“What ever happened to Peace Officers?”

A good article in the Ludwig von Mises Institute about a foreboding but little-remarked-upon change of terminology: how our police went from being ‘peace officers’ to  ‘law enforcement officers’:

‘Today when we use the term peace officer, it sounds antiquated and outdated. I’m sure most people in the room under 40 have never heard the term actually used by anyone; we might as well be talking about buggy whips or floppy disks. But in the 1800s and really through the 1960s, the term was used widely in America to refer generally to lawmen, whether sheriffs, constables, troopers, or marshals. Today the old moniker of peace officer has been almost eliminated in popular usage, replaced by “police officer” or the more in vogue “law enforcement officer.”’

While I don’t agree with everything the article goes on to say, the distinction it draws is important. The purpose of a ‘peace officer’ is to keep the peace. The purpose of a ‘law enforcement officer’ is to enforce the laws. The difference is that with the former, law enforcement is just a tool, one means among many towards the end of securing the public peace. If the neighbourhood is tranquil and the dogs aren’t barking, there is no need to hand out tickets or make arrests. The officer’s job is done. All he has left to do is to ensure that this situation remains.

It is instructive at this point to review Peel’s Nine Laws of Policing, as derived by Sir Robert Peel, the founder of modern 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 fulfil 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.

Some of these principles have been summarized as, “whether the police are effective is not measured on the number of arrests, but on the lack of crime.”

For what it’s worth, in my opinion, the principal reason today’s police deviate so far from this gold standard is the preventative law. From the radar trap located in a ‘fishing hole’, to bureaucratic gun laws, to the War on Drugs - all have conspired to inculcate an attitude of law enforcement among the police. Who cares about the peace? Have you met your ticket quota this month? It is impossible to prosecute a war on a substance that many people freely want to acquire and not have police officers develop the attitude of an occupying army. They can no longer see that “the police are the public and that the public are the police”.

While certain militaristic innovations like SWAT teams are necessary (how many hostage taking situations do we have today, as opposed to the 70’s?), the requisite legal and procedural constraints on their employment were never properly developed, or if they were developed, they were not with the idea of making them consistent with Peelian Principles.

Right now, the police as a profession are highly esteemed by the public. I personally believe that this is largely a holdover of the high crime days brought about by permissive sixties liberalism (“down with the pigs, man!”). But as these bad old days recede into the distance, what people will increasingly see in their minds’ eye when they think about the police is not Sheriff Andy Taylor of Mayberry but the assault troops, dressed in black, who rode around in armored vehicles after the Boston Marathon bombing ordering people to remain in their homes. 

To prevent that fate (and its inevitable consequences for their profession), the police need to return to the time tested principles of Sir Robert Peel - principles that are a necessary foundation of limited, responsible and civilized government - rapidly.

Comments

[don morris]

Those 9 rules by Robert Peel are, except for number 1, being egregiously violated by our police forces in Canada, especially the RCMP.

The police today act more like an occupying army than fellow citizens. After the notorious Dziekanski case,in which the RCMP lied about the facts until a private citizens video revealed the ugly truth, respect for the RCMP plummetted.

The recent actions in High River did the Force no good either. No wonder so many minor crimes go unreported when citizens are afraid to get involved with police.

The shaven-headed, armored cop of today resembles more the skinhead gangsters than a person sworn "to serve and protect" the citizenry.

, "the police need to return to the time tested principles of Sir Robert Peel" You are absolutely correct. A copy of Peel's Nine Rules should be E-mailed to the Justice Minister.

[Dollops - Eric Doll]

I take issue with the first of Peel's laws. It should read "To be a visible and respectable deterrent to crime and disorder.." "Preventing" the actions of free citizens is what the nanny state is all about.