius of London.
The word "police" was
borrowed
from French into the English language in the 18th century, but for a
long time it applied only to French and continental European police
forces. The word, and the concept of police itself, were "disliked as a
symbol of foreign oppression" (according to
Britannica 1911).
Before the 19th century, the first use of the word "police" recorded in
government documents in the United Kingdom was the appointment of
Commissioners of Police for Scotland in 1714 and the creation of the
Marine Police in 1798.
Policing in London
In 1797,
Patrick Colquhoun was able to persuade the
West Indies merchants who operated at the
Pool of London on the
River Thames,
to establish a police force at the docks to prevent rampant theft that
was causing annual estimated losses of £500,000 worth of cargo.
[15] The idea of a police, as it then existed in
France,
was considered as a potentially undesirable foreign import. In building
the case for the police in the face of England's firm anti-police
sentiment, Colquhoun framed the political rationale on economic
indicators to show that a police dedicated to crime prevention was
"perfectly congenial to the principle of the British constitution."
Moreover, he went so far as to praise the French system, which had
reached "the greatest degree of perfection" in his estimation.
[16]
With the initial investment of £4,200, the new trial force of the
Thames River Police
began with about 50 men charged with policing 33,000 workers in the
river trades, of whom Colquhoun claimed 11,000 were known criminals and
"on the game." The force was a success after its first year, and his men
had "established their worth by saving £122,000 worth of cargo and by
the rescuing of several lives." Word of this success spread quickly, and
the government passed the Marine Police Bill on 28 July 1800,
transforming it from a private to public police agency; now the oldest
police force in the world. Colquhoun published a book on the experiment,
The Commerce and Policing of the River Thames. It found receptive audiences far outside London, and inspired similar forces in other cities, notably,
New York City,
Dublin, and
Sydney.
[15]
Colquhoun's utilitarian approach to the problem – using a
cost-benefit argument to obtain support from businesses standing to benefit – allowed him to achieve what
Henry and
John Fielding
failed for their Bow Street detectives. Unlike the stipendiary system
at Bow Street, the river police were full-time, salaried officers
prohibited from taking private fees.
[17] His other contribution was the concept of
preventive policing; his police were to act as a highly visible deterrent to crime by their permanent presence on the Thames.
[16] Colquhoun's innovations were a critical development leading up to
Robert Peel's "new" police three decades later.
[18]
Meanwhile, the authorities in
Glasgow,
Scotland successfully petitioned the government to pass the
Glasgow Police Act establishing the
City of Glasgow Police in 1800. Other Scottish towns soon followed suit and set up their own police forces through acts of parliament.
[19] In
Ireland, the Irish Constabulary Act of 1822 marked the beginning of the
Royal Irish Constabulary. The Act established a force in each barony with
chief constables and inspectors general under the control of the civil administration at
Dublin Castle. By 1841 this force numbered over 8,600 men.
Metropolitan police force
London was fast reaching a size unprecedented in world history, due to the onset of the
Industrial Revolution.
[20]
It became clear that the locally maintained system of volunteer
constables and "watchmen" was ineffective, both in detecting and
preventing crime. A parliamentary committee was appointed to investigate
the system of policing in
London. Upon
Sir Robert Peel being appointed as
Home Secretary in 1822, he established a second and more effective committee, and acted upon its findings.
Royal Assent to the
Metropolitan Police Act was given,
[21] and the
Metropolitan Police Service was established on September 29, 1829 in
London as the first modern and professional police force in the world.
[22][23][24]
Peel, widely regarded as the father of modern policing,
[25] was heavily influenced by the social and legal philosophy of
Jeremy Bentham,
who called for a strong and centralized, but politically neutral,
police force for the maintenance of social order, for the protection of
people from crime and to act as a visible
deterrent to urban
crime and disorder.
[26]
Peel decided to standardise the police force as an official paid
profession, to organise it in a civilian fashion, and to make it
answerable to the public.
[27]
Due to public fears concerning the deployment of the military in
domestic matters, Peel organised the force along civilian lines, rather
than
paramilitary.
To appear neutral, the uniform was deliberately manufactured in blue,
rather than red which was then a military colour, along with the
officers being armed only with a wooden
truncheon and a
rattle to signal the need for assistance. Along with this,
police ranks did not include military titles, with the exception of
Sergeant.
[28]
To distance the new police force from the initial public view of it
as a new tool of government repression, Peel publicised the so-called '
Peelian Principles', which set down basic guidelines for ethical policing:
- Every police officer should be issued an identification number, to assure accountability for his actions.
- Whether the police are effective is not measured on the number of arrests, but on the lack of crime.
- Above all else, an effective authority figure knows trust and
accountability are paramount. Hence, Peel's most often quoted principle
that "The police are the public and the public are the police."
