VALDEMIR MOTA DE MENEZES
Police
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For
other uses, see Police
(disambiguation).
"Department
of Police" redirects here. For other uses, see Department
of Police (disambiguation).
|
German
State Police officer in Hamburg,
with the rank of Polizeihauptmeister mit
Zulage (Confirmed Police Sergeant Major).
A police
force is a constituted body of persons empowered by the state
to enforce the
law, protect property, and limit civil
disorder.[1]
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.[2]
Policing has included an array of activities in different situations,
but the predominant ones are concerned with the preservation of
order.[3]
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.[4]
Some parts of the world may suffer from police
corruption. The police force is usually a public sector service,
meaning they usually get paid by the taxpayer.
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. Police of the Soviet-era Eastern Europe were
(or are, in some cases, as in Belarus)
called the militsiya.
The Irish police are called the Garda
Síochána ("guardians of the peace"); a police officer
is called a garda.
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.
Contents
Etymology
First attested in English c.1530,
the word police
comes from Middle
French police,
in turn from Latin politia,[5]
which is the Latinisation of the Greek πολιτεία (politeia),
"citizenship, administration, civil polity".[6]
This is derived from πόλις (polis),
"city".[7]
History
Main article: History
of criminal justice
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.[8]
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.[9]
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 the even
the Praetorian
Guard if necessary.
Medieval policing
The hermandades
of Medieval Spain were formed to protect pilgrims on the
road to Santiago
de Compostela.
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.[10]
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.[10][11]
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[12]
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".
Gabriel
Nicolas de la Reynie, founder of the first uniformed police force
in the world.
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.[13]
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.
The modern police force
Patrick
Colquhoun, founder of the Thames
River Police.
The basis for the modern police
force was laid down by reformers at the turn of the 19th century, on
the basis of Benthamite
philosophy. 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.[14]
The idea of a police, as it then existed in France,
was considered an affront to the liberal English. 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.[15]
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 countries, notably, New
York, Dublin,
and Sydney.[14]
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.[16]
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.[15]
Colquhoun's innovations were a critical development leading up to
Robert Peel's
"new" police three decades later.[17]
A Peeler of the Metropolitan
Police Service in the 1850s.
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.[18]
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.
London was fast reaching a size
unprecedented in world history, due to the onset of the Industrial
Revolution.[19]
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,[20]
and the Metropolitan
Police Service was established on September 29, 1829 in London
as the first modern and professional police force in the
world.[21][22][23]
Sir Robert
Peel, widely regarded as the father of modern policing,[24]
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.[25]
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.[26]
Albertine
at the Police Doctor's Waiting Room,
(1885-87), painting by Christian
Krohg.
Due to public fears concerning the
deployment of the military in domestic matters, Robert 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.[27]
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."
Group portrait of policemen, Bury
St Edmunds, Suffolk,
England, c. 1900.
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.[28]
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.[29]
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.[30]
Other countries
Australia
Main
article: Law
enforcement in Australia
Police
motorcycles are commonly used for patrols and escorts, as seen
here in 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
Main
article: Law
enforcement in Brazil
Brazil's National
Public Security Force (Força Nacional de Segurança Pública)
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 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
Main article: Law
enforcement in 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.[31]
United States
Main article: Law
enforcement in the 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)[32]
and U.S.
Mint Police (1792).[33]
The first city police services were established in Philadelphia
in 1751,[34]
Richmond,
Virginia in 1807,[35]
Boston in 1838,[36]
and New York
in 1845.[37]
The U.S.
Secret Service was founded in 1865 and was for some time the main
investigative body for the federal government.[38]
A Deputy U.S.
Marshal covers his fellow officers with an M4
carbine during a "knock-and-announce"
procedure
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.[39]
In 2005, the Supreme
Court of the United States ruled that police do not have a
constitutional duty to protect a person from harm.[40]
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.[41]
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 from the 16th
century dates ranging from 1520-1850.[42]
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.[43]
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."[44]
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.[44]
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.[45]
Edwin
Chadwick's 1829 article, "Preventive police" in the
London Review,[46]
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."[47]
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.[48]
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
In most Western police forces,
perhaps the most significant division is between 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
Brazilian Federal
Highway Police at work.
