Police state

“ The police station and the feeing system are the parent of one most barbarous custom; an evil most elusive, its roots, like the roots of the vicious bindweed, so far underground, with such complicated entanglement of relationships, as to be almost ineradicable, involving in some instances State attorneys of good standing, detectives, policemen, sheriffs—in fact, more or less involving the whole force of agents supposed to be protectors of the public. This abuse is called the third degree, or the sweat-box.
A man is arrested, accused of a crime or of knowledge of a crime. ”

“ Any other rule would undermine 'the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers and effects,' [8] and would obliterate one of the most fundamental distinctions between our form of government, where officers are under the law, and the police-state where they are the law. ”

“ What is termed the police power of the State, which, from the language often used respecting it, one would suppose to be an undefined and irresponsible element in government, can only interfere with the conduct of individuals in their intercourse with each other, and in the use of their property, so far as may be required to secure these objects. ”

“ A leading authority on American police administration recently estimated that the average policeman, to enforce the city ordinances, State laws, and Congressional enactments, committed in whole or in part to his charge, must have a working knowledge of at least 16,000 statutes. ”

“ Of course, if the States afford less protection against the police, as police, than against the hoodlum-if under authority of state 'statute, ordinance, regulation, custom, or usage' the police are specially shielded- s 1979 provides a remedy which dismissal of petitioners' complaint in the present case does not impair. Otherwise, the protection of the people from local delinquencies and shortcomings depends, as in general it must, upon the active consciences of state executives, legislators and judges. ”

“ Littré defines police as “the ordered system established in any city or state, which controls all that affects the comfort and safety of the inhabitants.” “Police,” says a modern writer, “is that section of public authority charged to protect persons and things against every attack, every evil which can be prevented or lessened by human prudence.” Again: “To maintain public order, protect property and personal liberty, to watch over public manners and the public health: such are the principal functions of the police.” ”

“ Since enforcements cannot be counted on, it is the special task of the inspectors and state police administrative offices to urge the other administrative offices, charged with the commitment of the manpower, to take over the affairs of the Security Police within the sphere of their jurisdiction. ”

“ Well, the ordinary police are quite as cautious as the political police. So no one, whether in the Home Office or at the Prefecture of Police, ever moves excepting in the interests of the State or for the ends of Justice. ”

“ For a closed society is not open to ideas of progress—and a police state finds that it cannot command the grain to grow. ”

“ The police power is a very extensive one, and is frequently exercised where it also results in raising a revenue. The police powers of a state form a portion of that immense mass of legislation which embraces everything within the territory of a state not surrendered to the general government ”

“ Like their comrades beyond the boundary, the City police are largely employed by private individuals; banks, exchanges, public offices, and so forth, gladly put themselves under official protection. It should have been mentioned, when dealing with the Metropolitan Police, that some 1,800 officers of all{257} ranks, from superintendents to private constables, are regularly engaged in a variety of posts outside ordinary police duty. Every great department of State is guarded by them ”

“ The exercise of the right of eminent domain shall never be so abridged or construed as to prevent the Legislature from taking the property and franchises of incorporated companies and subjecting them to public use the same as the property of individuals, and the exercise of the police power of the State shall never be so abridged or construed as to permit corporations to conduct their business in such manner as to infringe the rights of individuals or the general well-being of the State. ”

“ 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 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Now, you may say that the police force can be inspired with proper respect for the law even if the head of the police ordains that a certain law, impunity for the violation of which had formerly been one of the main sources of police corruption, shall be enforced only apparently, or a little, or not at all. ”

“ They first enunciated the judicious principle that has ever governed police action in this country: the principle that prevention of crime was the first object of the constable, not the punishment of offenders after the fact. The protection of person and property and the maintenance of peace and good order were the great aims of a police force. A firm but pleasant and conciliatory demeanour was earnestly enjoined upon all officers, and this has been in truth, with but few exceptions, the watchword of the police from first to last. ”

“ No modern institution has been more talked about and written about than that of the police. The police problem is, in all cities, one to which continual thought is given by citizens as well as officials. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The immediate result of the institution of an effective police force, whose main object was prevention, was precisely that which was to be expected: convictions for crimes of violence decreased, because evil-disposed persons knew that they could no longer commit them with impunity, and convictions for minor offences increased, because the vigilance of the new policemen brought to their proper punishment many a petty depredator who had easily hoodwinked his familiar friend, the old parish officer. ”

“ He also collected a mass of evidence bearing on the causes that were responsible for the prevalence of crime, and proposed that a scientific campaign against the enemies of Society should be inaugurated, under the direction of experts, who should be free to devote the whole of their time and energies to the task. His proposition, in fact, amounted to the creation, if possible, of a centralized police, related to the general government through the Home Office, and officered both in the superior and subordinate grades, by men specially trained for the purpose. ”

“ In each country the police are organised on a different principle, and act in the execution of their duty on a different code of rules. In all cases, for instance, of mendicancy, drunkenness, brawling, and disorder, the initiative rests practically with the police, and it depends almost entirely on the instructions issued to the police whether such offences shall figure largely or not in the statistics of crime. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Now, when a police officer undertakes to investigate a crime, he is possessed and saturated with the thoughts and experiences he has with bad people. He is drifting and turning in the way of finding a criminal, magnifying this, minimizing that, throwing himself on this side in order to catch somebody, standing before a community that demands the detection and punishment of the criminal, blamed if he does not get somebody into the lockup before morning. “What are the police doing?” says the newspaper, and the newspapers, you know, are not always right, mostly. ”

“ Inquire at all garages, automobile stands, stables, etc.
If found, notify Detective Bureau.
Before noon, the Commissioner has postponed appointments, assigned routine business, and is engaged in an investigation that will keep him busy until that morning, twelve days later, when the first arrests are made, and the case is, in police parlance, “broken.”
Where do the police begin in such a crime? What do they start with when there is apparently so little to work upon?
In spite of the wide popular interest in police and criminal matters, the average citizen has no very clear idea. ”

“ Society, weak, gullible, and defenceless, handicapped by a thousand conventions, would soon be devoured alive by its greedy parasites: but happily it has devised the shield and buckler of the police; not an entirely effective protector, perhaps, but earnest, devoted, unhesitating in the performance of its duties. The finer achievements of eminent police officers are as striking as the exploits of the enemies they continually pursue. ”

“ When in any division, offences are frequently committed, there must be reason to expect that the police in that division is not properly conducted.
The absence of crime will be considered the best proof of the complete efficiency of the police. In divisions where this security and good order have been effected, the officers and men belonging to it may feel assured that such good conduct will be noticed by rewards and promotions. ”

“ 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." ”