The 1829 Metropolitan Police Act created a modern police force by
limiting the purview of the force and it's powers, and envisioning it as
merely an organ of the judicial system. Their job was apolitical; to
maintain the peace and apprehend criminals for the courts to process
according to the law.
[29] This was very different to the '
Continental model' of the police force that had been developed in France, where the police force worked within the parameters of the
absolutist state as an extension of the authority of the monarch and functioned as part of the governing state.
In 1863, the Metropolitan Police were issued with the distinctive
Custodian helmet, and in 1884 they switched to the use of whistles that could be heard from much further away.
[30] The Metropolitan Police became a model for the police forces in most countries, such as the
United States, and most of the
British Empire. Bobbies can still be found in many parts of the
Commonwealth of Nations.
[31]
Other countries
Australia
In
Australia the first police force having centralised command as well as jurisdiction over an entire colony was the
South Australia Police, formed in 1838 under
Henry Inman.
However, whilst the
New South Wales Police Force
was established in 1862, it was made up from a large number of policing
and military units operating within the then Colony of New South Wales
and traces its links back to the Royal Marines. The passing of the
Police Regulation Act of 1862 essentially tightly regulated and
centralised all of the police forces operating throughout the Colony of
New South Wales.
The
New South Wales Police Force
remains the largest police force in Australia in terms of personnel and
physical resources. It is also the only police force that requires its
recruits to undertake university studies at the recruit level and has
the recruit pay for their own education.
Brazil
In 1566, the first police investigator of
Rio de Janeiro was recruited. By the 17th century, most
captaincies already had local units with law enforcement functions. On July 9, 1775 a Cavalry Regiment was created in the state of
Minas Gerais
for maintaining law and order. In 1808, the Portuguese royal family
relocated to Brazil, because of the French invasion of Portugal. King
João VI established the "Intendência Geral de Polícia" (General Police
Intendancy) for investigations. He also created a Royal Police Guard for
Rio de Janeiro in 1809. In 1831, after independence, each province
started organizing its local "military police", with order maintenance
tasks. The
Federal Railroad Police was created in 1852.
Canada
In
Canada, the
Royal Newfoundland Constabulary was founded in 1729, making it the first police force in present-day Canada. It was followed in 1834 by the
Toronto Police, and in 1838 by police forces in
Montreal and
Quebec City. A national force, the
Dominion Police,
was founded in 1868. Initially the Dominion Police provided security
for parliament, but its responsibilities quickly grew. The famous
Royal Northwest Mounted Police was founded in 1873. The merger of these two police forces in 1920 formed the world-famous
Royal Canadian Mounted Police.
Lebanon
In
Lebanon, modern police were established in 1861, with creation of the
Gendarmerie.
[32]
India
In
India, the police is under the control of respective
States and union territories and is known to be under
State Police Services (SPS). The candidates selected for the SPS are usually posted as
Deputy Superintendent of Police or
Assistant Commissioner of Police once their probationary period ends. On prescribed satisfactory service in the SPS, the officers are nominated to the
Indian Police Service.
[33] The service color is usually dark blue and red, while the uniform color is
Khaki.
[34]
United States
In
British North America,
policing was initially provided by local elected officials. For
instance, the New York Sheriff's Office was founded in 1626, and the
Albany County Sheriff's Department in the 1660s. In the colonial period, policing was provided by elected sheriffs and local militias.
In 1789 the
U.S. Marshals Service was established, followed by other federal services such as the
U.S. Parks Police (1791)
[35] and
U.S. Mint Police (1792).
[36] The first city police services were established in
Philadelphia in 1751,
[37] Richmond, Virginia in 1807,
[38] Boston in 1838,
[39] and
New York in 1845.
[40] The
U.S. Secret Service was founded in 1865 and was for some time the main investigative body for the federal government.
[41]
After the
American Civil War,
policing became more paramilitary in character, with the increased use
of uniforms and military ranks. Before this, sheriff's offices had been
non-uniformed organizations without a para-military hierarchy.
[citation needed]
In the
American Old West, policing was often of very poor quality.
[citation needed] The Army often provided some policing alongside poorly resourced
sheriffs and temporarily organised
posses.
[citation needed] Public organizations were supplemented by private contractors, notably the
Pinkerton National Detective Agency,
which was hired by individuals, businessmen, local governments and the
federal government. At its height, the Pinkerton Agency's numbers
exceeded those of the
United States Army.
[citation needed]
In recent years, in addition to federal, state, and local forces, some
special districts
have been formed to provide extra police protection in designated
areas. These districts may be known as neighborhood improvement
districts, crime prevention districts, or security districts.
[42]
In 2005, the
Supreme Court of the United States ruled that police do not have a constitutional duty to protect a person from harm.
