Police

I

Introduction

Police, agency of a community responsible for maintaining public order and preventing and detecting crime. Modern policing began in the 19th century, but law enforcement mechanisms of certain kinds have existed for much longer.

II

Early Police Forces

The first policing activities were undertaken by military bodies such as the Praetorian guard in ancient Rome, whose principal role was the maintenance of order—crimes were investigated and prosecuted by private citizens. The Roman Empire achieved a high degree of law enforcement in the areas where the state did operate. When the empire declined, and eventually collapsed, such policing as there was fell to the feudal heads of the small states and fiefdoms that arose from the ruins.

In more stable medieval societies, policing remained the responsibility of feudal overlords. In England each nobleman policed his individual estate, subject to national laws that were mostly concerned with the protection of the king. Each nobleman appointed a constable, whose duties included keeping the peace and arresting and guarding criminals. Constables were often unpaid citizens who took turns at the job, which became increasingly burdensome. By the mid-16th century, citizens who could afford it took to paying deputies to do their duties. The quality of constables declined drastically as cost became the dominant factor.

In France during the 17th century, King Louis XIV established a small central police organization of about 40 inspectors who supplied the government with information on the conduct of private individuals, largely from paid informants. Much of their work was political. The king exercised a kind of summary justice on the basis of this. After the French Revolution, two police bodies were established, one for ordinary duties and one for political crimes.

Also in the 17th century the City of London started to pay watchmen to guard the streets at night. They were usually elderly men who were otherwise unemployable, and for the most part inefficient. In the 18th century they were the only policing body in the capital, together with the Bow Street Runners, an early form of police officers who were nicknamed “Robin Redbreasts” because of the red waistcoats they wore and who had some success against the rampant highway robbery of the 18th century.

The inability of these forces to deal with widespread lawlessness, particularly in London, led to a demand for more effective protection of the populace. After much Parliamentary debate, concerned with cost and the ramifications for civil rights, the home secretary (later prime minister) Sir Robert Peel established the Metropolitan Police (hence the nicknames “rozzer”, “bobby”, and “peeler” for police officers). This was the world’s first modern police force, and the pattern it established became a model for many other systems and had much influence on the style of policing in almost all countries. Earlier attempts at establishing a police force had taken place in Glasgow, where a force of eight officers was established in 1779. The experiment lasted just a few years but was resurrected in 1789. A Glasgow Police Act of 1800 established a force for the first time but the number of officers involved remained small. However, by the mid-19th century there were over 350 police officers working in the city.

The Metropolitan Police, and other forces that were set up in Britain in the wake of its success, was directed to crime prevention as its main objective. It was guided by the belief that it could only function effectively with the consent and cooperation of the public. Police constables should be civil and courteous to the public: an early law required policemen to walk in the gutter to symbolize their status as servants rather than masters of the public. The force was successful thanks to its good organization and discipline, although its civility was more in evidence in affluent areas of the capital than in working-class areas. After several years the Royal Irish Constabulary (later the Royal Ulster Constabulary, and now the Police Service of Northern Ireland) was formed, and similar organizations followed in Australia, India, and Canada. Other countries were impressed by the success of the British police model, and nations throughout the world adopted police systems on the same principle. The decentralized nature of British policing (explained below) has not been so widely followed: most countries, for example, France, have some form of national policing, often divided into one or more forces with different aspects of police work as a responsibility. Decentralization is seen as protective of the liberties of the citizen: where control over a police force is divided between local and national bodies, there is less risk of political interference in police decisions (regarding the investigation of crime or allocation of resources, for instance) for improper reasons. Attempts are made in Britain to mitigate any inefficiency that decentralization involves, by the exchange of information via such institutions as the National Reporting Centre and the National Crime Information Service.

