North-West Mounted Police

“ The 89th Congress gave us a new start in the attack on crime by passing the Law Enforcement Assistance Act that I recommended. We appointed the National Crime Commission to study crime in America and to recommend the best ways to carry that attack forward.
And while we do not have all the answers, on the basis of its preliminary recommendations we are ready to move.
This is not a war that Washington alone can win. The idea of a national police force is repugnant to the American people. Crime must be rooted out in local communities by local authorities. ”

“ Even the police, East and West, certainly no friends of mine, were not without a kind of—hum—let me say a kind of gratitude for the way I had come out of corners into which I had occasionally been crowded.
Law-abiding citizens, whom the police feel it their duty to protect and to avenge, do not shoot at people from the rear or from shadows, do not pick quarrels and lay traps. ”

“ There are, no doubt, many occasions on which it is desirable to transfer bodies of police from one place to another in order to concentrate the forces of law and order at some threatened or strategic point, but in so doing the danger to be apprehended from the resulting increase of local animus, ought to be taken into account, and adequately provided for. ”

“ The police in the South and West might not be so passive as they were in the recent affair at Larne, and there might be serious conflicts, and even loss of life, and from this day forward every day which the proclamation is enforced as strictly as it is now against the Nationalists brings increased danger of disastrous collision between the police and the people. ”

“ In all, the active members of both police and security forces (uniformed and plainclothes) probably total about 500,000 - or about 3% of the population. To supplement the large police and security forces, the regime has also attempted to organize an extensive network of informers, particularly in regions bordering on West Germany. Although some people, usually SED or FDJ members, willingly act as police informers, most recruits for this task must be coerced into service.
The police maintain a complex and extensive system of checks and controls over the population. ”

“ If the North-West Mounted start to arrest Bully West or to empty his liquor-kegs, they'll go right through with the job. They're go-getters, these red-coats are."
"Red-coats? Not soldiers, are they?"
"Well, they are and they ain't. They're drilled an' in companies. But they can arrest any one they've a mind to, and their officers can try and sentence folks. They don't play no favorites either. ”

“ The population has so increased, and so many new and remote communities have been established, that the police forces have had to be augmented. Colonel Phillips proved himself a master in organising ability. Notwithstanding the presence of numerous undesirable characters, who have migrated hither, like old-time bloodthirsty camp followers of victorious armies, to rob those following the victorious march, crime has not increased in proportion to the increase of population. Every centre and district is well served; the Western Australian police are a fine body of men. ”

“ Many militia functions are peripheral to the primary police duties of law enforcement and criminal investigation. Such functions include social controls having diverse objectives ranging from gun control to keeping undesirables off Sofia streets during visits of foreign dignitaries. The police have unusual powers in dealing with beggars, vagabonds, and others in the category that they classify as socially dangerous. Some of the controls are directed at preventing crime ”

“ The white policemen had all served in the United States army, navy or marine corps. The men are garbed in khaki, and look more like cavalrymen than police officers—indeed a stalwart, well-setup body of a high order of intelligence and excellent carriage. Arrests are numerous, yet not more so than in an American city of 65,000 people. Of about 150 convicts nearly all are black and these are employed in the construction of roads within the Zone. The work of the police is greatly expedited by the celerity of practice in the courts. ”

“ When individuals, in spite of the efforts of the law enforcement agencies and the social organizations, engage in antisocial or criminal behavior, the courts are charged with handing down appropriate sentences, and the penal institutions are concerned with rehabilitating the individuals for eventual return to society as cooperative and productive members.
People's Militia units throughout the country are the local police forces that enforce the laws, combat crime, and monitor the population. ”

“ The rough and the criminal do not fear the prowess of the individual policeman, they fear the organization behind him—take that away, and the constable becomes merely a big man armed with nothing more formidable than a wooden truncheon.
The result of this temporary and partial breakdown of the organization was that the whole force suffered a double loss; the general public, no longer feeling the old confidence in the power of the police to protect them, withheld to some extent their moral support ”

“ America's law enforcement officers face extraordinary risks-breaking up a drug ring, apprehending a fugitive, responding to an incident of domestic violence, even making a traffic stop. Since the first recorded police death in this country in 1794, more than 13,500 law enforcement officers have been killed in the line of duty. On average, more than 62,000 officers are assaulted and some 20,000 are injured each year. ”

“ In every state the police is the inner-political instrument of power; in every state its task is to support the government, to protect it in every direction and to render the disturber of the peace and the violator of the law harmless, if necessary, by force of arms. The defendant assigned these tasks to the police under his direction, whom he ordered, in the speech mentioned by the Prosecution, to act energetically and to fulfill their duties conscientiously. ”

“ From the beginning it was realized that law enforcement is not properly a military responsibility. Yet the necessity for using the Constabulary, as it existed in 1935, as the nucleus out of which to establish the Army’s foundation, and the paucity of trained men for key positions had been the causes of the temporary consolidation heretofore existing. In the hope of avoiding wholesale transfers from the Army for police work, the establishment of a State Police from civilian sources was attempted in 1936. ”