[43]
Development of theory
Michel Foucault
claims that the contemporary concept of police as a paid and funded
functionary of the state was developed by German and French legal
scholars and practitioners in
Public administration and
Statistics in the 17th and early 18th centuries, most notably with Nicolas Delamare's
Traité de la Police ("Treatise on the Police"), first published in 1705. The German
Polizeiwissenschaft (Science of Police) first theorized by
Philipp von Hörnigk a 17th-century Austrian
Political economist and civil servant and much more famously by
Johann Heinrich Gottlob Justi who produced an important theoretical work known as
Cameral science on the formulation of police.
[44] Foucault cites
Magdalene Humpert author of
Bibliographie der Kameralwissenschaften
(1937) in which the author makes note of a substantial bibliography was
produced of over 4000 pieces of the practice of Polizeiwissenschaft
however, this maybe a mistranslation of Foucault's own work the actual
source of Magdalene Humpert states over 14,000 items were produced from
the 16th century dates ranging from 1520-1850.
[45][46]
As conceptualized by the
Polizeiwissenschaft, the police had an administrative,economic and social duty ("procuring abundance"). It was in charge of
demographic concerns and needed to be incorporated within the western political philosophy system of
raison d'état and therefore giving the superficial appearance of empowering the
population (and unwittingly supervising the population), which, according to
mercantilist theory, was to be the main strength of the
state. Thus, its functions largely overreached simple law enforcement activities and included
public health concerns,
urban planning (which was important because of the
miasma theory of disease; thus,
cemeteries were moved out of town, etc.), and surveillance of
prices.
[47]
Jeremy Bentham, philosopher who advocated for the establishment of preventive police forces and influenced the reforms of Sir
Robert Peel.
The concept of preventive policing, or policing to deter crime from
taking place, gained influence in the late 18th century. Police
Magistrate
John Fielding, head of the
Bow Street Runners, argued that "...it is much better to prevent even one man from being a rogue than apprehending and bringing forty to justice."
[48]
The
Utilitarian philosopher,
Jeremy Bentham, promoted the views of
Italian Marquis Cesare Beccaria,
and disseminated a translated version of "Essay on Crime in
Punishment". Bentham espoused the guiding principle of "the greatest
good for the greatest number:
-
-
It is better to prevent crimes than to punish them. This is the
chief aim of every good system of legislation, which is the art of
leading men to the greatest possible happiness or to the least possible
misery, according to calculation of all the goods and evils of life.[48]
Patrick Colquhoun's influential work,
A Treatise on the Police of the Metropolis (1797) was heavily influenced by Benthamite thought. Colquhoun's
Thames River Police was founded on these principles, and in contrast to the
Bow Street Runners,
acted as a deterrent by their continual presence on the riverfront, in
addition to being able to intervene if they spotted a crime in progress.
[49]
Edwin Chadwick's 1829 article, "Preventive police" in the
London Review,
[50] argued that prevention ought to be the
primary
concern of a police body, which was not the case in practice. The
reason, argued Chadwick, was that "A preventive police would act more
immediately by placing difficulties in obtaining the objects of
temptation." In contrast to a deterrent of punishment, a preventive
police force would deter criminality by making crime cost-ineffective -
"crime doesn't pay". In the second draft of his 1829 Police Act, the
"object" of the new Metropolitan Police, was changed by Robert Peel to
the "principal object," which was the "prevention of crime."
[51]
Later historians would attribute the perception of England's
"appearance of orderliness and love of public order" to the preventive
principle entrenched in Peel's police system.
[52]
Development of modern police forces around the world was contemporary
to the formation of the state, later defined by sociologist
Max Weber as achieving a "
monopoly on the legitimate use of physical force" and which was primarily exercised by the police and the
military.
Marxist
theory situates the development of the modern state as part of the rise
of capitalism, in which the police are one component of the
bourgeoisie's repressive apparatus for subjugating the
working class.
Personnel and organization
Police forces include both preventive (uniformed) police and
detectives. Terminology varies from country to country. Police functions include protecting life and property, enforcing
criminal law, criminal investigations, regulating traffic, crowd control, and other public safety duties.
Uniformed police
Preventive Police, also called Uniform Branch, Uniformed Police,
Uniform Division, Administrative Police, Order Police, or Patrol,
designates the police that patrol and respond to emergencies and other
incidents, as opposed to detective services. As the name "uniformed"
suggests, they wear
uniforms and perform functions that require an immediate recognition of an officer's legal authority, such as
traffic control, stopping and detaining motorists, and more active crime response and prevention.
Preventive police almost always make up the bulk of a police service's personnel. In
Australia and Britain, patrol personnel are also known as "general duties" officers.
[53] Atypically,
Brazil's preventive police are known as
Military Police.
