Mounted police

“ The Police itself is much split and is subordinated in the most important parts to the ministry of justice and not to the ministry of the Interior. The special troops, the motorized and mounted units, are relatively good, the Marechaussee, a sort of troop gendarmerie, is very good. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ Hence the organisation of some force taking its mandate from the many to compel good conduct in the few; some special institution whose functions are to watch over the common weal, and act for the public both in preventing evil and preparing or securing good. From this the police deduces its claim to such interference with every citizen as{192} is necessary to maintain order and ensure obedience to the law. ”

“ A cursory glance at the conditions prevailing in Trafalgar Square reveals in a moment the reasons for the defeat of the police; it is at once apparent that their failure must not be attributed to any physical cause whatever. The police force on duty was quite large enough, and the units of which it was composed were sufficiently well endowed with muscle, nerve and morale, to have kept in order a crowd twice as violent and many times more numerous than the one actually opposed to it; the collapse of authority was due to defects of organization, to bad strategy, and to tactical blundering. ”

“ It was not considered advisable to occupy the ground in force before the agitators assembled, because, strictly speaking, the police had no authority to prevent peaceable citizens from walking across this particular piece of ground if they were minded to, and because it was foreseen that, should the mob find their rendezvous already strongly held, they would attempt to carry out their programme at some other spot, where there was no police force strong enough to interfere with them. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Certainly it would be unreasonable to require that police officers take unnecessary risks in the performance of their duties. American criminals have a long tradition of armed violence, and every year in this country many law enforcement officers are killed in the line of duty, and thousands more are wounded. ”

“ If the feebleness of the police was in some degree responsible for the ready appeal to arms in 1642, the lawlessness that was so widespread at the close of the century, was largely the outcome of the disorganization of the national police system, which was the natural accompaniment of the Revolution. Civil War is invariably attended by an outbreak of crime that has no connection with the main quarrel, but which arises in the day of trouble because the powerlessness of the executive is the opportunity of the criminal. ”

“ The policeman, like any civilian, fights for his skin; he gets a drubbing and returns it with interest. But since his weapon does not give him so manifest an advantage as a sword would, the public consider the fracas a fair fight. And after all, the combatants must appear before a magistrate; in the police-court they are on equal terms, and witnesses are heard on either side. There is no prejudice in favour of the policeman. ”

“ The momentary excitement caused by this altercation was swallowed up by the advent of a squad of police, which wheeled into the avenue from 43d Street, and checked the pursuit of the bleeding remnants of the invalid corps. Those immediately around the young man pressed forward to see what took place, he following, but edging towards the sidewalk, with the eager purpose to see the first fight between the mob and the police. ”

“ Ferguson should be strangled to death in a place considered to be so well policed and watched as Riga; and yet all the vigilance and all the cleverness of the police were powerless alike to stay the crime and to bring the criminal to justice when the crime had been committed.
‘Our lives and property are not safe,’ exclaimed the rabble. ‘The police are supine; they are useless; they are in league with the knaves who prey upon honest citizens. ”

“ The country, in fact, too often had to witness the ridiculous spectacle of a Legislature solemnly filling the Statute Book with elaborate enactments, whilst the constables whose duty it was to see the law enforced, were quietly going about their own business, following the plough, or minding the shop. English police was in truth at a low ebb, and the inevitable consequences of such a feeble executive quickly followed; bullies and blackguards of every kind overran the realm, and the weak had no rights except such as the strong chose to leave them. ”

“ Upon suspicion that the person may be armed, the police should have the power to 'frisk' him for weapons. If the 'stop' and the 'frisk' give rise to probable cause to believe that the suspect has committed a crime, then the police should be empowered to make a formal 'arrest,' and a full incident 'search' of the person. This scheme is justified in part upon the notion that a 'stop' and a 'frisk' amount to a mere 'minor inconvenience and petty indignity,' [4] which can properly be imposed upon the citizen in the interest of effective law enforcement on the basis of a police officer's suspicion. ”

