Police law

“ The judicial approach to the problem, of course, must be in a spirit of cooperation with the police officials in the administration of justice. They are directly charged with the responsibility for the maintenance of law and order and are under the same obligation as the judicial arm to discharge their duties in a manner consistent with the Constitution and statutes. The prevention and punishment of crime is a difficult and dangerous task, for the most part performed by security and prosecuting personnel in a spirit of public service to the community. ”

“ The police touch all classes of the public at many points beyond the performance of their sterner duties as representatives of the law, and they touch them in a friendly way.... The police in short, are not the representatives of an arbitrary and despotic power, directed against the rights or obtrusively interfering with the pleasures of law-abiding citizens: they are simply a disciplined body of men, specially engaged in protecting 'masses' as well as 'classes,' from any infringement of their rights on the part of those who are not law-abiding. ”

“ For myself, I have the firmest belief that the police endeavour as a rule to do what is right and straight, but after all we must not lose sight of the fact that the police are there to clear up the crime and to run in somebody—the real criminal of course for choice—and it seems hardly right to put them at this very critical moment into the position of a judicial authority deciding the most important point for or against the man they have arrested and believe to be guilty. ”

“ What is the Police? This we can best answer by a deduction of the conception of the police power of the state. The state, as such, has entered into a common compact with its citizens by which each party assumes certain duties and receives certain rights. We have shown the means of connection between the state and the citizens in all cases in which the citizen can and undoubtedly will prefer complaint. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In his "History of the Criminal Law," Sir James Stephen thus explains the position. "The police in their different grades are no doubt officers appointed by law for the purpose of arresting criminals, but they possess for this purpose no powers that are not also possessed by private persons.... A policeman has no other right as to asking questions or compelling the attendance of witnesses than a private person has; in a word, with a few exceptions, he may be described as a person paid to perform as a matter of duty acts, which if he so minded, he might have done voluntarily." ”

“ The penal department of any form of civil government must principally consist of two closely allied branches, the judiciary that interprets the law and exacts penalties for its infraction, and the police whose duty it is to enforce the legal code as laid down by the judges, it being in the nature of things that judicial functions cannot exist independently of police functions. ”

“ In general, it may be said that every citizen, under the common law, is expected to preserve the peace of the community, and may, without a warrant, make arrests for offences which he sees committed. Indeed, if the crime be extreme and be a felony under the law, he is bound to arrest the offender, under pain of fine and imprisonment. He may not make any arrests, however, unless he is an actual witness of the offence. ”

“ We also fully recognize the obligation of all citizens to aid in enforcing the criminal laws. This Court, while protecting individual rights, has always given ample latitude to law enforcement agencies in the legitimate exercise of their duties. The limits we have placed on the interrogation process should not constitute an undue interference with a proper system of law enforcement. As we have noted, our decision does not in any way preclude police from carrying out their traditional investigatory functions. ”

“ The immediate sanction triggered by the application of the rule is visited upon the prosecutor whose case against a criminal is either weakened or destroyed. The doctrine deprives the police in no real sense; except that apprehending wrongdoers is their business, police have no more stake in successful prosecutions than prosecutors or the public.
The suppression doctrine vaguely assumes that law enforcement is a monolithic governmental enterprise. ”

“ As we said just last term, 'The abhorrence of society to the use of involuntary confessions * * * also turns on the deep-rooted feeling that the police must obey the law while enforcing the law; ”

“ There has been no law in our country under our system of a more complete, sweeping and comprehensive measure placed within the powers of a simple executive office, as the Superintendent of Police is, as this law. It exceeds that of the Common Law, where the power is vested in a judicial officer to issue a warrant; but here a policeman may authorise in writing any members of his police force to enter any place complained of by either a member of the police force or by two householders, and arrest all such persons found therein.—Vol. ”

“ The police agencies — all the way from municipal and state forces to the federal bureaus — are responsible for law enforcement and public safety in this country. I am proud of their efforts, which, in my view, are not fairly characterized by the Court's opinion. ”

“ If circumstances so often require the warrantless arrest that the law generally permits it, the typical situation will find the arresting officers lawfully on the premises without arrest or search warrant. Like the majority, I would permit the police to search the person of a suspect and the area under his immediate control either to assure the safety of the officers or to prevent the destruction of evidence. And like the majority, I see nothing in the arrest alone furnishing probable cause for a search of any broader scope. ”