[54]
Detectives
Police
detectives
are responsible for investigations and detective work. Detectives may
be called Investigations Police, Judiciary/Judicial Police, and Criminal
Police. In the
UK, they are often referred to by the name of their department, the
Criminal Investigation Department (CID). Detectives typically make up roughly 15%-25% of a police service's personnel.
Detectives, in contrast to uniformed police, typically wear 'business
attire' in bureaucratic and investigative functions where a uniformed
presence would be either a distraction or intimidating, but a need to
establish police authority still exists. "Plainclothes" officers dress
in attire consistent with that worn by the general public for purposes
of blending in.
In some cases, police are assigned to work "
undercover", where they conceal their police identity to investigate crimes, such as
organized crime or
narcotics crime, that are unsolvable by other means. In some cases this type of policing shares aspects with
espionage.
Despite popular conceptions promoted by movies and television, many
US police departments prefer not to maintain officers in non-patrol
bureaus and divisions beyond a certain period of time, such as in the
detective bureau, and instead maintain policies that limit service in
such divisions to a specified period of time, after which officers must
transfer out or return to patrol duties.
[citation needed]
This is done in part based upon the perception that the most important
and essential police work is accomplished on patrol in which officers
become acquainted with their beats, prevent crime by their presence,
respond to crimes in progress, manage crises, and practice their skills.
[citation needed]
Detectives, by contrast, usually investigate crimes after they have
occurred and after patrol officers have responded first to a situation.
Investigations often take weeks or months to complete, during which time
detectives spend much of their time away from the streets, in
interviews and courtrooms, for example. Rotating officers also promotes
cross-training in a wider variety of skills, and serves to prevent "cliques" that can contribute to corruption or other unethical behavior.
Auxiliary
Police may also take on
auxiliary
administrative duties, such as issuing firearms licenses. The extent
that police have these functions varies among countries, with police in
France,
Germany, and other
continental European countries handling such tasks to a greater extent than British counterparts.
[53]
Specialized units
Specialized preventive and detective groups, or
Specialist Investigation Departments
exist within many law enforcement organizations either for dealing with
particular types of crime, such as traffic law enforcement and crash
investigation,
homicide, or
fraud; or for situations requiring specialized skills, such as
underwater search,
aviation,
explosive device disposal ("
bomb squad"), and
computer crime.
Most larger jurisdictions also employ specially selected and trained quasi-
military
units armed with military-grade weapons for the purposes of dealing
with particularly violent situations beyond the capability of a patrol
officer response, including high-risk warrant service and barricaded
suspects. In the United States these units go by a
variety of names, but are commonly known as
SWAT (Special Weapons And Tactics) teams.
In
counterinsurgency-type campaigns, select and specially trained units of police armed and equipped as
light infantry have been designated as
police field forces who perform
paramilitary-type patrols and ambushes whilst retaining their police powers in areas that were highly dangerous.
[55]
Because their situational mandate typically focuses on removing
innocent bystanders from dangerous people and dangerous situations, not
violent resolution, they are often equipped with non-lethal tactical
tools like
chemical agents, "
flashbang" and concussion grenades, and rubber bullets. The London Metropolitan police's
Specialist Firearms Command (CO19)
[56] is a group of armed police used in dangerous situations including hostage taking, armed robbery/assault and terrorism.
Military police
Military police may refer to:
Religious police
Two members of the Taliban religious police (Amr bil Ma-roof, or
Department for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice) beating a
woman for removing her burqa in public.
Some
Islamic societies have
religious police, who enforce the application of Islamic
Sharia law.
Their authority may include the power to arrest unrelated men and women
caught socializing, anyone engaged in homosexual behavior or
prostitution; to enforce Islamic dress codes, and store closures
during Islamic prayer time.
[57][58]
They enforce
Muslim dietary laws, prohibit the consumption or sale of
alcoholic beverages and
pork,
and seize banned consumer products and media regarded as un-Islamic,
such as CDs/DVDs of various Western musical groups, television shows and
film.
[57][58] In
Saudi Arabia, the
Mutaween actively prevent the practice or proselytizing of non-Islamic religions within Saudi Arabia, where they are banned.
[57][58]
Varying jurisdictions
Police forces are usually organized and funded by some level of
government. The level of government responsible for policing varies from
place to place, and may be at the national, regional or local level. In
some places there may be multiple police forces operating in the same
area, with different ones having
jurisdiction according to the type of crime or other circumstances.
For example in the UK, policing is primarily the responsibility of a
regional police force; however specialist units exist at the national
level. In the US, there is typically a state police force, but crimes
are usually handled by local police forces that usually only cover a few
municipalities. National agencies, such as the
FBI, only have jurisdiction over federal crimes or those with an interstate component.