“ A consequence that might be expected to spring from the prevention of crime would be a diminution in the numbers of the police. It is their duty to arrest criminals, and if the criminals are shut up their occupation is gone. ”

“ As there was no method known for the prevention of crime by an organised force of police, and no deterrent exerted on would-be criminals by the existence of a standing body of soldiery, the only possible weapon to be used against them was to be found in the law courts. ”

“ The law being powerless to prevent crime, and the police being unable to give protection, people exerted themselves to safeguard their own interests in their own way; shopkeepers combined to provide patrols to watch the fronts of their shops, householders armed themselves for the defence of their houses, whilst steel man-traps and spring-guns were set up in gardens and coverts. ”

“ 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. ”

“ But this securing the good-will of the police is comparatively unimportant, and is practically incapable of legal proof. A far more serious thing is the influence steadily brought to bear on the police in many small municipalities, to cause them to refrain from proceeding against certain public-houses. ”

“ The perpetrators of the deed, nevertheless, had disappeared, leaving no trace, and the police in their frenzied eagerness turned the city upside down. Searches innumerable of all suspected houses were made, and the most arbitrary arrests took place on the slightest whisper of anything wrong. Reports at the time put the numbers taken into custody at quite a thousand.
Yet “illegal” or “irregular” people, as they were styled by the officers of the law, came and went, moving about with impunity under the very noses of the police, and, as a rule, escaping scot-free. ”

“ WHEN men began to congregate in communities, laws for the good government and protection of the whole number became a necessity, and this led to the creation of police. The word itself is derived from πὁλις (“city”) , a collection of people within a certain area: a community working regularly together for mutual advantage and defence. The work of defence was internal as well as external, for since the world began there have been dissidents and outlaws, those who declined to accept the standard of conduct deemed generally binding, and so set law at defiance. ”

“ Having thus roughly sketched the perimeters of the constitutional debate over the limits on police investigative conduct in general and the background against which this case presents itself, we turn our attention to the quite narrow question posed by the facts before us: whether it is always unreasonable for a policeman to seize a person and subject him to a limited search for weapons unless there is probable cause for an arrest. ”

“ 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 ”

“ If a fight takes place in the streets, the police arrest everybody, not only the principals and their seconds, but all the spectators. Thus a perfectly harmless paterfamilias trudging back to his home, yielding for a minute to the curiosity inherent in us all and peering over the heads of the crowd at the struggling men, may find himself marched off to the lock-up, where he must spend the night—for there is no bail system; and next morning he is dragged off before a magistrate as an accessory to a street row and fined according to the lying capacities of the police officers concerned. ”

“ 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 diminution of our police force in so large a State with such difficult communications has had the result that the police force, moved incessantly from one end of the State to the other, never arrives in time to prevent crime! ”

“ The magistrate listened with attention and then said—
'I have long been aware of the existence of the secret, subterranean Vaults of which you allude, and so have the officers of the police; yet the fact is known to very, very few of the citizens generally. Now you propose that an efficient and armed force of the police and watch, make a sudden descent into the den, with the view of capturing the villains who inhabit it. Ridiculous!—why, sir, the thing is impossible: they have a mysterious passage, unknown to any but themselves, by which they can escape and defy pursuit. ”

“ Over all this horrible saturnalia of vice, the colors of the police force float in token of protection. The brave men of that force, morally degraded by the obedience they are compelled to yield to unworthy superiors want merely the opportunity to perform their full duty, not only as patrolmen but as patriotic American citizens. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ No division of the army should ever be without a strong detachment of police, either temporarily or permanently attached to it; and thus crimes would either be prevented through their vigilance, or those guilty of them immediately punished; the resources of a country would then neither be lawlessly seized and frittered away by marauders, nor would the inhabitants fail to bring supplies to the regularly established markets of the army, where they would be sure to find protection from the police. ”