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The Police

To Protect and Serve is the most succinct and appropriate mission statement of law enforcement, and has gained worldwide recognition thanks to Hollywood, which is unsurprising as it is the motto of the LA Police Department.

US police also have a written constitution to defend and use of the word defend, rather than uphold, might explain the more militant nature of US policing as opposed to the more softly softly approach of other Western police forces.

The UK police also swear an oath, which understandably references the Crown and takes several other obligations and duties, most notably to keep the peace, but with no written constitution to uphold (or defend), police here have a much more interpretive role, and unfortunately their priorities and policies too often depend on who is doing the interpreting.

The history of policing goes back much further than we may realize, and while Richard I was not busy crusading, he was also enlisting knights to be his 'keepers of the peace' and as we have already noted, this role of maintaining peace on our streets is a primary function of police, to this day.

The reason that most of us view the police as a fairly recent institution, is probably because modern policing really began with Robert Peel and his 'Nine Principles of Policing' which were remarkable in their time, and should still be held as the foremost aspiration for a civilian police force.

It is also remarkable, that after many hundreds of years and multiple iterations, police forces throughout the modern world are facing their most difficult and potentially destructive challenges, at a time of relative prosperity and general respect for the law.

As with many things in life, our greatest strengths will often become our most profound weaknesses and the maintenance of a civilian police force that recruits from, and has the support of, the society it serves, is the foundation of Western Democracy.

Six of Peel's Nine Principles use the word 'public' in phrases such as "public approval" and "co-operation of the public" and it is this notion of community policing by consent that has been so successful, and is today seen as increasingly vulnerable.

The problems with community policing are these:-

What happens when there is more than one community?
 And
What happens when a community does not want to be policed or does not recognize the Law of the Land?


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