In addition to conventional urban or regional police forces, there
are other police forces with specialized functions or jurisdiction. In
the
United States, the
federal government has a number of police forces with their own specialized jurisdictions.
Some examples are the
Federal Protective Service, which patrols and protects government buildings; the
postal police, which protect postal buildings, vehicles and items; the
Park Police, which protect national parks, or
Amtrak Police which patrol
Amtrak stations and trains.
There are also some government agencies that perform police functions in addition to other duties. The
U.S. Coast Guard carries out many police functions for boaters.
In major cities, there may be a separate
police agency for
public transit systems, such as the
New York City Port Authority Police or the
MTA police, or for major government functions, such as sanitation, or environmental functions.
International policing
The terms international policing, transnational policing, and/or
global policing began to be used from the early 1990s onwards to
describe forms of policing that transcended the boundaries of the
sovereign nation-state (Nadelmann, 1993),
[59] (Sheptycki, 1995).
[60]
These terms refer in variable ways to practices and forms for policing
that, in some sense, transcend national borders. This includes a variety
of practices, but international police cooperation, criminal
intelligence exchange between police agencies working in different
nation-states, and police development-aid to weak, failed or failing
states are the three types that have received the most scholarly
attention.
Historical studies reveal that policing agents have undertaken a
variety of cross-border police missions for many years (Deflem, 2002).
[61]
For example, in the 19th century a number of European policing agencies
undertook cross-border surveillance because of concerns about anarchist
agitators and other political radicals. A notable example of this was
the occasional surveillance by
Prussian police of
Karl Marx
during the years he remained resident in London. The interests of
public police agencies in cross-border co-operation in the control of
political radicalism and ordinary law crime were primarily initiated in
Europe, which eventually led to the establishment of
Interpol before the
Second World War.
There are also many interesting examples of cross-border policing under
private auspices and by municipal police forces that date back to the
19th century (Nadelmann, 1993).
[59]
It has been established that modern policing has transgressed national
boundaries from time to time almost from its inception. It is also
generally agreed that in the post–
Cold War era this type of practice became more significant and frequent (Sheptycki, 2000).
[62]
Not a lot of empirical work on the practices of inter/transnational
information and intelligence sharing has been undertaken. A notable
exception is
James Sheptycki's study of police cooperation in the English Channel region (2002),
[63]
which provides a systematic content analysis of information exchange
files and a description of how these transnational information and
intelligence exchanges are transformed into police case-work. The study
showed that transnational police information sharing was routinized in
the cross-Channel region from 1968 on the basis of agreements directly
between the police agencies and without any formal agreement between the
countries concerned. By 1992, with the signing of the
Schengen Treaty, which formalized aspects of police information exchange across the territory of the
European Union,
there were worries that much, if not all, of this intelligence sharing
was opaque, raising questions about the efficacy of the accountability
mechanisms governing police information sharing in Europe (Joubert and
Bevers, 1996).
[64]
Studies of this kind outside of Europe are even rarer, so it is
difficult to make generalizations, but one small-scale study that
compared transnational police information and intelligence sharing
practices at specific cross-border locations in North America and Europe
confirmed that low visibility of police information and intelligence
sharing was a common feature (Alain, 2001).
[65] Intelligence-led policing is now common practice in most advanced countries (Ratcliffe, 2007)
[66]
and it is likely that police intelligence sharing and information
exchange has a common morphology around the world (Ratcliffe, 2007).
[66]
James Sheptycki has analyzed the effects of the new information
technologies on the organization of policing-intelligence and suggests
that a number of 'organizational pathologies' have arisen that make the
functioning of security-intelligence processes in transnational policing
deeply problematic. He argues that transnational police information
circuits help to "compose the panic scenes of the security-control
society".
[67] The paradoxical effect is that, the harder policing agencies work to produce security, the greater are feelings of insecurity.
Police development-aid to weak, failed or failing states is another
form of transnational policing that has garnered attention. This form of
transnational policing plays an increasingly important role in
United Nations peacekeeping
and this looks set to grow in the years ahead, especially as the
international community seeks to develop the rule of law and reform
security institutions in States recovering from conflict (Goldsmith and
Sheptycki, 2007)
[68]
With transnational police development-aid the imbalances of power
between donors and recipients are stark and there are questions about
the applicability and transportability of policing models between
jurisdictions (Hills, 2009).
[69]
Perhaps the greatest question regarding the future development of
transnational policing is: in whose interest is it? At a more practical
level, the question translates into one about how to make transnational
policing institutions democratically accountable (Sheptycki, 2004).
[70]
For example, according to the Global Accountability Report for 2007
(Lloyd, et al. 2007) Interpol had the lowest scores in its category
(IGOs), coming in tenth with a score of 22% on overall accountability
capabilities (p. 19).