“ Nor can I join in the Court's criticism of the present practices of police and investigatory agencies as to custodial interrogation. The materials it refers to as "police manuals" [1] are, as I read them, merely writings in this field by professors and some police officers. Not one is shown by the record here to be the official manual of any police department, much less in universal use in crime detection. Moreover, the examples of police brutality mentioned by the Court [2] are rare exceptions to the thousands of cases that appear every year in the law reports. ”

“ A police officer has little more right than the citizen. It is true that, while the law only allows the latter to arrest in ordinary cases, it makes it the duty of the former in every case where he sees an offence committed. And where it is felony that is charged, the right of the officer is higher than that of the citizen, for he may make the arrest without warrant, upon information, and may use his revolver in case the criminal attempts to escape. ”

“ One FPD officer estimated that about a quarter of the Ferguson community distrusts the police department.
A growing body of research, alongside decades of police experience, is consistent with what our investigation found in Ferguson: that when police and courts treat people unfairly, unlawfully, or disrespectfully, law enforcement loses legitimacy in the eyes of those who have experienced, or even observed, the unjust conduct. ”

“ Train officers on mechanics of community policing and their role in implementing it; Measure and evaluate individual, supervisory, and agency police performance on community engagement, problem-oriented-policing projects, and crime prevention, rather than on arrest and citation productivity. 2. Focus Stop, Search, Ticketing and Arrest Practices on Community Protection FPD must fundamentally change the way it conducts stops and searches, issues citations and summonses, and makes arrests. FPD officers must be trained and required to abide by the law. ”

“ We therefore request the Police Commission not to be guided by the strict letter of the law, but by its reasonable purport and intent, to consider the great and far reaching evils which will follow the course so far adopted, and then honestly to admit that the whole people will be better and more wisely served by an enforcement of the law which is consonant with a reasonable construction and agreeable to the cosmopolitan character of our great and beautiful city. ”

“ As befits the mental calibre of such a man, the law frequently becomes synonymous with the functions of the police, who are naïvely supposed to know when and how to protect everybody’s legal rights. This is an error. Not only are the police extremely ignorant persons, but they have scarcely any legal status whatever. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The use of the process of injunction to prevent disturbance of a going business by such a campaign as defendants here have conducted, is in the essential sense a measure of police regulation. And just as the states have a broad discretion about establishing police regulations, so they have a discretion, equally broad, about modifying and relaxing them. They may adopt the common law, or some other system, as their own judgment of the interests of their people may determine. ”

“ Unlike other administrations, the police did not act under legal or statutory regulations, but it interfered very effectually in the life of the country by the exercise of orderly and systematic de facto law. I shall have the opportunity of treating certain aspects of this police administration in the fourth section of my brief. For the moment, within the scope of my subject, I should like simply to cite the facts which constitute direct and general violation of sovereignty. ”

“ In Continental Europe this danger has not, as we think, been sufficiently guarded against: the police functionary is there entrusted with powers that render him to some extent independent of the ordinary law of the land, for he cannot be prosecuted for malfeasance unless special permission has first been obtained from the Government, and this permission is only granted under very exceptional circumstances. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Should the civil liability for police conduct which can claim no authority under local law, which is actionable as common-law assault or trespass in the local courts, comport different rules' Should an unlawful intrusion by a policeman in Chicago entail different consequences than an unlawful intrusion by a hoodlum? ”

“ The same Part of the Article alters the ordinary law for the protection of the citizen in one important respect. Under the ordinary law, when a person has been arrested and is in the custody of the police he is protected from interrogation by his custodians for obvious reasons. ”

“ Such acts have produced the inevitable result, that, as such higher authorities saw fit to openly throttle a law they were sworn to enforce, the rank and file of the police force itself inferred that they, too, could seek to evade, and refuse to execute, all laws and ordinances which in their judgment affected the suppression of crime. ”

“ I might not agree with, but I could understand, a position that police officers acting without a warrant can obtain lawful consent to enter a home and ask questions only by explaining to the occupants that they have a constitutional right to deny admission, even to officers of the law conducting an authorized and necessary investigation. ”

“ The constitution of the general police of the country being of such a nature that it was powerless to enforce any universally unpopular measure, a distinct and separate organisation was required to administer the well-hated code of law which had to do with the royal prerogative of hunting. ”

“ 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 court, established by the State constitution of 1870, is held by the Mayor of the town, and in his absence by the Recorder, or in his absence by any justice of the peace who may be designated by the Mayor for that purpose. This court has jurisdiction of misdemeanors and of civil cases, where the amount involved is less than one hundred dollars, with the right of appeal to the corporation court when the amount in controversy is ten dollars or more. After the first of January, 1909, by provision of State law, this court will be conducted by a police justice. ”