III

British Police

There are 43 major police forces in England and Wales. The guiding principle of their organization is the avoidance of political interference in policing. For this purpose a police force is governed in a tripartite system comprising the Police Authority, central government, and the Chief Constable. The Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) was established in 1948 with the aim of centralizing the development of policing strategies so that this was performed by one body, on behalf of the service as a whole rather than by the separate forces. Strong local policing is pushed by the ACPO, which believes that this must be maintained within the tripartite police system. However, the ACPO recognizes that modern crime has an increasingly international dimension and there is an ever-present need to optimize the use of public resources, which places a voluntary duty on forces to work together employing common policies and methods.

The Police Authority and Chief Constable have control in setting priorities, in the annual policing plan, and setting the budget. The Police Authority has the ultimate power in appointing the Chief Constable. Traditionally, it was largely composed of representatives of local authorities in the relevant police area, but it now also contains business people and others with relevant experience appointed by central government. This has been criticized as reducing the input of local democracy and increasing the power of central government. Central government, in the form of the Home Office, is another pillar of the tripartite system. It produces a shortlist of Chief Constable applicants from which the Police Authority must select when there is a vacancy; it produces guidelines and instructions for the operational conduct of the police; it also produces regulations as to the terms and conditions of police employment. The third pillar of the system is the Chief Constable, who has considerable autonomy, particularly over operational decisions; it is impossible to dismiss a Chief Constable because of a disagreement over the operational activities of the force. This separation of authority is aimed at ensuring that no one element obtains dominating control of the force.

An exception is the Metropolitan Police, which, because of its history and certain special functions, is answerable directly to the Home Office. By convention its commissioner (chief officer) retains operational autonomy. The Macpherson inquiry, instigated by the then Home Secretary Jack Straw in 1997 to look into the way a racially motivated crime was investigated and prosecuted, reported in February 1999. This followed the police investigation of the murder of black teenager Stephen Lawrence by a gang of white youths in south London in 1993 that failed to bring about prosecutions. The report's findings vindicated the claim made by the Lawrence family and their supporters that the police investigation and failure to secure evidence and the conviction of Stephen's killers was largely the result of racist attitudes in the police. Institutional racism was defined as “the collective failure of an organization to provide an appropriate and professional service to people because of their colour, culture or ethnic origin. It can be seen or detected in processes, attitudes, and behaviour which amount to discrimination through unwitting prejudice, ignorance, thoughtlessness, and racist stereotyping which disadvantage minority ethnic people”. The report listed 70 recommendations, including a number addressing the need for greater training for the police in issues concerning race. The report also acknowledged that the problem of institutional racism was not isolated to the Metropolitan Police, but affected other institutions, and required action in many sectors of society.

The Race Relations (Amendment) Act 2000 strengthened the Race Relations Act 1976. It met recommendation 11 of the Macpherson Inquiry Report that the full force of race relations legislation should apply to the police and went further by extending the legislation to all public authorities. The 2000 Act outlawed discrimination (direct and indirect) and victimization in all public authority functions not covered by the 1976 Act, with only limited exceptions.

A

Police Personnel and Discipline

British police officers are not merely employees; they have individual status as constables, and their powers stem chiefly from that. Partly for this reason, a disciplinary offence alleged against a police officer must be proved beyond reasonable doubt, in the same way as a criminal offence—most disciplinary proceedings require less stringent proof. It is illegal for police officers to join a union or take strike action, but they have approved staff bodies, the police federations—for example, the Police Federation of England and Wales and the Scottish Police Federation. Complaints of abuses by the police of their considerable powers have brought about the creation of the Police Complaints Authority, an independent body that examines allegations by the public. This is an improvement on the previous ad hoc methods but suffers from the disadvantage that it has no significant investigative powers of its own.

In March 2004 the PCA ceased to exist and was replaced by the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC). The IPCC functions to secure and keep under review the maintenance of suitable arrangements for the recording, handling, and investigation of complaints and conduct matters with an appropriate degree of independence. The IPCC is able to make reports and recommendations to the Home Secretary on police practices. Its investigators have full police powers while on duty and must by law be given access to police premises, documents, and other evidence when requested.