[71]
As this report points out, and the existing academic literature on
transnational policing seems to confirm, this is a secretive area and
one not open to civil society involvement.
Equipment
Weapons
In many jurisdictions, police officers carry
firearms, primarily handguns, in the normal course of their duties. In the United Kingdom (except
Northern Ireland), Iceland, Ireland, Norway, New Zealand,
[72] and Malta, with the exception of specialist units, officers do not carry firearms as a matter of course.
Police often have specialist units for handling armed offenders, and
similar dangerous situations, and can (depending on local laws), in some
extreme circumstances, call on the
military (since
Military Aid to the Civil Power is a role of many armed forces). Perhaps the most high-profile example of this was, in 1980 the
Metropolitan Police handing control of the
Iranian Embassy Siege to the
Special Air Service.
They can also be equipped with
non-lethal (more accurately known as "less than lethal" or "less-lethal") weaponry, particularly for
riot control.
Non-lethal weapons include
batons,
tear gas,
riot control agents,
rubber bullets,
riot shield,
water cannons and
electroshock weapons. Police officers often carry
handcuffs to restrain suspects. The use of firearms or
deadly force
is typically a last resort only to be used when necessary to save human
life, although some jurisdictions (such as Brazil) allow its use
against fleeing felons and escaped convicts. A "shoot-to-kill" policy
was recently introduced in
South Africa, which allows police to use deadly force against any person who poses a significant threat to them or civilians.
[73] With the country having one of the highest rates of violent crime, president
Jacob Zuma states that South Africa needs to handle crime differently to other countries.
[74]
Communications
Modern police forces make extensive use of
radio
communications equipment, carried both on the person and installed in
vehicles, to co-ordinate their work, share information, and get help
quickly. In recent years, vehicle-installed computers have enhanced the
ability of police communications, enabling easier dispatching of calls,
criminal background checks on persons of interest to be completed in a
matter of seconds, and updating the officer's daily activity log and
other required reports on a real-time basis. Other common pieces of
police equipment include
flashlights/torches,
whistles, and
police notebooks and "ticketbooks" or
citations.
Vehicles
A
Ford Crown Victoria, one of the most recognizable models of American police car. This unit belongs to Houston METRO Police
German (green) and Dutch (blue/red) police vehicles
Police vehicles are used for detaining, patrolling and transporting.
The average police patrol vehicle is an specially modified four door
sedan
(saloon in British English). Police vehicles are usually marked with
appropriate logos and are equipped with sirens and lightbars to aid in
making others aware of police presence.
Unmarked vehicles are used primarily for sting operations or
apprehending criminals without alerting them to their presence. Some
police forces use unmarked or minimally marked cars for traffic law
enforcement, since drivers slow down at the sight of marked police
vehicles and unmarked vehicles make it easier for officers to catch
speeders and traffic violators. This practice is controversial, with for
example, New York State banning this practice in 1996 on the grounds
that it endangered motorists who might be pulled over by people
impersonating police officers.
[75]
Motorcycles
are also commonly used, particularly in locations that a car may not be
able to reach, to control potential public order situations involving
meetings of motorcyclists and often in escort duties where the
motorcycle policeman can quickly clear a path for the escorted vehicle.
Bicycle
patrols are used in some areas because they allow for more open
interaction with the public. In addition, their quieter operation can
facilitate approaching suspects unawares and can help in pursuing them
attempting to escape on foot.
Police departments use an array of specialty vehicles such as
helicopters, airplanes, watercraft, command posts, vans, trucks,
all-terrain vehicles, motorcycles, and SWAT armored vehicles.
Other safety equipment
Police cars may also contain
fire extinguishers[76][77] or defibrillators.
[78]
Strategies
The advent of the police car,
two-way radio, and telephone in the early 20th century transformed policing into a reactive strategy that focused on responding to
calls for service.
[79] With this transformation, police command and control became more centralized.
In the United States,
August Vollmer introduced other reforms, including education requirements for police officers.
[80] O.W. Wilson, a student of Vollmer, helped reduce
corruption and introduce professionalism in
Wichita, Kansas, and later in the
Chicago Police Department.
[81]
Strategies employed by O.W. Wilson included rotating officers from
community to community to reduce their vulnerability to corruption,
establishing of a non-partisan police board to help govern the police
force, a strict
merit system
for promotions within the department, and an aggressive recruiting
drive with higher police salaries to attract professionally qualified
officers.
[82] During the professionalism era of policing, law enforcement agencies concentrated on dealing with
felonies and other serious crime, rather than broader focus on
crime prevention.
[83]
The
Kansas City Preventive Patrol study
in the 1970s found this approach to policing to be ineffective. Patrol
officers in cars were disconnected from the community, and had
insufficient contact and interaction with the community.