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.[49]
Atypically, Brazil's
preventive police are known as Military
Police.[50]
Detectives
New
South Wales Police Force officers search the vehicle of a
suspected drug
smuggler at a border crossing. Wentworth,
New South Wales, Australia
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.[49]
Specialized units
After the 2008
Mumbai attacks, the Mumbai
Police created specialized, quick response teams to deal with
terror threats.
Specialized preventive and
detective groups 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.[51]
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)[52]
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:
- a section of the military solely responsible for policing the armed forces (referred to as provosts)
- a section of the military responsible for policing in both the armed forces and in the civilian population (most gendarmeries, such as the French Gendarmerie, the Italian Carabinieri and the Portuguese Republican National Guard also known as GNR)
- a section of the military solely responsible for policing the civilian population (such as the Romanian Gendarmerie)
- the civilian preventative police of a Brazilian state (Policia Militar)
- an Special Military law enforcement Service, like the Russian Military Police
Religious police
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.[53][54]
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.[53][54]
In Saudi Arabia,
the Mutaween
actively prevent the practice or proselytizing of non-Islamic
religions within Saudi Arabia, where they are banned.[53][54]
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.
A Police
Service of Northern Ireland barracks in Northern
Ireland. The high walls are to protect against mortar
bomb attacks.
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),[55]
(Sheptycki, 1995).[56]
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).[57]
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).[55]
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).[58]
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),[59]
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).[60]
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).[61]
Intelligence-led policing is now common practice in most advanced
countries (Ratcliffe, 2007)[62]
and it is likely that police intelligence sharing and information
exchange has a common morphology around the world (Ratcliffe,
2007).[62]
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".[63]
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)[64]
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).[65]
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).[66]
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).[67]
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
Armored vehicle of CORE,
SWAT unit within the Civil
Police of Rio de Janeiro State
In many jurisdictions, police
officers carry firearms,
primarily handguns, in the normal course of their duties. In the
United Kingdom (except Northern
Ireland), Ireland, Norway, New Zealand, 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.[68]
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.[69]
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
Main
article: Police
transportation
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 common Police patrol
vehicle is an improved 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.[70]
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[71][72]
or defibrillators.[73]
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.[74]
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.[75]
O.W.
Wilson, a student of Vollmer, helped reduce corruption
and introduce professionalism in Wichita,
Kansas, and later in the Chicago
Police Department.[76]
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.[77]
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.[78]
Anti-riot armoured vehicle of the
police of the Canton of Vaud
in Lausanne,
Switzerland
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.[79]
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.[80]
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.[81]
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.[82]
Power restrictions
Main
article: Police
misconduct
ACT
Police truck in Canberra
Australia
Traffic/highway patrol vehicle of
the ACT
Police.
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"[83]
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.[83]
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
Main
article: Police
misconduct
 |
This section needs additional citations for
verification.
Please help improve
this article by adding
citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be
challenged and removed. (March 2009)
|
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".[84]
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".[84]
Damaged 2004 Cincinnati
Police units
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[85]
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.[86]
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 decline in the public confidence in law
enforcement, agencies have suggested body cameras should be worn by
police officers.[87]
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.
An officer forcibly moves a
protester in New York
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.[88][citation
needed]
Protection of individuals
 |
The examples and perspective in this article
may not represent a worldwide
view of the subject. Please improve
this article and discuss the issue on the talk
page. (July 2012)
|
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
et al. v. State of Maryland, U.S
(Supreme Court of the United States 1855).
) and the most recent in 2005 (Town
of Castle Rock v. Gonzales).[89]
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.[90]
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.[91]
Such agencies include The United
States Secret Service and the United
States Park Police.
International forces
Main article: Law
enforcement by country
In many countries, particularly
those with a federal system of government, there may be several
police or policelike 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.[92]
Some countries, such as Chile,
Israel, the
Philippines,
France, Austria,
New Zealand
and South Africa,
use a centralized system of policing.[93]
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.[49]
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.