“ A force specially devoted to the last mentioned object is desirable on many grounds. In the first place the knowledge that such a body would possess of the welshers, cardsharpers, and pickpockets who travel about from one race-meeting to another, and with whom the different local police forces are unable to cope, would put an end to a great deal of the crime which is at present unchecked and undetected; and in the second place, it would no longer be necessary to withdraw large bodies of police from their proper duties for the protection of race-goers. ”

“ And for decisive evidence that the new establishment of a police force is not, by the crimes which it is the means of binging to light, the cause of the prodigious increase of crime of late years in the British empire, we refer to the contemporary examples of two other countries, in which a police force on a far more extensive scale has been established, and has been found the means of effecting a signal diminution of crime and commitment. ”

“ However, the immediate demands of the fight against crime, the concern not to create vacuums of authority, and other risks which the disbanding of the National Police would entail have prompted the Government to opt for a strategy which combines very rapid retraining of members of the existing force with the training of new police. ”

“ We may rely upon it that the law-abiding character of the British nation is largely due to the rarity with which espionage as a method of control has been employed in these islands, just as the trustworthiness of our English Constabularies is largely the outcome of the confidence that we repose in the wisdom and integrity of our peace-officers. We are well served by our police because we have wisely made them personally responsible for their actions. The constable suffers equally with the non-official citizen for any illegal action he may commit ”

“ Under the military régime espionage was encouraged, and the new functionaries received special [129] instructions to watch carefully such persons as appeared to live beyond their means. At the same time better protection for the public highways was provided, sheriffs being ordered to apprehend vagrants, robbers and highwaymen throughout their respective districts, with the assistance, if necessary, of the military police ”

“ A cop can arrest a man whom he sees in the process of house-breaking on burglary, but if he then fans him and finds a gun he cannot charge him with a concealed-weapon violation, because he had no warrant for the search. When police have information that a crime is being committed on a premise, they must first get in touch with the U.S. Commissioner or a judge, then locate a deputy marshal to come and serve the warrant.
But don’t you assume you can get away with anything in Washington. The cops are death on jay-walkers. If you cross against the light you’ll be jugged. ”

“ In this difficult and ofttimes dangerous duty the men who stand for constitutional order in society will always have the support of decent intelligent citizens.
Not only in the centres of population but away up in the Arctic regions beyond the sky-line of civilization have the Mounted Police in 1920 as always been doing their duty in their usual unobtrusive but extremely effective way. ”

“ They were not party men, politically or socially, but they saw that every person and every organization that was sane and law-abiding and constructive, got fair play without interference from anyone. The Police did not as a body engage in commercial activities themselves, but they made it possible for the settler and the miner and the railroad-builder and others in all lawful occupations to go about their work in peace and develop the country under the shield of police protection. ”

“ Increasingly during this period the Army came to assume new responsibilities that called for units capable of extending national security authority along the new nation's frontiers. Serving essentially as military police, federal troops played a vital role throughout the settlement of the trans-Appalachian West. Because of the proximity of Army outposts and the general scarcity of civil law enforcement authority, settlers looked to the military as the primary source of law and order. ”

“ They say that the returns of commitments do not afford a correct measure of the crime that really exists in the country; that a police force is now more generally established, and is incomparably more vigilant than heretofore ”

“ The prevention of kidnapping, bomb-throwing, and the other allied manifestations of the Black Hand depends entirely upon the activity of the police—particularly the Italian detectives, who should form an inevitable part of the force in every large city. ”

“ The institutional restructuring of the police should be based on a philosophy of service with a view to protecting the rights of each individual. As a guarantor of public order and an aid to the Public Prosecutor's Office in the investigation of crime, the police force should ensure internal peace and the safety of the citizens, and in so doing it is empowered to make legitimate use of force when absolutely necessary. Such action should be subject to effective internal controls, since only jurisdictional bodies are empowered to review the legality of police actions. ”

“ It is not true that all our existing police regulations are needed to protect our life and property. In the mining camps of the West and in Australia, the individuals took their protection into their own hands, forming the so-called "Vigilance Committees", and the most model order prevailed without any official machinery. It is not true that all our legal squabblings and janglings are needed to have justice properly administered. ”

“ It continued to be the only efficient instrument for imposing the will of the Government upon the people until 1829, when the present police-force was established. And the police are a standing army, neither more or less. The only essential difference between police and soldiers is that the former are employed mainly in the coercion of subjects of the State which levies them, while the function of the latter is to coerce the subjects of foreign states. It would not be inaccurate to say that police are soldiers against domestic enemies, and an army police against foreign enemies. ”

“ The Mission has reiterated the seriousness of the activities of illegal structures which conduct parallel investigations, in some cases affecting the judicial process. Faced with the high crime rate, and especially the impact of kidnappings, which serve to heighten the perception of a climate of insecurity, the State has allowed persons or groups outside the competent institutions to become involved in police investigations, on the pretense of supporting prosecutors, judges and victims, and to utilize State resources. ”

“ Without attaching too much importance to the statements of this foreign critic, it must be confessed that at no time in our history have the arrangements for maintaining the peace sunk to so low an ebb as when thief-takers like Jonathan Wild were officially recognised and allowed to co-operate with the constitutional police forces, and at no time has the flood of lawlessness reached such a [144] height as when highwaymen and footpads dictated their own terms to all who made bold to use the King's Highway. ”