[84] In the 1980s and 1990s, many law enforcement agencies began to adopt
community policing strategies, and others adopted
problem-oriented policing.
Broken windows policing was another, related approach introduced in the 1980s by
James Q. Wilson and
George L. Kelling,
who suggested that police should pay greater attention to minor
"quality of life" offenses and disorderly conduct. This method was first
introduced and made popular by New York City Mayor,
Rudy Giuliani, in the early 1990s.
The concept behind this method is simple: broken windows, graffiti,
and other physical destruction or degradation of property, greatly
increases the chances of more criminal activities and destruction of
property. When criminals see the abandoned vehicles, trash, and
deplorable property, they assume that authorities do not care and do not
take active approaches to correct problems in these areas. Therefore,
correcting the small problems prevents more serious criminal activity.
[85]
Building upon these earlier models,
intelligence-led policing
has emerged as the dominant philosophy guiding police strategy.
Intelligence-led policing and problem-oriented policing are
complementary strategies, both which involve systematic use of
information.
[86]
Although it still lacks a universally accepted definition, the crux of
intelligence-led policing is an emphasis on the collection and analysis
of information to guide police operations, rather than the reverse.
[87]
Power restrictions
In many nations,
criminal procedure law has been developed to regulate officers' discretion, so that they do not arbitrarily or unjustly exercise their powers of
arrest,
search and seizure, and
use of force. In the United States,
Miranda v. Arizona led to the widespread use of
Miranda warnings or constitutional warnings.
In
Miranda the court created safeguards against
self-incriminating statements made after an arrest. The court held that
"The prosecution may not use statements, whether exculpatory or
inculpatory, stemming from questioning initiated by law enforcement
officers after a person has been taken into custody or otherwise
deprived of his freedom of action in any significant way, unless it
demonstrates the use of procedural safeguards effective to secure the
Fifth Amendment's privilege against self-incrimination"
[88]
Police in the United States are also prohibited from holding criminal
suspects for more than a reasonable amount of time (usually 24–48
hours) before
arraignment, using
torture, abuse or physical threats to extract
confessions,
using excessive force to effect an arrest, and searching suspects'
bodies or their homes without a warrant obtained upon a showing of
probable cause. The four exceptions to the constitutional requirement of a search warrant are:
- Consent
- Search incident to arrest
- Motor vehicle searches
- Exigent circumstances
In
Terry v. Ohio (1968) the court divided seizure into two parts, the
investigatory stop
and arrest. The court further held that during an investigatory stop a
police officer's search " [is] confined to what [is] minimally necessary
to determine whether [a suspect] is armed, and the intrusion, which
[is] made for the sole purpose of protecting himself and others nearby,
[is] confined to ascertaining the presence of weapons" (U.S. Supreme
Court). Before Terry, every police encounter constituted an arrest,
giving the police officer the full range of search authority. Search
authority during a Terry stop (investigatory stop) is limited to weapons
only.
[88]
Using deception for confessions is permitted, but not coercion. There
are exceptions or exigent circumstances such as an articulated need to
disarm a suspect or searching a suspect who has already been arrested
(Search Incident to an Arrest). The
Posse Comitatus Act severely restricts the use of the military for police activity, giving added importance to police
SWAT units.
British police officers are governed by similar rules, such as those introduced to England and Wales under the
Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984
(PACE), but generally have greater powers. They may, for example,
legally search any suspect who has been arrested, or their vehicles,
home or business premises, without a warrant, and may seize anything
they find in a search as evidence.
All police officers in the United Kingdom, whatever their actual
rank, are 'constables' in terms of their legal position. This means that
a newly appointed constable has the same arrest powers as a Chief
Constable or Commissioner. However, certain higher ranks have additional
powers to authorize certain aspects of police operations, such as a
power to authorize a search of a suspect's house (section 18 PACE in
England and Wales) by an officer of the rank of Inspector, or the power
to authorize a suspect's detention beyond 24 hours by a Superintendent.
Conduct, accountability and public confidence
April 21, 2001: Police fire
CS gas at protesters during the
Quebec City Summit of the Americas.
The Commission for Public Complaints against the RCMP later concluded
the use of tear gas against demonstrators at the summit constituted
"excessive and unjustified force".
[89]
Police services commonly include units for investigating crimes
committed by the police themselves. These units are typically called
Inspectorate-General, or in the US, "
internal affairs". In some countries separate organizations outside the police exist for such purposes, such as the British
Independent Police Complaints Commission.
Likewise, some state and local jurisdictions, for example,
Springfield, Illinois[90] have similar outside review organizations. The
Police Service of Northern Ireland is investigated by the
Police Ombudsman for Northern Ireland, an external agency set up as a result of the Patten report into policing the province. In the
Republic of Ireland the
Garda Síochána is investigated by the
Garda Síochána Ombudsman Commission, an independent commission that replaced the Garda Complaints Board in May 2007.
The
Special Investigations Unit of
Ontario,
Canada,
is one of only a few civilian agencies around the world responsible for
investigating circumstances involving police and civilians that have
resulted in a death, serious injury, or allegations of
sexual assault. The agency has made allegations of insufficient cooperation from various police services hindering their investigations.
[91]
In
Hong Kong, any allegations of corruption within the police will be investigated by the
Independent Commission Against Corruption and the
Independent Police Complaints Council, two agencies which are independent of the police force.
Due to a long-term decline in public confidence for law enforcement
in the United States, body cameras worn by police officers are under
consideration.
[92]
Use of force
Police forces also find themselves under criticism for their use of force, particularly
deadly force. Specifically, tension increases when a police officer of one ethnic group harms or kills a suspect of another one.
[citation needed] In the United States, such events occasionally spark protests and accusations of
racism against police and allegations that police departments practice
racial profiling.
In the United States since the 1960s, concern over such issues has
increasingly weighed upon law enforcement agencies, courts and
legislatures at every level of government. Incidents such as the 1965
Watts Riots, the videotaped 1991 beating by
Los Angeles Police officers of
Rodney King, and the
riot
following their acquittal have been suggested by some people to be
evidence that U.S. police are dangerously lacking in appropriate
controls.
The fact that this trend has occurred contemporaneously with the rise of the US
civil rights movement, the "
War on Drugs",
and a precipitous rise in violent crime from the 1960s to the 1990s has
made questions surrounding the role, administration and scope of police
authority increasingly complicated.
[citation needed]
Police departments and the local governments that oversee them in
some jurisdictions have attempted to mitigate some of these issues
through community
outreach programs and
community policing
to make the police more accessible to the concerns of local
communities, by working to increase hiring diversity, by updating
training of police in their responsibilities to the community and under
the law, and by increased oversight within the department or by civilian
commissions.
In cases in which such measures have been lacking or absent, civil lawsuits have been brought by the
United States Department of Justice against local law enforcement agencies, authorized under the 1994
Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act. This has compelled local departments to make organizational changes, enter into
consent decree settlements to adopt such measures, and submit to oversight by the Justice Department.
[93][citation needed]
Protection of individuals
Since 1855, the
Supreme Court of the United States
has consistently ruled that law enforcement officers have no duty to
protect any individual, despite the motto "protect and serve". Their
duty is to enforce the law in general. The first such case was in 1855 (
South v. State of Maryland (Supreme Court of the United States 1855). Text) and the most recent in 2005 (
Town of Castle Rock v. Gonzales).
[94]
In contrast, the police are entitled to protect private rights in
some jurisdictions. To ensure that the police would not interfere in the
regular competencies of the courts of law, some police acts require
that the police may only interfere in such cases where protection from
courts cannot be obtained in time, and where, without interference of
the police, the realization of the private right would be impeded.
[95]
This would, for example, allow police to establish a restaurant guest's
identity and forward it to the innkeeper in a case where the guest
cannot pay the bill at nighttime because his wallet had just been stolen
from the restaurant table.
In addition, there are
Federal Law Enforcement agencies
in the United States whose mission includes providing protection for
executives such as the President and accompanying family members,
visiting foreign dignitaries, and other high-ranking individuals.
[96] Such agencies include The
United States Secret Service and the
United States Park Police.
International forces
In many countries, particularly those with a
federal system of government,
there may be several police or police like organizations, each serving
different levels of government and enforcing different subsets of the
applicable law. The
United States has a highly decentralized and fragmented system of law enforcement, with over 17,000 state and local law enforcement agencies.
[97]
Some countries, such as
Chile,
Israel, the
Philippines,
France,
Austria,
New Zealand and
South Africa, use a centralized system of policing.
[98] Other countries have multiple police forces, but for the most part their jurisdictions do not overlap. In the
United States
however, several different law enforcement agencies may have authority
in a particular jurisdiction at the same time, each with their own
command.
Other countries where jurisdiction of multiple police agencies overlap, include
Guardia Civil and the
Policía Nacional in
Spain, the
Polizia di Stato and
Carabinieri in
Italy and the
Police Nationale and
National Gendarmerie in
France.
[53]
Most countries are members of the
International Criminal Police Organization
(Interpol), established to detect and fight transnational crime and
provide for international co-operation and co-ordination of other police
activities, such as notifying relatives of the death of foreign
nationals. Interpol does not conduct investigations or arrests by
itself, but only serves as a central point for information on crime,
suspects and criminals.
Political crimes are excluded from its competencies.
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